Project summary

Storytelling has been used to spread news, information and ideas throughout human history, from Homer’s lessons in heroism to the Bible’s guidelines on moral conduct. Classic storytelling devices, such as narrative arcs like the hero’s journey, are deeply engaging to audiences across cultures, while the personality and struggles of main and secondary characters connect with us on deeply personal levels. These devices are enormously effective for absorbing our attention, transmitting key messages and persuading audiences of a given viewpoint – all of which are key goals for any advocacy campaign, particularly those promoting dietary change.

To encourage people to shift from meat-rich to plant-based diets – to benefit human health, the environment and food security – advocacy groups must get better at capturing the attention of mass audiences, many of whom may be hostile or resistant to change. Storying telling devices - narrative arcs, character archetypes, style, narrative voice - hold strong potential to facilitate campaigners to reach this goal, yet, many of these devices have not been used extensively within plant-based promotion campaigns.  

To date, a limited amount of research has explored the potential effectiveness of storytelling devices to encourage populations to shift towards more sustainable dietary patterns, although initial indications suggest these may hold promise to boost campaign effectiveness. For example, analyses of vegan advocacy content shows widespread use of the hero’s journey narrative arc and use of ‘discovery’ plot lines in popular blogs, while the ‘hero’ and ‘sage’ archetypes frequently appear in stories of personal dietary change as means to engage audiences.  Other research has shown widespread use of narratives emphasizing the idea of collective agency and joining a social fight on social media platforms such as X and Facebook.

The meat industry already consistently uses storytelling devices to promote their products. For example, selling meat products branded with happy animal characters. Strong masculine archetypes – such as the warrior – are extensively drawn upon to promote excessive meat consumption and ‘carnivore diets’.

When it comes to style and literary devices, some research suggests that the use of rhyme and metaphor can be effectively to boost sales of plant-based options, as can descriptive language that evokes strong positive visual imagery. Beyond diets, comedy and satire have also already been used effectively to promote social change, including promoting change towards more pro-environmental attitudes.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

Given initial indications that storytelling devices can enhance the impact of plant-based promotion campaigns, and given that no existing review or clear set of recommendations currently exists to provide guidance on which devices are most useful to include, we propose, here, a scope of work to answer the following key questions:

1.      Which storytelling devices are commonly used by the meat industry to promote meat products, and to undermine a transition to plant-based diets, in existing research literature, campaigns, and marketing?

 2.      Which storytelling devices have been used to promote the transition towards plant-based diets, in existing research literature, campaigns. and marketing?

3.      Which storytelling device hold greatest promise to support a transition towards plant-based diets, and how can plant-based advocacy groups and campaigners use these effectively going forward?

How will this funding be used?

Funding will be used to complete the following activities:

1.      Literature review of storytelling devices

Conduct a systematic review of relevant academic literature to identify

1.1 The major storytelling devices and/or associated frameworks that currently exist

1.2 Of these, which storytelling devices have already been used in service of encouraging dietary transitions

1.3 which storytelling devices show evidence of positive impact, negative impact or no impact on campaign outcomes

The major deliverable will be a short report summarising the key findings.

 2.      Qualitative analysis of storytelling devices in existing campaigns and media

A novel qualitative analysis of the most popular media articles and campaign content that:

2.1 promotes pro-meat diets

2.2 promotes pro-plant-based diets

This will involve coding key elements (i.e. major narratives, archetypes, narrative voice & style) using a defined framework and conducting quantitative analysis to determine the frequency with which each device appears in the two bodies of promotional content, and how this links to common engagement metrics (i.e. google analytics, SEO or content performance tools to understand engagement statistics such as traffic, backlinks, shares etc).

We will use this data to determine if specific storytelling devices are associated with higher popularity metrics and how these differ for pro-meat and pro-plant-based diet content.

3.       Building effective narratives workshop 

Taking the findings from phases 1 and 2, we will conduct a creative ideation workshop with representatives from plant-based advocacy organisations and campaigners. This will involve sharing findings from the prior research phases and conducting a series of creative ideation exercises to apply the most effective devices to a campaign target or question that each member brings to the session.

We will record the session and use this to produce a set of short learning videos that will be uploaded to Youtube and other media sites for sharing, ensuring that the key learnings from this scope of work are publicly available for use by other campaign groups.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Behavior Global is a UK-based behavior change consultancy that helps companies, governments, and the third sector to design and evaluate solutions that create behavior change for better health, wellbeing, and a sustainable future.

We have successfully executed a range of behavior change projects clients including the World Resources Institute, The Neom Project, Public Health England, Green Nudges, The University of Illinois and more.

Further details can be found on our website: www.behaviorglobal.com

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Potentially causes of project failure may be lack of access to relevant data sources, or incomplete data to input into an analysis - which is, however, very unlikely. The analysis strategy can be easily modified to arrive at similar conclusions using alternative approaches.

Failure to fund this project represents a missed opportunity for plant-based campaigns to utilise a series of storytelling devices that could lead to a meaningful improvement in their impact and reach.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

N/A - new project