'Be Sensitive...There's Going to be Drama!'

Fundación Televisa, part of the Televisa Group, has been working with telenovelas to create social impact since the late 1970s and ‘80s. Televisa’s latest campaign was focused on Early Childhood Week.

“What we are experimenting with now,” Alejandro stated, “is what if you have a soap opera or scripted show that you can watch in the afternoon and then in the morning entertainment show the next day, you talk about the storylines on that show? What if you have an expert on the topic there and what if, during the actual show, you can have a Facebook or Instagram live so that people can go there during the breaks to continue the conversation about the emotional side that you see in scripted shows. What if we connect all of this with PSAs and ad campaigns during the duration of the show’s storyline?”

How then do content makers balance social impact messages and demands with the writing and entertainment?

He believes that one of the main challenges is that producers, programmers, and content developers often believe that having intentional social impact through a piece of content is not going to be entertaining:

“[If] it’s not going to be sex, drugs, violence, killing or funny jokes that may not be politically correct, but everybody laughs with… they kind of prefer to stay away from that. What we have learned is that we identify an issue, and we bring it from the very beginning to the writers. We make sure that the writers that are going to be involved in it are going to be passionate about the writing. About being able to influence millions of people.”