MCB: Messaging and storytelling for digital campaigning and stakeholder communication

19.12.2025

The Workshop on Messaging and storytelling for digital campaigning and stakeholder communication, part of EMSP’s Membership Capacity Building (MCB) Programme, was held in 2020. It brought together representatives from various EMSP member organisations to share experiences and best practices. In this article, you can explore the main outcomes of the workshop.

Objectives:

1. To strengthen the capacity of EMSP members to continue delivering their work effectively in a changing environment.

2. To introduce the foundational theory of storytelling, including the science behind how stories work and the key elements of story structure.

3. To develop practical storytelling skills, by exploring concrete methods to plan, craft, and tell compelling stories.

4. To support members in using storytelling as a strategic tool to communicate their work, engage stakeholders, and convey impact more effectively.

What does neuroscience teach us about the power stories have to teach, engage and influence? What are the ingredients of a high impact story?

We first looked at the work of Professor Paul Zak who has explored the impact emotionally engaging stories have on our ability to influence and persuade. In research he found that more emotionally laden stories created more oxytocin and cortisol (the hormones responsible for distress and empathy) that audiences with high quotas of these in their bloodstream were susceptible to influence.  This makes stories a powerful tool for fundraising and lobbying. You can read about his research here.

We then looked at the work of Kendell Haven, a storytelling consultant who has worked with the World Bank, NASA, US Government Departments, business and non-profits to look at how we learn through stories. His wide-ranging research has explored a range of things including how our brains are hard-wired to think and learn in stories and how when presented with new information that is not in a story we are likely to turn it into a story in order to make sense of it. This long but interesting podcast features an interview with Haven and covers many of his key findings.

We explored the ingredients of a powerful story, as defined by Haven through his work. We related these to a real life example of someone living with MS to show how the different aspects of someone’s personal experience can be communicated through a powerful story structure. Ingredients include character, personality traits, goal, motives, conflict and problems, risk and danger, struggle and details (context).

How do we identify the stories that will have the biggest impact on our audiences? How can we use digital technology and channels to capture and tell stories?

We explored what best practice cause-related storytelling looks like. Stories that are told by organisations for the purpose of influencing policy change, for education or to raise money must be directly linked back to your core purpose and objectives. If they are not then they risk creating a disconnect in your audience understanding, which was something we looked at with Kendell haven’s work and his ‘Make Sense Mandate’. We touched on the concept of framing and the power stories have to wither challenge or reinforce beliefs about certain issues and groups of people.

We then looked at a practical tool to help organisations pick good stories to tell – the PICk acronym. P for problem, I for Intervention and C is for Change. Organisations telling stories in order to influence should ensure they have answered these questions in their storytelling: what is the problem you are trying to solve? What are you doing to solve it? What has happened as result of your work? If you answer these three question in your story you have shown the problem, intervention and change. You can emphasise different parts of the story according to what you want it to achieve – fundraising stories commonly focus on the problem while impact reporting will focus on the change.

We looked at the different types of audiences including policy-makers, funders, the media, the general public, peer organisations and colleagues. Different audiences will be interested in different things and it is important to give your target audience the information they need and want in a format that works for them, rather than just presenting things in the same way for everyone. For example a policy-maker may want the opportunity to network with your peers in other countries so they can learn what has worked in other territories but someone who has just been diagnosed with MS may want to hear from other people with the same diagnosis so they can learn from their experience and feel less alone. There are different digital platforms you can use to tell your stories and reach your audiences. Different social media channels offer different opportunities for networking and conversation. Twitter is good for engaging in conversation and observing creating wide scale awareness, Facebook is a great digital tool for creating support groups and Instagram can be a great platform for holding Q&A sessions and online events. Platforms such as Substack and Medium are great resources for producing digital newsletter. Film is a powerful way to communicate your messages, YouTube is the most popular platform for film but Instagram TV is also a great options. Consider how you can hold online event using  Zoom (Zoom is a great alternative to being in the room for a real event and you can even encourage networking in small groups through the breakout room facility.

Identification of good examples of stories within the MS community. Work in small groups in breakout rooms to discuss examples of great stories and consider them through the lens of the learnings.

The larger group were then divided into small breakout rooms to work together to identify stories that could be told that would communicate the impact Covid-19 is having on the treatment of chronic conditions. The facilitator moved around the rooms during this session to answer questions and observe discussion. There were some interesting conversations happening and it was good to see the groups referring back to what they had learnt so far.

It is important to remember that storytelling must focus on people talking about their experiences, not organisational messaging and wherever possible you should use the real life voices of people with lived experience.

Toolbox for MS societies. What systems and processes and skills do you need to facilitate your storytelling and how can you best support your storytellers?

We closed the workshop by exploring some of the systems and processes you need in place to develop your storytelling, including planning processes and ways to support and protect your storytellers. This toolbox is provided alongside this report in the form of the Mile 91 storytelling handbook. In addition to the handbook we would recommend you read this paper about the experiences of patient storytellers as it provides valuable insight into some of the things you should consider.