Slide 1 – Cover
Slide 2 – Where Message Comes into Teaming with Wildlife Campaign
IAFWA, State Fish and Wildlife Agencies, non-governmental organizations and others have worked for many months to develop our State Wildlife Action Plan. We are now moving out of that planning period and onto putting the plan into ACTION. But to make the plan work, we need funding, and to receive funding we need local and national legislative support. To receive legislative support, we need public support.
Which is why we are advancing our message – to take advantage of the solid public opinion research that has been done on our behalf, to ensure that we talk about our plans in the most effective and appealing way possible.
Slide 3 – How Message Sets Up Good Communication
These messages allow us to step outside of our echo chamber.
We are not just repeating things we like to hear, or that we think sound best about our plans, but we are conveying messages that meet people in terms of their own needs and expectations: where their understanding of wildlife and conservation is, and where they feel positive about conserving and investing to protect and improve the condition of wildlife in our state.
We are telling them why supporting the State Wildlife Action Plan should be important to them. And our messages are not simply good statements about our Action Plans, but they are research-tested and reasoned arguments that both “offensively” put forward our goals and “defensively” assuage doubts and questions about the Plans.
Slide 4 – Three Steps to Successful Communication
Being a good communicator requires more than just a good message.
We need to know our audience. This means considering who is in the room? What about the [State] Wildlife Action Plan will they find appealing? What are their other interests? How can I best relate to them?
We need to know our purpose. Why are we talking in the first place?
And finally we need to know the message.
Being aware of those three goals gives our message power and helps us become more effective communicators.
Slide 5 – Building Public Support
To make the Teaming campaign successful, we need to be good communicators who build public support. We do this by being consistent and repetitive with the message. That means you and you and me, all of us, need to use the same message.
And we need to use public opinion effectively. The messages I am about to show you were written after thorough research to allow us to do just that. And together, all of us, being consistent in using the same message will be able to create a public narrative that builds public support and gets people to do what we need them to do.
Slide 6 – The Triangle
Everyone should have this triangle in front of them.
In the next slide we will go over the triangle part by part, but this is the main tool we have for all communications. It ensures we all stay on the same message. There are a lot of words here, and we do not need to use all of them every time. But these are the poll-tested messages that allow us the flexibility to communicate effectively, no matter what audience we are addressing or why we are discussing our [State] Wildlife Action Plans.
Slide 7 – What we want
The center of the triangle represents what we want. Depending on who we are talking to – and why we are talking to them – we may need to add a sentence, but generally we want people to invest in the State Wildlife Action Plan now to conserve wildlife and vital natural areas for future generations.
Slide 8 – Where we meet public opinion
The points in blue are the main impacts of the [State] Wildlife Action Plans about which people feel most favorable. They are like the thesis statements of our plans. The points underneath are the supporting evidence.
Slide 9 – Getting back to our ground
Finally, at the bottom, we have these transition statements that allow us to get back to our own ground, the subjects we want to talk about. We can use these phrases when we are asked a difficult or digressive question and need to get back to our main points.