Rule 1: Lead With The Future, Not With The Past

Not all messaging is created equal. It is highly contextual, dependent on audience, environment, medium, and messenger. For those trying to change the world – advocating for a cause greater than themselves and mobilizing others to move big ideas – these mission-driven organizers must follow a different set of rules. Each week for the next nine weeks, we will unveil our Rules for Movement Messaging. By delivering one rule per week, it is our hope that as advocates and communicators, you can apply them to your own work one by one.

We will lay out a guideline to help you in your messaging work, research that affirms our advice, and an example of the rule in practice. We will archive each rule as they are released on our Ideas page, and we welcome you to share the Nine Rules for Movement Messaging with your colleagues and friends.

Resist the urge to lead from what you are against. Instead, articulate the better future you envision. It helps draw people to the solutions you offer because you share a certain set of values, rather than firing up a limited base of people who share your rage. Those people are with you anyway. The key to building a movement is…well…building it. You do that by first telling people what you stand for.

In fact, leading with the problems you seek to solve may very well have the opposite of the intended effect. Instead of firing up a movement, you may fire up your opposition. Research shows that when you trigger entrenched political or cultural beliefs, even when shrouded in evidence and data refuting such assertions, Americans dig in their heels and double down on their erroneous assumptions.

Movement Messaging appeals to our shared values for a better world, rather than giving people immediate license to disagree with you. This opens the door to describing what that better world looks like.

Look how the Boston Waterfront Partnership talks about the waterfront’s potential, rather than leading with its challenges.