Be emotive
If you’re handing over the story to someone else to tell, there’s a tendency to concentrate on the logistics and functional details of that story, but whilst those details and context can be very important, we all know stories are absolutely nothing without emotion. Our creative philosophy at GOOD is ‘Stir the Soul’; if you want to make people do something, you must first make them feel something.

Our award-winning awareness campaign for Motor Neurone Disease Association didn’t have a script. Instead, it focused on the truth of the emotion that MND ‘takes everything’, but it cannot take the love inside.

Listen
Like a ‘factory visit’, there is no better inspiration than hearing from people on the frontline.

The more you listen and hear from the voices of service users and beneficiaries, the richer your insight will be. You may pick up little phrases or nuggets that provide you with the creative springboards to help you stand out from your competitors.

When creating our most recent work with RNIB, we wanted to fully understand the hurdles and obstructions that get on the nerves of people who are either blind or partially sighted and what they would want the general public to know to make the world more inclusive. We used an online forum with thousands of people with lived experience to tell us the answer.

Co-create
From workshopping together to giving more agency to people in how their stories are represented.

Getting into a room together and workshopping is an amazing place to start, and it has never been easier to co-create as we have access to virtual calls, making it possible to connect with communities all over the world.

Our Crisis at Christmas campaign last year was an amazing piece of co-creation. We  worked with lead storytellers who have experienced homelessness and gave them as much agency as possible to tell their stories, from using their handwriting in the copy to having actual service users on the DRTV shoot and as active consulters on the shoot itself.

Unfilter
‘Get out of the way’ of people telling their version of your organisation’s services, language and impact.

It’s so important to think about how we can provide space for people to share their own experiences, and it provides an amazing opportunity to build lived experience into your work. Our campaign for Save The Children broke the norm and handed the microphone to a doctor in Kenya and a mum who was with her child at the hospital. The campaign was unscripted, but we built up trust and gave her space to speak from the heart about her experience.

Find commonality
Find simple creative hooks that give flexibility for different voices to build one consistent core narrative.

These hooks often come from just listening. Listening to people talk about their own experiences and finding the common thread that runs through them all. It also gives the audience a simple expression of what their donations will help achieve. Our ‘First Day’ work with Crisis was based on a simple truth of what it feels like to walk into Crisis for the first time, the first time sitting down and feeling safe, or the first haircut.

Find safe spaces
Consider where people feel most comfortable opening up – work on their terms, not yours.

There’s a real challenge if you’re giving storytellers the mic in terms of settings, the toughest place you can do that is in a studio. Studios and sound booths can be intimidating places for anyone who’s not a trained actor or a voiceover artist. They’re uncomfortable spaces to be in, and when someone’s uncomfortable, you’re unlikely to get the most out of them. Is there a space where your storytellers can be where they will feel comfortable and tell their story in the best way?

Our #WillTalk campaign for Marie Curie was all about sparking conversations about end of life and wills, which aren’t easy conversations to have. So, it was important to get the setting right. Each couple is in environments that feel familiar to them, like their living room or the local pub with a drink in hand. The result was insightful, genuine and powerful conversations.

Diversify
How can you represent your impact with more inclusion?

Building any creative platform that supports a diverse range of storytellers is essential if you want the work to be authentic, relatable and empowering. That means really thinking about the voices who tell your story, not just what you want your organisation to say. When casting your storytellers, choose voices that challenge stereotypes and bias and build that sense of relatability and relevance. Ultimately, that’s what will make your work deeper and sharper.

Our brand development for The Children’s Society championed a diverse range of voices who could really reflect a sense of optimism and resilience. Moving the charity away from sometimes showing children as victims to empowered and diverse.

Unscript
Consider when to script, when not to script, or when to try both.

A script can be a beautiful thing, but we shouldn’t feel beholden to using one, going unscripted can be where you find the rawest emotion. However, going unscripted requires work. It requires a certain level of preparation to create the right environment and safe spaces and to ask the right questions. But when you do that, great stuff can happen.

This really came together for a campaign we did for RNIB. we’d written a script for perm, and she said the words beautifully, but we left the cameras rolling and kept asking questions afterwards and all this amazing stuff just poured out. She told her story in her own way, and you could really feel a change of emotion.

If you would like to speak to us about an upcoming project, please contact lucy.martin@goodagency.co.uk