I am going to keep this short and too the point. In the past several days Chris on Hardball has been saying that if Obama wants to create jobs he should go into districts, folks that won't vote for more spending on a jobs bill, and show people photos of bridges that are literally falling apart. Schools with roofs that leak and don't even have A/C.
I couldn't agree more!
Obama is smart. Very smart. But he makes the same mistake IMHO most of my very smart clients make when they write copy for their sales and marketing materials. They talk about features and not benefits.
They want to talk about the processing speed of their computer. The resolution of their TV. The battery life of their cell phone. But these are features. They require the person reading or listening to the content to make the mental leap to why this will provide them a benefit.
Obama is making the exact same mistake when talking about jobs.
One of the best examples lately I've seen of this, just to present another example, are the tablet computer ads running 24/7. See the Apple iPad doesn't support Flash. That is kind of a big issue depending on how you want to use it, since many of the popular online games and videos are Flash based (like all of YouTube).
In the ads for tablets they promote a feature, we support Flash. Not a benefit, you can watch YouTube and play thousands of games on our tablet, not the iPad.
Obama does this all the time. He talks about infrastructure or stimulus spending and that it would create jobs. But those things are features. Benefits are there isn't any mold making your children sick in their school. The bus they go to school on is safe, cause it is new and not 30 years old. You don't have to get your suspension worked on each year cause of all the potholes in NYC.
Those are benefits, not features. They are benefits that matter to people, cause well they benefit them. They are not features that require the individual to connect the dots to the end benefit.
Obama really has to stop doing this.