NAILED IT! ALL THAT WE SHARE
Welcome to Nailed It!, a regular blog series focussing on examples of excellence in values-based messaging. Each blog post will focus on one of the main categories of helpful values – Universalism, Benevolence and Self-Direction. They come from not for profit organisations, political campaigns, governments and private companies.
We hope our examples provide useful inspiration for your own messages and narrative development. For more on values based messaging you can check out our Resources page or this quick introduction.
A video featuring a group of people discovering that they share more in common than they might think. The creator is TV2 Denmark.
The issues: diversity, equity and inclusion, migration
This example comes from: TV2 Denmark
The context: TV2 is a public broadcaster. Their brand strategy was to take on the role of a public service provider with the goal of supporting cohesiveness in society by building on universal human insights. They produced a series of ads in the form of ‘social experiments’ in 2017. This one went viral with over 300 million views and (according to the ad agency), led to a shift in viewer attitudes, with an overall belief in the message “we have more in common than what separates us” rising by 27%.
The values it’s priming are: Universalism [Broadminded, Equality], Benevolence [True friendship], Self-Direction [Choosing own Goals, Dignity].
What we love about it: If you’ve taken part in a Common Cause Fundamentals course since 2017, you’ve probably seen this video already! Denmark’s public broadcaster presents a beautifully simple social experiment to show, not tell, the message that we have more in common than we might realise. The surprise and recognition on the faces of the various groups often sparks joy, while the poignant moments – a kid regrets his past bullying behaviour – bring a lump to our throats.
By the end, the audience is fully primed with helpful intrinsic values about what it really means to be Danish, how to be ourselves, and how to treat fellow humans. This framing is backed up by research that shows that simple conversations about shared human experiences can challenge stigma and change attitudes on a range of issues. We also love that it was a viral success – showing that content built around intrinsic value primes can be a mainstream success.