Countering Chaos and Uncertainty
Ideologically-moderate women’s top priority is being able to take care of their families, but as gas prices rise, ICE attacks divide communities and an unpopular war in Iran diverts tax dollars away from essentials like healthcare, they are feeling the impact on their wallets alongside a deepening sense of chaos and uncertainty. Take a look at some recent survey results:
In the month since the start of the Iran war, the average price of unleaded gas has spiked more than a dollar a gallon, hitting $4.02 per gallon as of April 1 (source: NBC News). Which of the following best describes how this increase has affected your household’s daily spending, if at all?
How Does Galvanize Action Help Ideologically-Moderate Women Make Sense of this Chaos?
Our research-backed programming shares affordability and security narratives that resonate with ideologically-moderate white women, validating their feelings, and helping them make sense of what they are seeing, who is to blame, and what they can do.
Narrative research provides the baseline for how we shift our audience’s thoughts around economic stability away from scarcity and zero-sum mindsets, which can lead to othering, and towards mindsets rooted in abundance and win-win frames that provide them with a sense of collective agency, belonging, and resilience.
What do those narratives look like?
Creator Cohort
In our digital age, people’s “village” often comes from the folks they engage with online as much as, if not more than, those in their physical community. Our new creator program takes what we know about our audience’s online habits and the messages they need to hear and provides them with content from trusted creators who already speak to their values. These creators share personal stories and engage head-on with the issues our audience cares about like affordability, healthcare, and childcare to promote prosocial action.
Our first 10 videos have already reached nearly 3 million accounts!
Here is one stand out example that we tested and found it moved our audience by statistically significant margins on three key outcomes: their “willingness to take action, including voting or advocacy, if the government fails to address the economic needs of working families,” agreement with the statement “I have a role to play in making my community a better place to live for all,” and vote choice.
The comments on this video show how well this connected with our audience.
- This is so validating. The amount of time and money it takes to be at a baseline minimum of feeling ok to function, is exhausting. And then by the time you can do something fun that you want to do, your body is done for the day. Thanks for sharing 💖
- 👏👏👏 you are absolutely not alone
- Is there some way to get Congress to watch this video? Like on a really bright giant screen with individual headphones turned all the way up, with chronically ill people standing under the screen staring and pointing at them?
We are so excited to share more of these videos with you!
Leveraging Established Channels
We also use established channels that reach our audience, like this Facebook page for Single Moms Getting By In Michigan, to help spread our prosocial messages even further. These “always-on” community hubs meet ideologically-moderate women where they already scroll: parenting corners, wellness feeds, and comfort-content communities. Each page delivers the kinds of posts women already engage with, like life hacks, hometown trivia, humor, and connection, layered with content that meets them at their values of fairness, merit, and compassion.
We know from our recent study that our audience is more likely to share content if it’s funny, so our content brings humor to these issues, without making light of them.
These pages reached over 300,000 people in April alone!
Here are a few of our favorite posts so far (with bonus comments)!
- Omg! That would be right up there with winning the lottery and never having to work again. Literally…my SUV take premium.
- It would mean one less thing on my plate trying to survive without any child support just me and my girls
- more money in the pocket for important things like medical issues and medicines and food and clothes etc..
Case File Ads
Knowing that much of our audience are fans of true crime, our latest ad uses that style to engage them as we help them make sense of who is to blame for rising prices.
This ad counters othering and scarcity narratives that place the blame on immigrants and working families by naming exactly who is responsible for their financial stress.
We created 6 versions of this ad, each naming a different elected official who has sided with billionaires over their own constituents, giving viewers in each district a clear call to action: tell your elected official that this is not what you voted for.
This is just some of the programming we are sharing this year to counter chaos and corruption with messages that show they are not alone and they have an important role to play in protecting their families and communities.
