As a wave of 90’s music and fashion nostalgia sweeps the country, I’m reminded of the teenage version of myself from that bygone era. Sporting baggy jeans, flannel and rockstar length hair, I believed my garage band would rule the airwaves and bring about Eddie Vedder-level fame. Full volume, the music and message were uncompromising and sought to change the world in a big way.
Decades later, sporting differently baggy jeans, dadbod flannel and a hairline that’s less “rock” and more “The Rock”, fame having thus far eluded me, the soundtrack has mellowed a bit. I still want to change the world, albeit in ways that are a tad more subtle. The airwaves have been supplanted by marketing channels, celebrity status replaced by audience reach, and the “volume” I now care about relates mostly to email deliveries.
After 22 years conducting digital advocacy campaigns, I’ve (metaphorically) rocked a few stages, toured in odd places and most definitely flubbed some notes. And like that one guy who always lingered near my band’s merch table, I’m here to offer random and unsolicited musings, bootlegs of knowledge if you will, to my fellow communications rockstars.
Harmonize
Like any band, your instruments should be united to create a full sound. The overused “one band, one sound” mantra isn’t a call for uniformity, quite the opposite. Each instrument plays a different part, adding layers to a mix to create the best composition. A solo may grab attention, but it falls flat without bass and drums locking down the low end. All eyes may be on the lead singer but at times it’s the rhythm guitar that brings home the money. And occasionally someone even busts out a tambourine.
The same holds true for your communications tools. Email is unequivocally NOT dead, it just doesn't have the range it used to, so maybe let it rest between performances. Text messaging keeps shredding, but only a subset of your fans will ever notice. The fax machine retired but occasionally tries to show up and jam...make sure it stays unplugged. A.I. got us all using autotune, but now it wants to lead the band.... don’t let it. And if you ever get the urge to bust out a weird instrument, they’re out there.
You Need Better Representation
Managers and agents may help the band run, but they have no place performing the songs. Keep Yoko and your publicist backstage. Let the composers and musicians do their thing.
Emails by committee, endless approval processes and group-workshopped talking points are killing your sound. That team of 12 people demanding editorial access to your draft content thinks they’re making it sing, but the 3 clicks you generated last month indicate it’s out of tune. Let the content experts make and deploy the content. Let the players play.
Video (reduced the influence of) the radio star
No matter the talent level, countless musical performers go unnoticed until their visual presence resonates with audiences. The rise of music videos brought with it a golden era for many previously overlooked artists. But while the ghost of MTV is all that’s left of those early days, YouTube and the various “toks” of the world continue to surface new and better performances. Video, in all its forms, remains dominant. If your engagement program isn’t on camera, it isn’t anywhere.
Lip-synced or Unplugged?
Don’t overthink your video engagement program. Many of the biggest video hits from yesteryear were scripted. Everything, from camera angles to lighting to color to the story being shown on screen was planned to perfection. “Live” performances were overdubbed, lines were lip-synced and creative editing removed anything resembling a flaw. And while that process gave us classics like Thriller and November Rain, it also gave us career-enders like Rock Me Tonight.
That’s not a case against production value, though. We’ve all witnessed that yawn-inducing parade of meandering volunteer testimonials. No one sits to watch a disjointed collection of 8-minute videos featuring grumpy looking folks who’d clearly rather be doing anything other than narrating their entire medical history. Or that hastily recorded and out-of-focus clip that got shared before the social media manager noticed it mentioned the wrong bill number. No, a little direction never hurts.
But take care not to remove the human element. In the current authenticity era, where human experience is battling a wave of AI slop, show “real” content. It’s okay to prepare some talking points, but we can see you looking off camera to read them. Setting a time limit is great, just be sure you’re not truncating the heart of your advocate’s story. And be ready to edit your work. Not every frame is a VMA winner.
Storytellers
Whether it’s legendary encounters down at the crossroads, notorious backstage antics or the biting of bats, stories bring legends to life. Fact or fiction, stories will always expand beyond their initial telling. The narrative isn’t fully controllable, but perhaps the vibe is. Worry about the “gist”, not the exact verbiage. Your carefully crafted talking points are fine, but no one will be sharing those in years to come. They will, however, share your story. Your goal is to ensure people understand what you mean, not for them to memorize a catchphrase. Tell your stories, then let them breathe.
Stage Presence
Your audience doesn’t care about your process or data, just your output. Advocates are far less motivated by facts and statistics than they are emotions and stories. They don’t need bill numbers and they’re NOT reading spreadsheets.
Great performers understand this dynamic. They balance the need to master their craft with the understanding that sometimes it just comes down to hitting the right note at the right moment. You won’t see fans knowingly cheer for a mixolydian scale, or hear a dude yell “play something with Neo-Riemannian theory” at the top of his lungs. They just want to hear the music. Play for them and keep the rest backstage.
After 22 years in digital advocacy, here’s what it really comes down to:
Advocacy is not about volume. It is about resonance.
Build programs that sound like real people, and real people will respond.
Christopher Masak was the longtime Director of Advocacy for a large voluntary health organization and has served in a number of advocacy communications and engagement roles. He spends his time driving social and policy change at all levels of government. His fashion sense remains terrible and if you ask nicely he might let you listen to his band’s demo.
