Causes in Hollywood: 5 Strategies to Transform the Narrative

Listening to Raina Deerwater, a researcher at the GLAAD Media Institute, I started to see a clear pattern of what makes a campaign successful. Here are the five most important strategies to assure your group or cause is included and well represented in entertainment and media.

1) Start with Data

Raina said, "people are more likely to listen to the numbers...unfortunately." Every successful entertainment initiative starts with a study. For Donate Life Hollywood it was research by Dr. Susan Morgan that spurred me into action. Her findings helped me open doors to working with writers, and transform narratives. GLAAD has a full entertainment and analysis team generating qualitative and quantitative data. They track LGBTQ portrayal, figure out what people want to see, and show that the LGBTQ audience is an incredibly valuable market. This "makes Hollywood comfortable telling our stories." Smart.

2) Give Awards

Raina called the GLAAD Awards a "party with a purpose." You know I love purpose, and a red carpet. The Donate Life Hollywood Inspire Awards was an incredible way to build lasting relationships with the entertainment industry. The Awards got influential people in a room, then we used real life stories of donors and recipients to inspire the hell out of them. The event turned people into advocates for our cause, no matter what writers room they were in. I would argue that the GLAAD Awards are even cooler than the Oscars because they give Hollywood a place to celebrate the best of what the entertainment industry can do: provide authentic representation, transform social acceptance and inspire understanding.

3) Tell Your Own Stories

You can't rely on other people to create the most impactful portrayals of your cause. You need to invest in the stories you want to see. The GLAAD List, created in partnership with the Black List, is a curated list of the most promising unmade LGBTQ-inclusive film scripts. It lets the entertainment industry know, "hey! these are authentic stories!" With Donate Life Hollywood we paired documentary producers with donor families and recipients to create inspiring shorts that we could show to creatives and say, these are our authentic stories. Not the black market.

4) Provide Tools

You need to invest in resources to help writers craft your authentic stories. These include fact sheets, videos and best practices. These are tools you can put online for writers to find in the middle of the night when they are working on a script. One of GLAAD's recommendation to writers is to create LGBTQ characters who are "just existing." Just...existing. DLH tools included the "Rule of Three" when writing about organ donation and transplant. #1 Include the OPO, #2 Go Beyond the Shortage...and honestly I forget #3. But the Rule of 2 sounded weird.

5) Consulting

The goal of every campaign is to build relationships with the entertainment industry and turn those relationships into consulting opportunities (and partnerships). When writers and producers ask you for help on their storyline, you've made it. GLAAD shared how they shaped representation of the first trans participant on Survivor. DLH had experts on-call to answer any question any time and often received emails from writers asking for clarification on a transplant process. Sometimes I could answer, but often had time to engage a surgeon to be more in depth. Consulting is super-fun.

I learned a lot from GLAAD tonight. It really drove home the important elements of successfully working with Hollywood to transform a cause.