In this chapter, we explain what a campaign strategy is. With these tips, you will be able to design more impactful campaign plans. To make it easy for you to get started, we provide examples, templates and workshops.

Chapter quality: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5)

Like all content on Activist Handbook, this chapter is building upon the experience of activists around the globe. Based on our own quality guidelines, we give this chapter four out of five stars. Check out our discussion page on how to improve this chapter.

What is a campaign strategy? #

A campaign strategy is a plan or roadmap. It helps us determine what we need to do today and next week to get closer to our goals.

A strategy is not a long detailed document that you update every 3 years. It's a continuous practice of taking deliberate steps every single day. Your strategy constantly adapts to changing contexts and lessons learned.

The ant-zebra-elephant model #

Analogies help make abstract strategy models easier to understand. That is why Activist Handbook has developed the ant-zebra-elephant model, which explains strategy using a story. With this framework, we are building upon the work of many experienced campaigners who have developed various different models. We take an unique approach, that puts the focus on a continuous iteration process, rather than a strategy-as-a-static-three-year-document approach. This makes movements more adaptable to quickly changing contexts, and stimulates innovation.

The story #

Below, you can read a story about three heroes that go on a journey together. A strategy is like the map that shows the adventures of these three heroes. As they travel, they leave their footprints on the map. These footprints are the steps you need to take as part of your strategy plan. With every step, you make progress towards your goals. Even if you already understand the concept of strategy well, learning this story can be useful to tell other people in your organisation about it.

Feel free to decide which you want to read first: the story or the theoretical model (the latter explained below the story). Either way, we recommend you to read both, to get the best understanding of this model. Most importantly: you need to practice using the model to get the most out of it.

🗺️ The adventures of the Ant, Zebra and Elephant

This is a story about an Ant, a Zebra and an Elephant. The three adventurers have a certain destination in mind, which is very far away. The heroes take off, without being sure they will ever reach the final destination. They are excited, because they are brave enough to face the unknown. The Ant, Zebra and Elephant make sure to pack their bag to be as prepared as possible. But the three know: the best way to find out what the future holds, is to take the first step outside the door.

For each huge step the Elephant makes, the Zebra needs to take many small steps. And the Ant takes even smaller steps for each Zebra step. The Elephant is huge, has super good forward vision and always dreams about the final destination, so they can see very far ahead. The Zebra is more down to earth, but is still able to see the upcoming roads. The Ant is all about the small details and is an expert in working together with large groups. Together, they have a complete picture of the road ahead.

On the way to the final destination, the heroes meet all sorts of allies and enemies, as well as opportunities and dangers. More and more people join the team. The Ant assembles a colony. The Zebra gets together a zeal. And the Elephant leads a herd. Most of the new folk join because they admire the close friendship of the three heroes, and they want to feel like they belong too. The three heroes make sure to welcome everyone, and empower everyone in their unique skillset. The bigger the group, the stronger they get. They also make sure to respect the other animals in the ecosystem, because they know they all play a part at making nature work.

At night, all the animals have dinner together at tables with place for 8 each. This way, they can hear all voices well. They tell stories to each other, and the more people join, the more diverse the stories. While they welcome everyone, they also make sure to set clear ground rules on how to treat each other. Those with big feet make sure not to step on those who were born smaller. Together, they decide which places they want to go together. Love, care, solidarity and trust keeps them together when things get difficult. When some get injured, they take good care of each other. Nobody is left alone.

Sometimes, a group of animals decides to leave the team to go on their own adventure. Although the thee heroes are sad to see some friends go, they know they will meet again some day in the future. After all, they are still travelling to the same destination, just taking a different route. They are excited for the other groups, because while they are convinced their route is the fastest, who knows for sure? The more routes tried, the more chance of success.

After many years of adventures, one of the heroes dies. Lots of friends are around their bed. While this hero never reached their destination, they got very far. Their friends will tell others about all the stories they made together, and inspire many more to be courageous. Those animals will carry on the journey, until the destination is reached.

It is important to realise this is not just a silly children's story or a fantasy. Of course, in reality, ants, zebras and elephants do not go on adventures together. However, this story is based on elaborate social change research. Vitally, this research is not just theoretical. The patterns described in the story above and in the theory below are based on the most successful social movements of the 21st century, as well as historical social movements. If you are thinking "ok... so what does this story have to do with strategy?", read on!

The theory #

In short, strategic campaigning consists out of the following 5 elements:

1. 🛤️ Journeys — Each step is part of a journey that brings us further: Our steps (for example: a protest action, training, or other event) are connected. Everything we do is a preparation for the next thing we do. Impactful campaigns are about designing and constantly optimising these journeys through iterations that are 'good enough' to try.

2. 💡 Visions — Our visions are big ideas of a better future that bind us together: They are ambitious stories that tell what direction to go in. Visions are formed and embedded through continuous collaborative processes that help us understand our shared goals.

3. 🎯 Focus — Focus helps us narrow down what exactly we want to achieve in the near future: It helps us position our campaigns relative to what other movements are doing. This differentiation stimulates innovation and collaboration. Focus also gives us concrete things to achieve within reasonable time. This makes progress towards our vision visible.

4. 🌐 Contexts — Contexts are analyses that help us understand what world we live in right now, and where it is going: These analyses tell us the starting points of our journeys, and they tell what obstacles and opportunities we may find in the future. We need to know what stakeholders and power relations we need to deal with. We also need to know what resources we have available. The severity of the issues we are trying to tackle greatly impacts which actions are appropriate. Remember that contexts change over time, so we need to prepare for that using predictions. Finally, subgroups of our organisations may operate within different contexts.

5. 💪 Best practices — Best practices are expertises based on experience: Theoretical plans are useful, but practice turns our strategy plans into reality. Iteration is key: best practices and new ideas are tested out and then refined them based on the outcomes. The other Activist Handbook chapters describe the best practices of activists around the globe, categorised into different disciplines such as organizing, wellbeing and communication.

Below we describe each of these five strategy elements in more details.

Campaign strategy principles #

Thanks to the many generations of activists who have tried out various strategies, we now know 8 rules to be applicable to every grassroots campaign. It is absolutely essential you understand these rules well, because they form the basis for everything else you do as an activist.

Note: Types of campaigns exist that do not make use of grassroots people power. For example, you might consider doing an awareness campaign for a certain cause. Not all principles below apply to those kinds of campaigns.

While social change is certainly possible through other means than people power, Activist Handbook is fundamentally opposed to any forms of social change that do not derive from people power. Thus, we do not discuss those strategies here.

Rule 1: Build people power #

People power, or collective citizen action, can drive social and political change through voting, protests, strikes, and other forms of direct action. Impactful campaign strategies make use of people power to bring about social change.

History shows its power to challenge authority, fight for equality, and spark significant societal shifts. It also empowers communities to shape their future by acting together, bypassing reliance on external factors. People power works in two ways:

Make decisions together #

Engage your community in productive dialogue and shared decision-making. This strengthens internal democracy and challenges the need for external authority figures. This is how to incorporate people power through collective decision-making into your campaign strategy:

• Gather diverse perspectives: Involve marginalised groups directly in shaping the campaign goals, strategies, and messaging. Organize workshops, reflection moments, and dialogues to ensure all voices are heard.

• Facilitate inclusive decision-making processes: Use tools like consensus-building or ranked-choice voting to reach decisions that represent the collective will, not just the loudest voices.

• Empower community ownership: Train and equip individuals within the movement to take on leadership roles and responsibilities.

Directly challenge existing power structures #

Create effective plans to transform individuals into a powerful collective that demands attention. Develop clear goals and define the best courses of action to achieve them. Design a campaign strategy that leverages group strength:

• Organize direct actions: Utilise protests, strikes, boycotts, or civil disobedience to draw attention to your cause and disrupt the status quo.

• Build alternatives: Strengthen your community by building alternatives to a state-provided social safety net. Decrease dependance on commercial and government solutions, and challenge their existence by making them irrelevant.

Rule 2: Scale up people power #

The more people are actively involved in your campaign, the better. Time and again, social change research has proven that campaigns with more actively involved people have a higher chance of success (Social Change Lab, 2022).

Thus, a good change-maker is never satisfied with the current size of your group. No matter the positive impact you are making, there is always more to be done. The most impactful campaign strategies are scalable. That means that the strategy is designed in such a way that there is no limit to the growth of your movement or campaign.

Grassroots movements do this by turning their strategy into a template that anyone can reuse and adapt (see for example Extinction Rebellion: anyone can start a new local group just by reading their online guides). More institutionalised organisations do this by making use of a form of organising called 'big organising'.

An important factor in the scalability of your strategy is the way you make use of your resources (for example: money, paid staff, buildings). For example:

• Not scalable: If every group of 10 volunteers needs one paid staffer for support, you need to hire a new employee for every 10 new volunteers. This means your financial means need to grow linearly with the size of your movement. It is unlikely you will get enough donations to do that.

• Scalable: If you make use of publicly available buildings to meet up, such as libraries, you can have people meet up anywhere without worrying about the costs of renting locations.

Rule 3: Get people's attention to get them involved #

It's not enough for people to simply know you exist. You need to be top of mind. In a world overloaded with information, cutting through the noise and capturing people's primary attention is crucial for getting them involved in your campaign.

This connects directly to the concept of attention bandwidth. People have limited attention bandwidth. It is also important to note that impoverished people tend to have limited attention to devote to social issues. This is not because they lack intelligence or interest, but because poverty creates a high-stress environment with limited time and energy to focus on anything beyond day-to-day survival. For example, someone working a physically demanding job may not have the energy after work to engage in activism, particularly if they are also facing financial worries or raising children

Therefore, your campaign strategy must prioritize capturing people's attention in a meaningful and impactful way. This means going beyond simply expecting people to attend meetings based on informational flyers.

Here are some key takeaways for getting people's primary attention:

• Prioritise proximity: People are more likely to pay attention to things that are close to them – geographically, socially, and emotionally. Host events and actions in locations that are easily accessible to your target audience. Build relationships and foster a sense of community. Tap into issues that resonate deeply with people's lived experiences.

• Embrace emotion: Information alone rarely motivates people to act. Connect with their emotions through powerful storytelling, compelling visuals, and actions that evoke strong feelings. Utilize disruption (discussed in detail in Rule 4) to break through the apathy and inertia that often prevent people from engaging.

• Concentrate your efforts: Don't spread your resources and efforts too thin. Focus on delivering impactful messages and experiences within a concentrated time and space. Create a sense of urgency and momentum that compels people to take action.

Remember, capturing people's primary attention is not about manipulation or trickery. It's about recognizing the realities of limited attention bandwidth and designing your campaign strategy to be compelling and relevant to the lives of your target audience.

Rule 4: Disrupt to get attention #

Disruption is a key element of successful campaigning. As we discussed, people tend to pay more attention to actions that shake things up, especially if those actions challenge established norms and power structures. Disruptive actions can act like a jolt to the system, forcing people to pay attention and take notice.

The logic of disruption #

• Breaks through the noise: In a world saturated with information, disruptive actions stand out and cut through the clutter. They create a sense of urgency and force a response from both the public and those in power.

• Triggers emotional engagement: Disruptive actions can evoke strong emotions, both positive and negative. This emotional engagement, even if it's initially negative, can lead to a deeper consideration of the issues at stake.

• Sparks dialogue and debate: Disruptive actions can generate widespread public discourse, forcing people to confront uncomfortable truths and consider alternative viewpoints.

Key considerations for disruptive action #

• The "8 out of 10" principle: Aim for a level of disruption that is significant but not excessive. Pushing too far can alienate potential supporters and lead to overpolarization.

• Moral framing: Frame your disruptive actions within a clear moral framework. This helps to legitimize your actions and connect with people's sense of justice and fairness.

• Managing backlash: Anticipate and manage potential backlash. This includes having a plan for dealing with negative media coverage, public criticism, and potential police repression.

• Maintaining nonviolent discipline: Emphasize nonviolent principles in all your actions. This helps to maintain moral authority and prevent the escalation of conflict.

Remember: disruption is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. The ultimate goal is to use disruption to spark dialogue, shift public opinion, and ultimately create the conditions for lasting social change.

Rule 5: Design spaces for social engagement #

Activism is about bringing people together to act collectively. If you are not building a collective, you are not doing activism. By its definition, activism is about building and strengthening social relationships between people.

Increasing social engagement is essential in any social movement. The primary reason people become and stay active in your movement, is because of the social connections they form with other people in your movement. To increase the chance of succes for your movement, put a lot of time and energy into designing social spaces that increase social engagement. Icebreakers and community building are not optional additions to your activism, they are the very foundation. Every protest action, training and other event you organize should be focussed on increasing social engagement.

Whatever campaign you are coordinating, we believe there is a common element in the visions of all activists. Activism is at its core opposed to our current anti-social society. Everything activists do is because we want to strengthen social connections between people.

Capitalist narratives tell us that humans are by nature self-interested individuals without any emotion. We do not think this is true. If we observe humans in the real world, we see them doing all sorts of things that contradict that idea. When we are born, we fully depend on the care of others to survive. At the end of our lives, we fully depend on others. We live to care for others, without expecting anything in return. We feel all sorts of emotions in connection with the people around us. Being lonely hurts physically. When we feel sadness, anger, fear or mourning, these are not negative emotions. They are expressions of love. Human nature is all about longing for social connection. We feel all these emotions to increase our collective chance of survival. Sure, sometimes we do things out of self-interest. But we argue these are exceptions to the rule.

Rule 6: Take risks for rewards #

Working with probabilities and complexity:

Nobody ever changed society by doing things the way they have always been done. Big wins are only possible by taking big risks. Obviously, you do not want to take risks where it is not absolutely necessary. But as an example of a case where taking risk is a no-brainer: if we do not radically transform our society right now, we will face definite climate collapse, with disastrous impacts for people around the globe.

We need lots of people trying out lots of things. Most strategies will fail to bring about any significant change, but we only need one successful campaign to win.

Taking risks does not mean doing anything, including stupid things. We still need to be smart and strategic. Actions of one group can negatively impact a social movement as a whole. But they can also be beneficial for each other in unexpected ways. For example, some research has shown that actions of the radical flanks of social movements can actually increase support for more the moderate flanks, even if the radical groups themselves were unpopular.

Rule 7: Use conflict to make impact #

Many people do not like standing out, going against the current. They like being 'in the middle' or 'neutral'. If you want to become effective as a change-maker, you need to learn swimming against the current. Being an activist is like being a hero: you do things that many other people do not dare to. Activists do things others think are impossible. Be brave.

Activism is about making trouble. You are unhappy about the way things are, so you say and do things to bring about change. There will always be people that benefit from the status quo (how things are right now). They will not like you trying to change things, so they will try to stop you. These are usually people with lots of power and money. They will try to convince other people that they should also be angry at you, even if the change you want is actually in their interest (for example, by publishing negative news about you in the outlets they own).

Being 'neutral' is like saying: I am ok with the way things are, I will not disrupt. Activism is the opposite. Impactful campaign strategies make use of disruption: you make noise, stand in the way or build alternatives that make the status quo irrelevant. Effective campaign strategies also take into account backlash.

Those in power do not listen to reason, information or moral arguments when it comes to things that are against their interests. They listen to material disruption of their interests. For example, most employers will only give their employees higher wages and fair working conditions if they go on strike. Democracy, women's voting rights, the end of segregation: all the result of people deciding to disrupt until they got what they demanded.

The degree to which you make trouble can vary: from changing the system 'from the inside' (for example, by going into politics), to blowing up pipelines. But there will always be a certain level of conflict. If there is no conflict, the change you are bringing about is too small for anyone to care about. Learn more about neutrality, disruption and social change in the book written by Bernie Mayer, Jacqueline N. Font-Guzmán.

Rule 8: Balance reflection and action #

Start with action #

A strategy helps you get from A to B. It is a roadmap with many steps along the way. Often, however, the thing you want to get to is very far away. Mapping out the entire journey before even taking your first step can be daunting. Our advice: don't! Just determine where you are now, where you want to arrive, and which approximate direction you need to go. You can take years to think about the best strategy to change the world, but often the best way to find out is to try.

To make it a bit more concrete: get together with a few people, and decide together: what needs to be done tomorrow and next week? Start by taking action, then evaluate and readjust.

Reflect & adjust strategy frequently #

Importantly though: do not skip the evaluating part! Many activist movements struggle to make enough time to reflect. People are always so busy taking action, they have little time to think about whether their actions are actually creating the desired effect. Activist like to act, and that is a good thing: that is much better than politicians only talking, never actually doing anything. However, it is important to find the right balance. Acting without thinking does not make much sense either.

Being too busy is not a good excuse. Having time for things is a matter of priorities. Reflecting is vital, so just make time for it. That means frequently deciding not to do other things. Also remember: urgency is not the same as importance.

Key strategy elements #

1. Journeys 🛤️ #

The basics #

A strategic journey brings you from point A to point B. Usually, there are many small steps in-between. For example, right now, your group only consists of 5 people, and you want to grow to 500. You will need to do all sorts of things between now and then to achieve that. By strategically making a plan for a series of steps (a journey), you make it more likely that you will achieve your goals.

Activists that are just starting out, often only think about single steps. For example, they are worried about the climate crisis, so they organise a protest to voice their discontent. However, this usually does not work. After the protest, you will likely not have solved the climate crisis. It will seem like you achieved nothing. However, this is not true. By bringing together people at a protest, they now know they are not alone. You have changed their perception of being alone. In other words: you have made a step. Unfortunately, a single step is almost never enough to achieve your goals. That is why you need to think many steps ahead.

Strategic campaigning is about focussing on the journeys, not the single steps. Here is an example of a better strategy:

• Step 1: Organize a public assembly at your university "What to do about the Climate Crisis?". The purpose is to get a group of people together who can organize a big protest. Invite everyone to a training.

• Step 2: Organize a training "How to organize a successful protest". The purpose of this training is to provide people with the skills to organize a successful protest, but also to get to know each other better. The idea is that if people become friends, they stay with the group for longer.

• Step 3: Organize the protest. To put pressure on key decision makers (for example, to vote for a specific climate law), you need way more people than you have currently. So the purpose of this protest is not yet to achieve that. Instead, the purpose of this protest is to grow your group by getting some media attention. Make sure all all the news media write about your upcoming assembly.

• Step 4: Repeat everything starting with step 1, until you have enough people to pressure the decision makers.

The key takeaway are not these specific steps! This plan is not detailed enough, and many elements are missing. Rather, the point we are trying to make is that you should already have some idea of the full plan, before even organizing the first assembly. If you do not know what the full journey will be, you also cannot know the purpose of the first assembly.

Levels of movement #

Activism is all about creating change. Journeys help you bring about change. This change, or movement, occurs on different levels. If done right, it starts really small, with just a few people, and scales up to a large number of people that together can bring about big changes in society. This is great, because it means that you can bring about big change even if you start off with a small number of people.

Many campaigners think that if you just tell people about your campaign, which concerns a cause that they find important, they will get actively involved. For example, they think people will get actively involved if you give them an informational flyer. This is wrong for several reasons:

• This assumes

• People may have lots of other things on their minds.

• People may not come to your meeting because it is too far away.

• People may

• Attention

• Proximity

• Social engagement

You need to start by designing journeys on the smallest level. This first type of change happens within small groups (±8 people). A vital question you need to ask yourself is: how do I get people actively involved with my campaign?

Imagine you are able to get together a group of 8 people. They do not know each other yet. The best way to get these people involved in your campaign

You should think about ways to get

At first, you might have 8 individuals who do not know each other at all. You then need to design a series of steps (a journey) that turn these individuals

You will need to map journeys on various levels:

• 🐜 Micro journeys with tiny steps (small groups): designing social spaces that optimize for social engagement and proximity

• 🦓 Meso journeys with small steps (campaigns): campaign-based actions, with concrete demands that are within reach

• 🐘 Macro journeys with huge steps (society): stories that tell how you plan to get from the current society to a new one (the one described in your vision).

You cannot do the one without the other. Each of the journey levels should logically feed into each other.

A mistake that many more experienced activists make

As a rule of thumb, you should spend 60% of your time on micro journeys, 30% on meso journeys, and 10% on macro journeys.

Planning versus action #

A big challenge for many activists is to balance planning versus action:

• If you do not spend enough time thinking about plans, your actions will make no impact. In the beginning, people may start enthusiastically, but after a while people will get discouraged because they do not see any progress.

• If you spend months making plans, you will not actually be doing anything, so you will not make any impact either. In addition, since you never try out any of your ideas, it is likely that your plans are bad and will not work anyways.

The solution is about knowing which journey levels to most of your time on, and trying out stuff as soon as your plans are 'good enough'. You should spend most time designing and optimizing micro journeys, and scale up once you know they work. This is how your micro journey work feeds into the meso and macro levels (emergence). Iteration is key, which we discuss in more detail later on.

2. Vision 💡 #

• A vision enables us to dare to imagine a different future.

• It helps us understand the direction we want to go in.

• It brings us closer together.

• By contrasting your vision with reality, we can see more clearly the problem definition.

3. Focus 🎯 #

• Focus helps you make the work you need to do more concrete and manageable.

• It positions your movement/campaign within the wider ecosystem of movements. What are you doing that others aren't?

  • Positioning (within movement of movements)

    • Stakeholders = answers: where are others?

    • Positioning = answers: where do you position your organisation/campaign] - an active decision

• Only use term 'Strategy focus' (or 'strategy scope'), instead of 'strategy goals': The difference between 'goals' and 'objectives' is frequently misunderstood by activists. These words are also often difficult to translate into other language (for example, in German, they both translate as "Ziele"). Solution: Use the term 'strategy focus' instead of 'campaign goals' .

• It also helps make smart campaign objectives: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound.

4. Context 🌐 #

Analysing your strategy context, also called situational analysis, helps....

• Analysis of what is. The hard facts (from your perspective). Not: what do we decide?

• Stakeholders & power: Analysing power relations helps us understand why things are the way they are, and how to change things. Society is organised into groups of people. Each of these groups have specific interests and power relations towards other groups of people. The same happens on an individual basis: for example, within an organisation, each individual wants specific things for certain reasons, and has a power position within that organisation. Do not forget that human beings have many common needs as well!

• Resources available:

• Severity:

• Predictions: Predictions are scenario's of things that may happen in the future. You should design your strategy based on what is going to happen, not on what currently is, or has happened in the past. The future is not certain, and difficult to predict. However, it is vital that you still try. You should prepare both for (1) the most likely scenario's and (2) the less likely worst-case scenario's. Remember: the context within which you operate is not static, and change is not linear!

• -Stakeholders

  • 'Stakeholders' as an umbrella term for allies, constituents, third parties and targets.

  • 'Power' is the connection between the network of nodes (the stakeholders)

  • We put Stakeholders as a sub-item of Context, as we believe a situational analysis is always in the end about Stakeholders. While defining the Context, one logically already finds the Stakeholders. However, we do make a distinction between the analysis of your Stakeholder surroundings, and your decision to Position yourself in relation to those Stakeholders. This decision is not part of the Context.

• Resources available: people & money that you have available, with what capacity are you starting? (and thus also: what capacity still needs to be built?)

• Urgency & severity: urgency requires different strategic decisions. Severity is about what happens if your campaign fails. What are the stakes? Severity also impacts strategic decisions.

• Use the term 'Strategy context', instead of 'Situational analysis': the latter is more difficult to understand for non-native speakers. Both seem equally popular in Google Trends (with 'strategy context' on the rise, and fewer webpages, so higher ranking potential). However, we will include a sentence "also called situational analysis" in case people look up that work on our own search engine.

5. Best practices 💪 #

• Organizing: organisational framework

• Tactics: Individual points of action.

  • Different types of tactics training, recruit people, strengthen community, create visibility, direct actions

• Wellbeing

• Communication

  • Audiences

  • What message?

  • Means to spread the message

• Organizing: Practices that help us build strong social connections between large groups of people.

• Wellbeing: Practices that help us stay healthy and win the fight in the long run.

• Communication: Practices that help us tell convincing stories that motivate people to act together.

Iteration #

learning and scaling up

External resources #

• Book: Good strategy, bad strategy by Richard Rumelt: about strategy in a commercial context, but provides valuable insights for activists