Creative coalitions and why the world needs them

Creative coalitions work by bringing together multiple individuals or organisations who all share the same vision. You may have slightly differing views on how you want to bring about this specific change – and that’s ok. As long as you all agree on what needs to change and what success will look like at the end of your campaign, you can move forward. It’s all about making sure the focus is on the change you want to create, rather than the coalition.

With so many different voices behind it, a shared vision becomes a particularly powerful message when you share it with the world. A good example of this is the Routes out of Homelessness campaign we helped to deliver for Network Rail. We created an animation that helped to promote and explain their Routes out of Homelessness charity coalition with Shelter, Big Issue Foundation, Crisis, Railway Children and End Youth Homelessness. Our animation helped to bring this shared vision to life, explaining how all involved held the same goal of supporting people to find a route out of homelessness.

The power and success of the creative coalition depends on the strategic choices of those involved.

Therefore, it’s important to build transparent and democratic structures of decision-making. The participation of senior leaders from the organisations involved demonstrates commitment and can lead to quick decision making, while also encouraging new leadership from champions from within the ranks.

The most successful creative coalitions have a few well-chosen allies rather than a long list of partners. Less people around the table means you can do more together and take the time to build close, respectful relationships before starting to campaign together. United by your shared vision, you can then embrace collaborative working to set your goal in motion. Choose diving deep into the issue rather than taking a broad view or you risk only agreeing what you are against rather than what you are for.

The secret ingredient to effective collaboration is listening to each other and finding the common ground. And by keeping your creative coalition agile by taking a voluntary ‘opt-in’ approach instead of forcing participation from all collaborators at every stage, you’ll find that you’re working together to build a strategy that brings together creative, innovative tactics that have the power to create the change you want to see. And with this plan now in place, you can start to identify who should deliver each element of the strategy. Which leads us neatly into our next point…

Creating disruption in a saturated marketplace starts with pooling together a diverse range of skills, perspectives and approaches. And one of the key benefits to a creative coalition is the diversity of skills and experience at your disposal. The most effective creative coalitions also leverage their networks showing their versatility to act on a local, regional, national and sometimes international scale to exert their influence. Understanding how to make the most of everyone’s expertise and ensuring that all talents are allocated where they can best serve the change your coalition is seeking to make is what will enable you to achieve maximum impact.

What we’ve learned from our experience of working with coalitions is that open and regular communication is essential. Continually re-centering the focus on the cause rather than the coalition helps to rally the coalition behind the joint vision. Finding the mutual self interest in these kinds of alliances and communicating the broad narrative with a set of specific demands gives scope for maximum creativity and impact.

To ensure the success of your creative coalition, we can help you leverage marketing tactics - whether that's developing compelling content for the web or creating a scroll stopping digital campaign to extend your reach. If this sounds like what you’re looking for, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.