If you live in the States, unless you spent the last 6 months living in a cave or under a rock, you’ve been inundated with information about the “midterm” elections. I suspect that anyone else from anywhere else who has sufficient Internet connectivity to be reading this blog is also aware that candidates have been at each others’ throats, if not “tooth and claw,” TV and radio ads and “robo-calls” day and night. With Tuesday’s election (2 November 2010), all of that has come to an end at least for a few weeks—when “they” will start gearing up for the election in 2012.
Meanwhile, pundits and prognosticators are deep in analysis: why things turned out the way they did, who paid how much for what, how it might have been (should have been) different, will it actually make a difference, what happens next, and so on. Although I believe that the political process and associated social policies are important (I, for one, would like to have decent roads, bridges safe to drive over, decent public schools, good police and fire protection, and a host of other things usually considered appropriate subjects of government oversight), I think that it is easy to focus on the external while missing what’s important for us as individuals.
The principal lesson I think that we should draw from the midterm elections in the States is that what makes the difference between “winning” and “losing” is communicating. In my opinion, the best of the postmortem analyses of what happened and why focus on the differences in the messages framed by the Republicans (including the “Tea Bagging” component) and the Democrats. The Republicans had a message well-defined by a limited number of “talking points,” and the Democrats simply could not agree on a unified message. Where the Republican message was specific, pointed, and “personal”; the Democrats were not only inconsistent and abstract, but also emphasized policy rather than personal issues.
Whatever your thoughts, feelings, and/or beliefs about Republicans, Democrats, and the advertising and related public messages (TV interviews and the like), my sense is that there’s an important message buried in the messages here. The message in the messages isn’t anything new. It is something we’ve all know for a long time. In baseball, it would be the standard advice: “Keep you eye on the ball.” In business, marketing messages are most effective when they answer the key question for customers and potential customers: “What’s in it for me?” The principal issue is one of what, in NLP terms, are differences in map and territory. The mental map consists of the perceptions and beliefs about the territory. And those perceptions and beliefs may not be an accurate representation of the territory.
In persuading others to think or do anything it’s important to remember that their mental maps are the ones that count, and their view of the territory may be very different from yours. When you want them to share your view, you need to make it both easy and clear. This is especially true when the territory in questions is as murky and difficult to understand as trillion-dollar deficits, tax rates, and International trade agreements, and other aspects of political policy. Whatever you are marketing, however, the benefits for your audience need to be clear and easy to see and understand. I suspect that the five most important rules are the following:
- Establish a shared understanding based on a clear vision or frame. A “frame” presents the picture you want your clients, customers, or co-workers (or voters) to see. While others may not agree with your vision, having them fail to understand (exactly) what you are saying is worse than having them disagree with you. Those who disagree may change their minds with additional evidence. Those who don’t understand your initial message have no basis for understanding whatever additional information you can provide.
- Keep the message simple and repeat it with regularity. Keeping the message simple is the way to establish a shared understanding. Keep the number of main points small—no more than seven. Remember the basic rule of how much information people can process at a time: 5 ± 2 points. Keep both sentences and words simple and short. Repetition counts. We remember the sequence of the 26 letters in the alphabet is because we have repeated it so often. Select any other 26 things and see if you can remember them, let alone in the sequence in which they first occurred.
- Feelings drive decision. Emotion overrules reason. People buy automobiles, for example, because they provide “excitement” or because they will keep those in them “safe.” The same is basically true for anything you are “selling.” If your message doesn’t have an emotional component, it is likely to result in a big, “So what.” Of all the emotions, fear is the strongest. Fear is based on the survival instinct, and primitive fears (such as a snake in the grass or a lion behind a tree) have evolved into a general tendency for people to be risk aversive. If you want people to change or take a chance on your product, service, or idea, you will need to counter the general belief that change is risky. Not changing might be even more risky….
- Support claims with facts. Even though emotion overrules reason, facts provide essential support. They answer the question, “How do you know?” If you’re selling digital cameras, for example, you can create lots of positive feelings about how people might use the camera to create important memories, but those who are tempted to buy will still want to know how many megapixels the camera provides and other technical details.
- Framing is easier than reframing. While facts are necessary to support your view, they aren’t enough. Once people are convinced of the “truth” of something, presenting the facts changes few minds. If President Obama’s stimulus package is successfully framed as “failed,” facts that show success tend to disappear. One of the often-cited cases studied those who believed that Iraq was responsible for the attacks on 9/11 and that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been discovered following the U.S. invasion. Even when presented with the evidence that neither was true, very few “believers” changed their minds. Perhaps a more universal example is the common belief in the States that the U.S. is the “world’s best” in health care and education, when by most measures, we’re not doing that well when compared to other industrialized countries. The facts have been published and are readily available (search GOOGLE to find them for yourself), but they fail to reframe the rankings for many.
The most important part of this rule is to avoid simply negating your competitors’ frame. This is the “Don’t think of elephants” rule. Telling a person “no,” “not,” or “don’t” actually has the opposite effect. Think of Nixon’s “I am not a crook speech.” After he said it, “Nixon” and “crook” were deeply embedded in every viewer’s mind. Also, every time you mention your competitors’ frame—whether to negate it or to “borrow” the language used by them, you reinforce their frame in your audience’s mind.
What this means for those who want to be successful in communicating change is the need to develop a clear, compelling message that either complements the audience’s existing beliefs, or offers a safe and easy way for the change to be accepted one step at a time. Most people will not rush to a swimming pool and dive in. Most test the water temperature by sticking in a toe. They jump in only when they are convinced that the temperature is OK. My guess is that, for most people, a change in perspective occurs the same way. Only rarely is it the equivalent of Saul on the road to Damascus.
One of the implications of this is that communication not only needs to be planned, but also needs to be an ongoing process. Debra and I typically refer to the process as reframing by degrees. See Healing with Language: Your Key to Mind-Body Communication, (pp. 141ff.) for more on this subject.
