An Action Canada public awareness campaign combats polarization and misinformation through human connection and empathy, by motivating people to have real-life conversations with people in their lives. This article explains how they did it, from conception through strategy, creative direction, and deployment.
Across Canada and the world, anti-rights politicians and movements are working hard to sow division and widen the gap between “left” and “right.” The right to bodily autonomy and education have been hijacked to wage polarizing political battles, with abortion, the rights of queer and trans youth, and sex education being used as a wedge to create fear among ordinary Canadians. As a non-profit communications professional and reproductive-justice advocate, I am all too familiar with how this political context has fuelled hateful comment sections and fortified our online and in-person echo chambers.
But at the beginning of 2024, my colleagues at Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights had the opportunity to develop a campaign to reshape these narratives and recentre empathy, connection, and community. Rather than letting increasing attacks on sexual and reproductive health and rights further divide “us” from “them,” we adopted narrative change as a framework to centre our shared values, resonate with new audiences, and pull ourselves out of existential despair.
New Brunswick is one province (along with Alberta and Saskatchewan) where the government’s approaches to these issues stoked misinformation relating to sexual and reproductive rights. This included directives and policies that resulted in the closure of community abortion clinics and removing protections for transgender and gender-diverse youth in classrooms. (In October, New Brunswickers elected a new government, which has reinstated some protections for reproductive health care and trans youth in schools.)
In spring 2024, we chose New Brunswick as the first place to test narrative change as a framework to fight back against misinformation, authoritarianism, and polarization. With ambitious plans to reach every New Brunswicker, we hoped to create compelling stories that motivated people to get offline and have real-life conversations with people in their lives.
Here’s how we did it.
A window of opportunity: Reclaiming our communities
With our modest budget in hand, we partnered with values-driven marketing agency Principles to lead us through discovery, strategy, creative direction, and deployment.
The robust discovery process included market research, environmental scans, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, national and local surveys, and a deep dive into narrative change tactics – tactics that anti-rights actors have been using successfully for years. In layman’s terms: we were looking for stories. What stories were being told across the political spectrum, what stories were people telling about themselves and their communities? What stories are lost when we become “us” and “them”? And what stories could we tell to rewrite harmful narratives?
Survey results highlighted that people’s opinions and beliefs on wedge issues (like abortion, sexuality education, and trans rights) are led by emotion rather than accurate information. A survey participant noted that people “don’t seem to care about the data if it doesn’t match their feelings.” This observation is supported by a range of research across disciplines, including neuroscience and psychology. We feel first and think second, which is how we develop opinions and beliefs, often tied to our own sense of self (basically, confirmation bias).
When hateful and inaccurate information circulates online, it exploits people’s uncertainties and fears about the world and their place in it. It reinforces narratives that align with their existing biases, beliefs, and even sense of self-identity. Social media algorithms only exacerbate this, and ongoing changes to platforms like X and Meta are making things even more extreme.
Our strategists found that “there is substantial evidence that social media platforms tend to reward and amplify scandalous, provocative or outrageous content over boring facts and data, due to their engagement-driven algorithms and reward systems.”
We also found that “inflammatory social media interactions are often incongruent with how we exist in offline communities.” People who saw each other as politically opposed online may be friendly neighbours, former classmates, or even family members. “People will fight anonymously on the internet with somebody,” one survey participant said. “And that person is probably just their cashier at the store who they’d get along with.”
When we engage with each other in real life, it is easier to make emotional connections that can rewrite our assumptions about the world.
When we are baited into fighting online, we lose sight of our shared experiences and values. We are further divided into “us” and “them,” even when we share common struggles as simple as finding a family physician or dealing with the cost of groceries. Across the in-person communities we occupy – our household, our neighbourhood, curling or gardening club, town or city, or wider provincial and national communities – click-driven platforms do not serve to strengthen a united “us.”
At their best, these platforms connect communities and democratize information. But at their worst, social media platforms are hijacking our relationships, the stories we have about the communities we live in, and the people we live in community with.
Here was the spark: that when we engage with each other in real life, it is easier to make emotional connections that can rewrite our assumptions about the world. We needed to get people offline and talking.
Deep canvassing: Family and friends first
But talking to people is scary when there is no screen to hide behind, no block button to click if things get messy. And if people’s beliefs are so ingrained, is it even possible to break through? Enter: deep canvassing.
Deep canvassing is a technique used in community organizing and activism that involves engaging in extended, in-depth conversations with individuals to understand their perspectives and ultimately persuade them to support a particular cause or viewpoint. Unlike traditional canvassing, which often focuses on delivering a scripted message or collecting quick responses, deep canvassing prioritizes building genuine connections and empathy.
According to the Deep Canvass Institute, deep canvassing is a two-way conversation where the canvasser non-judgmentally solicits the other person’s views about an issue and asks follow-up questions to better understand their perspective. Sharing stories about personal experiences with that issue is key, in order to find shared values and help the other person build a new understanding about the topic. A case study about deep canvassing in the United States found that even just “15-minute conversations can create significant change that is extremely durable and lasting.”
“Deep canvassing is powerful because it shifts the focus from persuading to connecting,” explains Zach Zimmel, co-founder of Principles. “It teaches us to listen and create moments where someone feels safe enough to consider their beliefs, and question whether all their beliefs relate to their core human values. When we use this approach, we’re not just trying to change opinions. We’re building trust, which is the foundation for any meaningful narrative change. We must also enter these conversations with minds open enough to realize we might be wrong about some things, too.”
Deep canvassing is powerful because it shifts the focus from persuading to connecting.
Zach Zimmel, Principles marketing agency
As a proven tactic, deep canvassing is a clear way to break through digital echo chambers and conflict-hungry algorithms to engage in real-life dialogue. But we needed to scale down – hard conversations not between strangers going door-to-door, but between friends or family. Not to convince or persuade, necessarily, but to build mutual trust, find common ground, and – maybe – establish some good-faith curiosity and reflection about the online content we are all consuming and sharing.
As much as our team knew that our pie-in-the-sky dream would be to change the minds of people who are openly hostile to issues like trans rights and sex education, we also knew that we didn’t have the time, resources, or gumption for that. Instead, perhaps we could sway the narrative for people who are ignorant or misinformed but who would be willing to having an open dialogue about their views. If not our allies, then those who could be – often described as the movable or persuadable “middle,” which makes up 60% of the population.
Instead of fighting in social media comments or blocking people online, we asked our allies to have those hard conversations in real life. By breaking click-bait cycles with real human connection, our audience would serve as ambassadors within their communities.
Campaign tools: The power of storytelling
We came up with a repeatable, concise, and effective narrative that would be memorable and accessible to audiences: Get Offline and Talk. And to inspire and empower audiences to initiate these offline conversations, we had to root the campaign in powerful and relatable stories.
When we approached OPC Films about creating videos for our campaign, we came with our humble budget and our story – one that sought to bring communities together and push back against political polarization.
As it turned out, even the idea of this campaign sparked hope. The team at OPC and the crew they put together were so excited about what we were trying to do that they donated an unbelievable amount of time and resources into bringing these stories to life. Without their trust and generosity, we would have never been able to afford this high calibre of talent. Director Paul Shkordoff crafted a warm, honest, and intimate world where we could ask audiences to see themselves having vulnerable conversations of their own.
Putting our three creative teams (Action Canada, Principles, and OPC) together, we created two stories to help us recentre empathy in narratives about trans youth rights and sex ed.
The first story features Dave and Greg, two brothers whose close relationship becomes strained when Greg posts something hurtful online about trans kids – Dave’s teenage kid Sammy is trans. Rather than let Greg’s actions drive a wedge between them, Dave goes to talk to his brother about how his posts have hurt him and Sammy.
The second story follows Ashley as she consults her friend Maggie about how to talk to her mom about something her mom posted online. Despite their differences, Ashley is able to get her mom to open up and talk about the issue. Although we always intended for this story to centre sex ed, we intentionally left the script vague. We did this for a few reasons: to avoid censorship on advertising platforms, to allow viewers to project an issue that they care about, and to get the message of “get offline and talk” through to viewers without triggering knee-jerk assumptions about sex ed.
These two short films serve both as models of what these conversations might look like and to simultaneously humanize the relationships that are affected when we post polarizing things online. These narratives also reframe the role of the parent, empathize with those who may have caused harm, and model how these conversations could play out. They demonstrate the power, vulnerability, and possibility that open up when we try to forge these real-life connections. Fundamentally, the people in these stories love each other, despite the hurt they are navigating. And the moment they try to understand each other is healing – even just to watch.
These feelings of trust, love, and empathy were critical to this campaign. Facts are important – and we did include accurate information about sex ed and queer and trans rights on our campaign microsite – but it is highlighting our shared values and emotional storytelling that has the potential to break through the noise and make an impact. Anti-rights movements do this all the time, focusing on sowing fear, uncertainty, anger, and hate. Get Offline and Talk did this with empathy, trust, curiosity, and humanity – a reminder that we are in community with each other, even when social media tries to divide us.
Launch, monitoring, adapting, and reactions
Of course, social media platforms are not exactly optimized for campaigns that seek to fight misinformation about issues relating to gender and sexual health. During launch week, YouTube rejected our video ads for violating the “Sexual orientation in personalized advertising” policy. After an unsuccessful appeal, our strategists re-uploaded the video spots as “unlisted,” removing any written content that could be construed as being about sexual orientation in the video titles and descriptions. After this adjustment, the YouTube advertising went smoothly.
The advertising portion of the campaign ran from September 4 to 30, coinciding with back-to-school season and – unfortunately – a mail drop of 160,000 anti-trans flyers across New Brunswick from a national anti-abortion group. The flyers featured dangerous misinformation rooted in alarmist fearmongering. This is the sort of well-funded, coordinated effort that progressive organizations are up against. And these are the exact narratives we are hoping to re-write in our communities.
The flyers dropped a few days before the launch of our campaign. We didn’t have the money, time, or resources to counter with flyers of our own. We had to trust that our digital advertising and local radio ads would reach people in their homes and on the very devices we were encouraging them to put down. And we can say with confidence that many New Brunswickers at least saw our campaign. On Facebook and Instagram alone, we reached one in three New Brunswickers and generated more than three million impressions.
Beyond simple numbers, we also heard stories and reactions to Get Offline and Talk from New Brunswick and other places across Canada: “Brings tears to my eyes – a vitally important message for sure.” “‘Go offline and chat’ is good advice on ALL the tough topics in life. Lead with love. Listen. Talk about real people, not abstract issues.” “Love this. Face to face is very difficult but very productive.”
David-Roger Gagnon is a United Church minister at an affirming (pro-2SLGBTQIA+) church in New Brunswick. He has been an advocate for 2SLGBTQIA+ safety and inclusion in communities of faith and publicly condemned the mass mail-out of anti-trans flyers in September.
It is hard to get messages of calm conversation and dialogue into the public attention. This campaign works wonderfully into my message about seeking wisdom during these times of cacophony.
David-Roger Gagnon, United Church minister
A few days after Get Offline launched, Gagnon reached out to our team seeking permission to share the campaign videos with his congregation. I followed up with him afterward. “It is hard to get messages of calm conversation and dialogue into the public attention,” he said. “This campaign works wonderfully into my message about seeking wisdom during these times of cacophony. The videos we showed during our worship service were very, very well received. People were appreciative of the tone and approach, and I believe this campaign is life-saving.”
The response was clear: for so many people who are tired, overwhelmed, and losing hope in a polarized political landscape, Get Offline and Talk offered a reminder that empathy and connection is a winning strategy.
Learnings, locality, and next steps
For many of us involved in this campaign, it was an exercise in self-reflection about our own activism and relationships. “This project made me reflect on my own activism over the years, and on the many times I’ve built very strict barriers with people I didn’t see eye to eye with on issues I’m passionate about,” Zach Zimmel says. “Over time, that’s meant I’ve created a small and insular community that agrees with me. That community isn’t big enough to enact the revolutionary changes I want to see in the world. So I now realize it’s time to listen to understand versus listen to win. And that hearts-and-mind changing is a real long game that starts by finding commonality and shared values. Which aren’t as hard to find as one might think, as long as you actually look for them.”
Throughout the campaign development and launch, we touched base with allies in New Brunswick, many of whom run front-line and advocacy organizations. As a national organization dipping our toes into regional campaigning, we relied on their local expertise, insights, and feedback to ensure that the campaign resonated with New Brunswickers. These collaborations helped ground our team in the ethos of Get Offline and Talk – although Action Canada works remotely, this campaign re-centred the importance of our own locality and in-person relationships. We aren’t just little squares on a screen, but are shaped by the real-life communities we occupy.
I now realize it’s time to listen to understand versus listen to win. And that hearts-and-mind changing is a real long game that starts by finding commonality and shared values.
Zach Zimmel
As a Maritimer myself, I was thrilled at the opportunity to collaborate and highlight the amazing work being done on the East Coast and drove out to Moncton to meet with a handful of organizations working on human rights issues in the region. Despite most of our work being done online through emails, Zoom meetings, and text messages, it was these relational moments that sparked my own motivation and hope.
I am well aware of the irony and limitations of a digital advertising campaign to get people offline, and of the people we are missing in an exclusively online campaign. We did have some limited local radio ads, but we would have loved to have the funds to do mail-outs, out-of-home advertising (billboards, bus ads, etc.), and collaborate with local organizations to host town halls.
As we experience a seemingly never-ending cycle of elections and the polarization that accompanies them, campaigns like Get Offline and Talk showcase how we can find common ground, even when it’s uncomfortable.
This campaign wasn’t about progressive people being correct, but about dismantling the polarization that separates people who ultimately care about each other. No matter where we come from or who we are, we all care about the well-being of our families and our communities.
Feminist and progressive organizations often fall into the traps of perfection and self-righteous politics – how could we be wrong if we are fighting for things like bodily autonomy, equity, and better futures for everyone? How could a campaign be effective if it isn’t perfectly “feminist”? But these attitudes only serve to widen the gaps between us, alienate our neighbours, and hold our movement back.
Beneath the outrage and rage-bait encouraged by social platforms and politicians, we have more in common in our real-life communities than we might think. We are connected by shared values: we all want less traffic congestion in our towns, affordable homes for our families, to be able to afford groceries, to have safe schools, to access healthcare.
These values are most evident when we show up in person, in all of our humanity, with empathy at the forefront. And these are the seeds we need for narrative change, and ultimately a better material reality for all of us. A future where we all have access to the resources that we need for our families and communities to thrive, including safety for trans and queer youth and access to comprehensive sexuality education.
We hope Get Offline and Talk can serve as a template for other organizations seeking to sow new narratives for a better future!
With deep gratitude to Jill Oba-McGrath and Frédérique Chabot at Action Canada; Zach Zimmel and the team at Principles; Paul Shkordoff, Emily Harris, Harland Weiss, and the team at OPC Films; Alter Acadie, Chroma NB, and other participating partners in New Brunswick; and David-Roger Gagnon.
Resources for building narrative change messages and campaigns:
- ASO Communications
- Narrative Initiative
- Antidote to Authoritarianism by People Action’s Institute
- Funding Narrative Change: An Assessment and Framework by the Convergence Partnership
- Social Change Initiative
- Commons Social Change Library
- Reframing Migration Narratives Toolkit by International Centre for Policy Advocacy
- Reframe Academy
