PSA: The Mobilisation Formula
How We Bring People Together to Make a Difference
At Treeshake, we've learned that successful campaigns aren't built on great ideas alone—they're engineered through mastering three distinct types of strategic work. After reaching over a billion people across diverse campaigns, we've codified our approach into the Mobilisation Formula.
This framework reveals why some initiatives create lasting transformation while others generate temporary buzz before fading away.
The Three Essential Elements
Every successful mobilisation depends on three fundamental components:
People are your participants—not just any audience, but the specific individuals who can become champions of your cause and drive change within their networks.
Story is your compelling narrative that explains why change matters now, connecting hearts and minds to transform abstract goals into meaningful vision that people want to join.
Action is your pathway to impact—the specific, achievable steps that convert intention into measurable results.
Why Most Change Initiatives Fail
When only two elements align, you get partial results that feel frustratingly incomplete:
People + Story = Engagement Without Impact
You have an interested audience inspired by your message, but they don't know what to do next. Think viral content that generates shares but no lasting behavior change.
Story + Action = Plans Without People
You have compelling messaging and clear objectives, but no one to execute them. Like a detailed campaign strategy sitting unused because you haven't built the network to make it happen.
People + Action = Tasks Without Meaning
You have willing participants and specific work to do, but no deeper purpose connecting them. This creates short-term compliance without lasting commitment.
True Mobilisation: Where All Three Converge
At the intersection of People, Story, and Action, you achieve Mobilisation—when the right people are moved by compelling narratives to take coordinated action that creates lasting change.
This is where social movements gain unstoppable momentum, where policy campaigns shift public opinion, and where brand initiatives generate authentic community engagement that endures.
Three Types of Work
The Mobilisation Formula integrates insights from sociology, narrative science, and behavioral psychology:
People: Connective Labour
Connecting with the right people intentionally and impactfully can be hard work, especially in the beginning. The work to be done here ranges from identifying key stakeholder groups and individuals, calling people and getting them onboard, hosting meetings, posting to social media. Who are you going to reach, how are you going to reach them, and when or how often?
Story: Narrative Labour
People don’t make decisions based on facts alone, they need a story. The work of finding out what messaging moves people, and how to communicate it is narrative labour. People are busy and your message competes with hundreds of others in their world every day. You need messaging that hits people at an emotional level while remaining true and effective. We develop core narratives while analyzing competing stories, cultural context, optimal timing for message resonance, and the media landscape your story must navigate. There’s communications collateral here - speaking to people and testing messaging, gathering evidence, producing videos, documents, presentations, adverts and so on.
Action: Experiential Labour
People may want to support you but find it difficult to do so. Making action clear and easy is the work of experiential labour. It’s about taking complex actions and breaking it down into clear steps that move people along from awareness to action. This could range from designing advocacy toolkits to organising transport to political rallies. We design clear objectives while securing resources, optimizing timing, building infrastructure, reducing friction, and developing the organizational capabilities required for execution. This is all about designing processes, interfaces, share-packs.
Why This Approach Works
Most agencies focus on what they know best—creative, media, or strategy—while treating other domains as afterthoughts. We've built our entire methodology around the recognition that lasting change requires excellence across all three types of work working in harmony. The right people, information presented narratively, and clear next actions that drive meaningul results.
We evaluate every campaign through these three lenses, identifying which domain needs the most attention while ensuring all three remain integrated throughout execution. The result? Campaigns that don't just achieve immediate objectives—they engineer momentum that transforms temporary initiatives into sustained movements.
Ready to Mobilise?
Whether you're launching a public awareness campaign, driving policy change, building brand community, or leading organizational transformation, the Mobilisation Formula provides the strategic foundation for results that compound over time.
Let's engineer change that lasts.
