nailed it! community stands up to an alcohol megastore

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.

The issues: Alcohol and Drugs, First Nations Justice 

 This example comes from: Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance (AMSA) Northern Territory  

The strategic context: In 2016 Woolworths, the largest food and beverage retailer in Australia, proposed to build a Dan Murphy’s alcohol megastore in Darwin, near three dry Aboriginal communities. The community pushed back - and won. 

More details: full SBS article here, full open letter here.

The values it’s priming are: Benevolence [mature love] Universalism [Social Justice]

What we love about it: This media quote (above) wraps up two intrinsic values – Universalism and Benevolence – so strongly it’s pulled out for the news outlet’s social media. AMSA NT resisted the opportunity to frame the issue as one of crime or safety – which would have played into stigmatising frames. The quote also externalises the problem by addressing the retailer Dan Murphy’s, and calls out their motives directly. We also recommend checking out the full open letter (which Common Cause provided some input into) for an example of how this framing translates into a longer piece.