Stealing From The Best: 8 Things Entrepreneurs Should Learn From Doc Filmmakers...

By Anita Lee

What does social entre­pre­neur­ship have to do with doc­u­men­tary film? Quite a lot, actually.

I am a self-proclaimed doc­u­men­tary film junkie who watches a doc­u­men­tary about…every cou­ple of months.  That’s mostly because I’m sen­ti­men­tal and doc­u­men­taries can tend me make me cry. A lot. Nonethe­less, I love doc­u­men­taries with passion.

There was a time when I was deter­mined to be a doc­u­men­tary film­maker.  After a short stint behind the cam­era, I’ve real­ized that I’m bet­ter suited work­ing behind the scenes.  I’m fas­ci­nated by doc­u­men­tary films that are strate­gi­cally used to launch social impact cam­paigns, using the HUMAN story in the film as a vehi­cle for start­ing conversations.

Some doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers, the ones that have used their films to change pub­lic pol­icy and rewrite his­tory, are social entre­pre­neurs in every sense.  They might not get involved to the Skoll World Forum on Social Entre­pre­neur­ship but they have a lot to teach us about how to gen­er­ate the kind of buzz that also changes people’s minds and dri­ves social change.

8 Social Impact Strate­gies That Doc­u­men­tary Film­mak­ers Do Better

Doc­u­men­taries like An Incon­ve­nient Truth and Shark­wa­ter have cre­ated a new stan­dard for what you can accom­plish, start­ing with 90 min­utes of someone’s time.  Here’s a look at what they can teach social entre­pre­neurs about cre­at­ing change:

1. Have a darn good story to tell.  

This is the heart of your orga­ni­za­tion. This is the back­bone of why peo­ple will or will not pay atten­tion to you. This is what peo­ple will remem­ber. They will even­tu­ally for­get about your tech­nol­ogy and your lat­est prod­ucts but if you can cap­ture their hearts through your story, they will tell oth­ers and the move­ment begins. Peo­ple con­nect to sto­ries. Peo­ple tell other peo­ple stories.

2. Be avail­able for Q&A.

When doc­u­men­taries pre­miere at film fes­ti­vals, they are usu­ally fol­lowed by a short Q&A sec­tion with the film­mak­ers.  While this is a small ges­ture and takes 20 mins of the filmmaker’s time, it is inte­gral to get­ting strangers per­son­ally involved in the mis­sion. For social entre­pre­neurs, this means being open about your journey.

 Fig­ure out what peo­ple want to know about your BUSI­ness. Once you’ve touched hearts with your story, cre­ate a way for peo­ple to get the ques­tions about your busi­ness answered (read: cre­ate a website!).

3. Enlist a small army.

Doc­u­men­taries designed for change always point peo­ple to action, whether it’s on to a web­site, donat­ing, vot­ing or vol­un­teer­ing. Con­trast this to what I’ve seen from many social enter­prises do when they’re first start­ing out: social enter­prises push the sale.  You might argue that you’re a social enter­prise. You need to gen­er­ate rev­enue to con­tinue doing your work.  True, but this is like using your advan­tage as a disadvantage.

We live in a world today where more and more peo­ple want to do mean­ing­ful work.  As a social enter­prise, you’re in a per­fect posi­tion to help them do that.  They might like what you’re doing but they don’t want to buy more shit.  Still, get them on your mail­ing list, lik­ing your Face­book page or fol­low­ing you on Twit­ter and show them what to do next.

4. Make your mes­sage easy to share.

Not every­one may want to buy your prod­uct but there is noth­ing stop­ping you from ask­ing for their help to spread your mes­SAGE.  If you have a com­pelling story, they peo­ple will nat­u­rally want to share it.

Have pro­mo­tional mate­ri­als like QUOTE cards, share­able screen­shots and info­graph­ics ready for your audi­ence to eas­ily share with their social net­works.  The Bully Project went as far as design­ing edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als for teach­ers to use in school.

5. Get clear on your social change goals.

Do you want to raise aware­ness for a par­tic­u­lar issue or do you want to save the Ama­zon For­est? Who exactly do you want to reach most?  Hint: it’s not every­one.  Get really clear on how you and your social enter­prise wish to define your social impact.

Start small but have a game plan for the larger soci­etal change you might like to achieve.  It’s eas­ier to get peo­ple psy­ched about your mis­sion when they know what exactly you’ll be track­ing and work­ing towards.

For exam­ples, The film­m­mak­ers behind The Invis­i­ble War, a doc­u­men­tary about rape in the U.S. Mil­i­tary set out to achieve the following:

• Dra­mat­i­cally raise pub­lic aware­ness about the epi­demic of Mil­i­tary Sex­ual Assault (MSA)
• Cre­ate a national dia­logue about the issue
• Moti­vate the press to sub­stan­tially increase its cov­er­age of this issue and its inves­tiga­tive report­ing of these crimes
• Spur the mil­i­tary on to ini­ti­ate inter­nal changes
• Build a national com­mu­nity of active survivors
• Effect pol­icy change at the level of Con­gress and the Depart­ment of Defense

Since the film­mak­ers knew they wanted to exert pres­sure on polit­i­cal deci­sion mak­ers, built alliances with key mem­bers of U.S. gov­ern­ment, espe­cially Repub­li­cans since they con­trolled the House.

6. Get involved in the politics.

Have the courage to speak up about what you stand for. Social enter­prises seem to stay out of pol­i­tics. They do so by sup­port­ing causes in devel­op­ing coun­tries, far away enough so that no one can really track their progress. If you want to really make an impact in your com­mu­nity, have the courage to speak up about issues at home.

At the very least, you can advo­cate for spe­cial­ized legal cor­po­rate forms for social enter­prises, some­thing that most coun­tries, includ­ing Canada, are still lacking.

7. Share your space.

Film­mak­ers who really want to get their film in front of as many eye­balls as pos­si­ble don’t just wait for the fes­ti­vals to screen their films, they will take up any avail­able pub­lic space to screen their films.  If your social enter­prise has a phys­i­cal office, use it!

Turn your office or retail space into a hub for peo­ple who also care about your cause.  Use it to host screen­ings like Patag­o­nia did or use it as a meet­ing point for nature walks.

8. Design for the long haul.

I am so inspired when I see film­mak­ers reach out into the world beyond their film and really try to make a last­ing impact. It won’t hap­pen overnight but if you use the momen­tum gar­nered from your story, you can start a foun­da­tion. This is not for the faint of heart. The foun­da­tion or non-profit can fur­ther your mis­sion with­out hav­ing to worry about fund­ing, which can from your for-profit ven­ture.  Think what Vir­gin Unite ( Vir­gin Group’s non­profit foun­da­tion) could do for all the eye­balls that watched BBC’s Planet Earth.

http://anitalee.tv/learn-doc-filmmakers/#sthash.JaeTyTfA.dpuf