A campaign takes a long time to win; one action is just a small part of it

A campaign is like a long-term strategy but more detailed and intensive; it requires active upkeep by a persistent activist group.

As Ivan Marovic writes, "Unlike strategy, [campaigns] need to be detailed, their objectives specific, their targets well defined, and their messages clear and straightforward. Campaigns must correspond to changing environments but must also support the long-term strategy. And since it takes time for campaigns to have an effect… you must wait months before making changes based on an evaluation of the campaign’s effectiveness."

Although tactics like ours (or the thousands within Actipedia) can contribute to long-term and short-term change through their sheer existence, only campaigns bring about change with any reliability.

Instances in which we learned this lesson

At the hottest Berlin Fashion Week event yet, "Adidas" made history by introducing their new Co-CEO: a Cambodian garment worker. Vay Ya Nak Phoan…
(Diana Taylor was the main originator of this action. This is an excerpt of the last chapter of her 2020 book, ¡¡Presente! The Politics of Presence.…
Several elements went into the success of this project. Although we didn't do a formal SWOT analysis beforehand, in retrospect it's clear what the…
Back in 2011, a small brainstorm around the NYPD's racial profiling ("Stop and Frisk") led to an idea that everyone laughed and cringed at…
An Amsterdam neighborhood thrills that the City is making their local squat official—and then helps to save it from eviction, for real. Sometimes…
This is a big part of the meandering path that led straight (yes, it's a contradiction) to our biggest success.
Learning and relearning a whole bunch of things in a very confusing place
So how did we end up speaking to 350 million people on behalf of Dow Chemical? It's a pretty long story—much longer than what we could tell in our…
Two hundred apartheid-party zombies descend on the Cape Town City Hall to celebrate their return to power. Whaaaaaa?