Jakarta – Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Indonesia is holding a Strategic and Creative Campaign Workshop to Promote a Just Energy Transition on February 29, 2024, in Central Jakarta. Aulia Novirta, Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), and Ersya Nailuvar, PWYP Indonesia, were present as facilitators at the workshop. This workshop aims to increase participants’ understanding and disseminate strategic and creative campaign ideas to encourage various social changes, especially those related to a just energy transition. Several representatives from the Civil Society Organization (CSO), Women’s Rights Organization (WRO), and Disability People Organizations (DPO) participated in this workshop.

The first material discusses the importance of campaign strategy. Strategy determines the best way to get from a starting to an ending point. See the methods and steps taken to achieve the goal. The strategy has essential elements, such as understanding the current position and the goals to be completed. Strategy can also identify obstacles, challenges, and opportunities. In developing a plan, narrow down the steps to create a campaign and imagine and visualize it until it hits the target.

Determining the campaign’s final goal is also important, whether changing policies, mobilizing the masses, or something else. For example, changing public opinion on an issue can be done through survey strategies, research, and the importance of influencing our campaign targets to have the same goals as the campaign being carried out.

Aulia Novirta invited participants to observe a video of the very high tax on tampons in Germany, namely 19%, even though the tax on other luxury goods is only 7%. Tampons, which are a woman’s primary need, are considered a luxury; the narrative conveyed is that the policymakers are men who do not understand women’s problems. The campaign action that was created was a campaign for tampons to become books. Through this strategy, society and women are changing their opinion that tampons are a primary need and that it is unreasonable to tax them too high. Once the campaign has changed people’s views and in large numbers, the campaign can target policymakers to change the tampon tax.

Ersya Nailuvar spoke about the theory of change. The theory of change helps us identify obstacles and reflect on the campaign’s ultimate goal. Ideally, we will identify needs and problems to determine data requirements and focus on campaign objectives when formulating a campaign. When knowing the needs of campaign targets, the criteria that can be used are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound). This approach can be used to make goals more targeted. The big questions in the theory of change are: If the campaign is successful, what changes will we see? What should be the goals of the campaign? Who should change their behavior? What is happening now? What are the conditions we are experiencing currently?

Ersya Nailuvar invited participants to observe the video of Barack Obama’s victory in 2008. Obama was predicted to lose in Florida because the majority of Jewish people would not vote for him, so the campaign used was “The Great Schlep,” which bridged the generations of grandchildren and grandparents of the Jewish community. With The Great Schlep, the grandchildren socialized Obama’s vision and mission, which was inclusive, regardless of race and ethnicity, so that the sentiments of the Jewish community towards Obama could change. The success of this campaign led to Obama’s victory in Florida and his advancement to become President of the United States.

Next, Ersya Nailuvar invited a group discussion to determine the definition of success in a strategic campaign based on the video. The questions include: What is the definition of success? Who to address? Who should donate? What are the positions and conditions from the start to the end of the campaign?

The following material is the Empathy Map. Empathy maps are actually like playing roleplay. It helps describe how people will say, think, feel, and do before targeting them. Ersya invited participants to watch an advertising video where a disabled girl couldn’t hear her house bell until her father repaired a lamp to replace the bell so that the girl could know her friend was coming to her house. This video analogy uses the From-Being analogy. From people who feel and think it is challenging to know when guests are coming to their house to me knowing when someone visits them. This empathy map also became a group discussion using prompts (analogies of situations) prepared by resource persons in participant training. Three prompts related to energy transitions were presented.

Aulia Novirta invited participants to watch videos of women from various ethnicities, races, and body shapes exercising and maintaining their health. Many women don’t feel confident about going to the gym to exercise because they face stigma, assumptions, and judgment. Through the trajectory metaphor, the most critical factors in determining the campaign products that can be created can be calculated.

The next video is a video about a younger sibling fighting for the cure of his older sibling who is suffering from leukemia. He is campaigning with two organizations to save more people from leukemia through marrow donation. Participants responded that the elephant metaphor (feelings) plays a vital role in the success of a campaign. Empathy exists and spreads widely to the determined campaign targets when we can arouse people’s feelings regarding an event.

Participants asked whether we were allowed to use “pity” to elicit the emotions of campaign targets. Apris, co-facilitator, responded that the emotion we show is not just pity because there are many emotions. When campaigning, we must determine the campaign’s tone, and agitation techniques must be used to arouse feelings, not compassion, but empowerment. For example, for women who are also heads of households, we do not because we feel sorry for these women but because we show women’s empowerment for an effective campaign.

Campaign effectiveness is measured in output, outcome, and impact. The output targets whether the campaign material reaches the target. And the result is whether there is a behavior change. And whether the effect is the desired social change. The participants created a MILE (Maximum Impact Little Effort) matrix divided into groups with the same prompts regarding the energy transition.

Author: Chitra Regina Apris
Reviewer: Aryanto Nugroho