What’s more important, the message or the messenger?
A quick reflection for those of us out there trying to inspire shifts in hearts and minds - on the environment, or any other issue.
I continue to ponder on how we as a species might come back into relationship with nature and come back into relationship with each other.
In a recent post, I wrote about leaning more into ethics and morality – changing hearts - to inspire pro-social and pro-nature behavior in addition to delivering facts to try to change minds.
Both are important, both are necessary.
And for each, I’ve begun to wonder if the messenger is more important than the message.
I’ve taken part in designing a handful advocacy and comms campaigns over the last decade or so. Overall, I would give those past efforts on average a B+ in terms of defining the target audience, a B- for designing a message that would resonate with that audience and a solid F for reaching that audience in a way that they would receive that information, finding the right messenger.
I’ve also been a part of a few product marketing campaigns. In general, it’s much easier to get somebody to buy something then it is to get somebody to change their mind or their heart. Marketing is the magic of tapping into your target audience’s existing set of beliefs and desires - triggering emotions to get them to purchase what you are selling. Not trying to change them.
I don’t have any broader evidence to back up this claim, but based on my personal experience, in marketing campaigns, the messenger and the message are roughly of equal importance.
But advocacy, or comms campaigns that are trying to inspire a shift in one’s beliefs or way of thinking, I believe, is something entirely different. And I’m starting to think more and more that the messenger is actually more important than the message.
In the past when designing advocacy and comms, and even marketing campaigns, I have made the tragic mistake that I see all too frequently in the environmental space in particular. I spent about 20% of resources defining and understanding my target audience, about 70% of resources coming up with and refining the message and 10% of resources identifying the distribution channels.
Note that I called those distribution channels, not the messenger quite intentionally.
Because the vast majority of campaigns that I see are focused on their distribution channels, but not the messengers. They focus, largely digitally, on different pathways to reach our target audience, and that’s even when they’ve defined a target audience instead of just writing something up and putting it out into the universe in any way they can trying to reach anyone (like me with these Substack posts ).
But what if we took a page out of Amazon’s book? Yes, the company. Bear with me…
Working Backwards
There is a core product/service development approach that sits at the center of Amazon’s business. Working backwards. Essentially, identify your target costumer and understand their needs and then work backwards to determine what product/solution will best address their needs and desires.
Now I don’t think that there is a direct application of this approach onto the task of inspiring shifts in hearts and minds, but there is one key piece that I think we could all learn from.
If we’ve identified our target audience, let’s say one individual, and we take one step backwards from them, what do we find? Who do they listening to? Who do they trust? Where do they get their information? Where do they get their inspiration? Where do they get their sense of belonging? Where do they get their dose of community?
And herein lies the big aha for me.
Because if that one step backwards gets us to some form of digital device and not another human, then I think you, the campaign, have already lost. There is no way that you are going to reach that person. And I can tell you from personal experience. As much as I try to expose myself to sources of information digitally that give me different perspectives, even I find it near impossible to voluntarily do so. I still spend the vast majority of my time listening to podcasts and reading articles from sources that reinforce my existing beliefs.
99 times out of 100, when I’ve found myself starting to see a different perspective and maybe a reshaping of my own mental model and beliefs, it’s due to a conversation with a real human being that is already a known quantity. A human being with which I likely have some trust and respect for how they show up in the world. Someone that I have physically met in person, likely many times.
And this is where I think advocacy and comms campaigns need to go if we are going to influence anyone to start to think outside of their own echo chamber. Particularly given the world that we are entering into with the emergence and rapid growth of AI.
AI will cause a proliferation of content. Well formulated arguments backed by information pulled from some source somewhere, where anyone with an internet connection can make a strong case for anything, at anytime.
But do you know that person? Do you know their agenda? Do you trust them? Do you respect them? Do you believe that they want what’s best for you?
Probably not.
Do you even believe that they are a real person?
Definitely maybe not.
And that is why I believe that to change hearts and minds, it’s the messenger, the human messenger, that will be as, if not more important than the message itself in the coming decades.
So who are the messengers?
Identifying the best messenger starts with the question, “who really cares about the person that I’m trying to reach?” Which then begs the question, “do I really care about the person that I’m trying to reach?”
If someone is trying to influence me and I don’t think that they have my well-being first and foremost, then immediately I’m going to shut them out. Especially in today’s world where we are constantly bombarded with external forces trying to grab our attention, the bar is quite high for engaging in new information, especially if that information is counter to our existing beliefs. So whoever is bringing that new information, better be someone that I trust has my own well-being at the top of their priorities.
If you find yourself trying to change someone’s heart or mind and you don’t genuinely care about making their life better, then just stop. Stop immediately, you are wasting your time and theirs. Trust me, I’ve learned this the hard way too many times when I’ve been in states of anger and frustration.
Any advocacy campaign (or each of us in our everyday lives) should first ask the question, is the change in their beliefs or values that I want, something that is genuinely good for the people I am trying to reach with this message? It’s hard to be honest with ourselves about this question, but I think it is at the heart of whether a campaign will be successful or fail. It’s ok if they don’t want it, otherwise it wouldn’t be a change in their comportment, but will it ultimately be good for them and do you genuinely want good for them?
Who truly cares for the person you’re trying to reach that they trust?
There is not a single advocacy campaign that has the resources to work backwards, person by person. I’m all for us as individuals working on a person by person basis, and we absolutely should in our lives. But if we are trying to reach audiences with which we don’t already have relationships, we need to work through people and institutions who do.
And I think the best routes in are via the institutions and places where your target audience are already in community and experience a strong sense of belonging.
Belonging is a powerful state of being that inherently entails trust and community. Identifying where your target audience experiences belonging is key to identifying the best messengers to reach them. The challenge is that in today’s world, there are less and less 3rd spaces or places where people are in community in person. So we’ve got to work a bit harder to find those.
Likely the most common is still places of religious practice.
The Interfaith Rainforest Initiative offers a powerful example of what this looks like in practice. Across the Amazon frontier in Brazil, where many of the political and land-use decisions driving deforestation are actually made, evangelical churches are among the most trusted institutions in people’s lives. Instead of broadcasting environmental messages from the outside, IRI equips pastors and other faith leaders with credible science about the rainforest and connects that knowledge to the moral language their communities already understand. Those leaders then carry the conversation into congregations across frontier states where deforestation pressures are most intense. More than 25,000 senior religious leaders across rainforest countries have now been trained, with organizing chapters across Amazon jurisdictions where forest loss is concentrated.
Farmers offer a another example. In the Midwest, organizations like Practical Farmers of Iowa have accelerated the adoption of regenerative agriculture not through national campaigns, but through field days where farmers walk each other’s land. One farmer explains why they planted cover crops, how it affected yields, what went wrong the first year, what improved in the third. Hundreds of farmers show up to these gatherings every season. When a neighbor demonstrates that soil health practices work economically, adoption spreads across counties faster than any government program could achieve.
Hunting and fishing communities provide another example. Organizations like Backcountry Hunters & Anglers have built one of the fastest-growing conservation movements in North America by organizing within hunting lodges, fishing clubs, and outdoor gatherings. Conservation framed through the language of tradition and stewardship working through the hunting and fishing communities where people already have a strong sense of belonging resonates with people who might never attend an environmental rally.
Looking outside of the environmental space, the gun violence reduction movement “Cure Violence” uses a similar insight but in urban communities. Instead of police or government officials delivering messages, the program recruits former gang members as “violence interrupters.” They mediate conflicts before they escalate. Cities that have implemented the model have seen measurable reductions in shootings.
A great example of a “third space” to meet people where they have relationships and often a sense of community is barbershops and salons. These have long served as social hubs in many communities. Many public health initiatives in the United States have successfully partnered with Black barbershops to deliver information about hypertension, cancer screenings, and vaccination.
The dance is how can we do this at larger scales?
All of these examples above require a bottom-up approach that takes a lot of time and resources to deeply understand, build relationships with and then work with existing institutions and community hubs to reach their people.
Even if we want to reach billions, my sense is that it’s best to start focusing on a few target audiences in very specific places and then build out from there. Identify a specific person in a specific city and deeply understand where are their places of belonging and who do they trust. And then map that backwards to see if those places of belonging and channels of trust hold true for larger and larger numbers of people.
To achieve true shifts in someone’s position on an issue, we need to focus on physical institutions and people reaching people. What I’ll call “digital-to-human” advocacy via digital means I don’t think is going to cut it in today’s world. This likely means that we need to start smaller and start much more focused on smaller audiences, ideally in person and not digital. It likely means a longer path and more resources required to achieve shifts, but with a much higher potential that a shift will occur and that it will be sustained.
But on second thought, maybe everything I just said is wrong…
Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to shift anyone’s minds or hearts. Maybe trying to find the right messenger and the right message is not the path to change. Maybe the only way to achieve true lasting change in this world is to be a lighthouse, to create a pull rather than a push. Instead of trying to force our own desires and our own beliefs on others, maybe we just need to live them out for ourselves and maybe it will attract a few others to the light. And maybe their light will attract a few others. And little by little, through people seeing people that they trust and they respect, we’ll make our way out to those who don’t see the world the way I do or share my values and they’ll be inspired to take a step in our direction. And maybe we’ll find ourselves inspired to take a step in theirs.
I don’t know.
I’m just a tinkerer, a thinker and a feeler trying to find the right path to make this world a better place.
What do you think?
- Eric
okay wait… the one step backwards to who they trust instead of just where to reach them, that really landed. especially the line about losing if that step leads to a device and not a human… oof, that feels uncomfortably true. i’m also sitting with your lighthouse vs. persuasion tension, like, maybe trust IS the mechanism, not the tactic? excited to connect!!
I think, by looking around at what's on fire, we can see that it is the push marketing rather than the pull that works at scale. As you say, social media algorithms, internet marketing, even TV marketing drive people's behaviour in ways they don't even understand or consciously recognise. Our opinions and reactions are deliberately and carefully manipulated into outcomes other people want. I agree and would be inclined to be blunt that this is all based in human psychology and uses our internal chemical stimulants like dopamine to influence us.
As an autistic fundraiser, I can also say absolutely that messenger matters more than message in fundraising. Many times I've observed organisations with effusive leaders but very limited real-terms impact outperforming organisations delivering real change but without the personality.
Interestingly, I met someone from the Museum for the United Nations' UN Live programme last year, who was looking into how we use mass media marketing for good rather than profit. I think this is a good angle to pursue, because if we want to change behaviour for the good, we have to out perform the algorithms attempting to drive behaviour for harmful profit.
Social marketing is also all about the messenger, we clearly onboard information more readily from people that we can relate to. I think that if you take this idea to its limit, we'll end up with personal AI generated "human-like" influencers, I'll have mine, you'll have yours, and they will speak to us as if we've always known them and they will engage our subconscious trust automatically, because that will be how they are coded. It will only take sitting the psychologists down in a room with the AI techs and that will be that. Already we're seeing people develop attachments, addictions, and dysfunctions to AI tools. Imagine if your feed was just full of your own personal AI personalities self-corroborating and repeating messages to influence you. Maybe I should have patented that idea...
Anyway, sorry, back on topic. I do believe there is an information war being fought, whether we accept that or not, where our messages and messengers are being cut down intentionally to advance the profit driven messages and messengers. I think all the tactics you outline and more will be necessary, but first, I think we need to strategically recognise that this is a war and prepare ourselves accordingly.