Politico-Marketing 101

Repubs have successfully beaten reality. They've been very very adept at playing the frame game and using people. They use emotional and spiritual and visceral indicators to convince voters of their dominance and trustworthiness. So the Liberals of the world need to, first of all, understand this game, second, play it well, and third, negate it. Only after we've succeeded at equaling their game will their playbook become ineffective. And we will get to define the framework in which political questions are discussed and reported.

My first move is this. I want to change my handle on Kos. I've used my last name because it just seemed natural, and I never wanted to seem ashamed of my beliefs. But what's more important to me than my name is making the Democratic party strong enough to stamp out this ridiculous waste of politico-marketing muscle that the Rs have thrust upon a trusting nation. I think part of this battle has to do with the concept of liberal vs conservative. I am a Liberal Pragmatist, now more than ever. If there is a way to make that my handle while keeping the history of my posts and diaries, then I will do that. Seems like a Kos thing, though.

In terms of Liberal and Conservative, I like to think of neither word being negative, they are simply different political philosophies. But these words have been baggaged by years of political badgering and campaigning and sniping. Possibly so badly that neither word is actually salvageable at this point. I'm a marketing guy, so I think of so many things as market vs consumer and manipulations on both ends. So I'll use that analogy to construct my thoughts here. I'm sure you've heard it all before.

Consider these words:
Kleenex
Coke
Jello
Walkman
Reynolds Wrap
Ziploc
Glad bags
Pledge
Windex

Now consider the non-brand-name words they represent:
Facial tissue
cola drink
flavored gelatin dessert
portable personal tape player
aluminum foil
resealable storage bag
garbage bag
wood furniture polish
window cleanser

Now, consider this. Republicans are Coke. We are cola drink. Republicans are Walkman, we are portable personal tape player. Republicans are Ziploc, we are the resealable storage bag. We're pretty boring, eh?

I wouldn't ever say that politics is about making your argument exciting, because that would be tantamount to the dumbing down of a message for consumers. I hate that. Any time a message or idea gets dumbed down, we, or the marketing person doing it, is making the terrible mistake of assuming that your target market is dumber than you, and you've immediately lost. It has nothing to do with dumb people, dumb markets. It's about generating enough excitement and raising the interest level high enough that people will take the time to investigate and understand your message further. This is not a sign of stupidity, it's a sign of an increasingly stressed and apolitical market. This does not mean they are ignorant, it means they tired and frustrated.

I come from design; I am a designer. People tend to think that what I do is make things pretty. Of course, that may be what my profession looks like from the outside, but it is actually about information. What I do is take information that must be communicated to a specific target market and organize it and make it understandable. It has to do with the prioritization of messages and thoughts and reinforcement throughout. I think that designers are some of the best problem solvers we have. (That's probably a self-centered assertion.) As a designer, I've made everything from advertisements, to books to brochures, to websites, to report designs of all varieties. And the one thing they all have in common is information. Even the simplest ad has to communicate a thought. The simpler the ad, the more obvious the message (for the most part). Even the most complex report (annual report, government compliance report)  has to communicate a message. You can have twenty pages of the most up-to-date, amazing and revealing data about some valiant cause, and to anyone who doesn't understand or pay much attention, it is meaningless. You still need a summary page.

I posit that what Republicans have done well is, metaphorically, make splashy cover pages, filled with fantastic brand names, but they've got no real data to back it up. They've just sexed it all up a notch. Liberals tend to think that if you put the data out there, the people will get it and make the right choice. That is wrong and destructive to our cause. We need cover pages. Republicans are only cover pages, and we are only data. We don't need to worry much (right now at least) about them getting data to back up their flashy cover pages because they've pretty well buggered everything everywhere and have no real record to run on. But it doesn't look that way from the media-ready, sound-byte ready cover page they've constructed. We as liberals can certainly learn from this to make a great executive summary that will help sell and inform.

For instance, there are several types of organizations in the financial world. For simplicity's sake, I'll say that there are those that are licensed to give financial advice, and those that are not. If you are not a financial advisor and you talk about how good it could be for someone to buy this or sell that, you are in a heap of trouble. But, if you are not a financial advisor and you simply provide a comprehensive cover report that summarizes reams of important data and distills it to obvious important points, the next pragmatic step can be taken by the user of that report without having to seek advice from a licensed advisor. In essence, make the choice so clear that no further reading and analysis of the data is necessary. This is possible through the careful juxtaposition of sorted data.

"Why is that big slice of my pie chart red?"

"Well, Mr Client, you asked to have anything over [x] limit to be flagged in the report. That red is a flag."

"I don't like that. I'm going to have to change that weighting in my portfolio."

"How you act on this information, sir, is your choice. I've merely clarified the data for you, per your request."

See how easy it is to let people make their own choices when they are given the real data in a logical format for analysis? We don't actually need advisors telling us what to do about financial, real estate or career issues. We need data, broken into comparative chunks. In the end, summarizing data is really about relationships. If you squint a bit and the page blurs, you should still be able to discern the relationships between blocks of data when the numbers disappear. Did something go over a limit? By how much? If my summary is constructed well, I will be able to see that it went over my pre-set limit by only a smidge, and it's not much of a task to bring it back within limits.

To bring this all home, I encourage you to think of the publicity arm of politics as marketing. Obviously politics has an important role which, most of the time, is outside the view of the general public. But whenever an election or an important initiative rolls around, it gets planned, designed, packaged and sold to the voters and media, and both are hungry and eager for the next new thing. If it's called "Blue Skies," it's gonna sell, no matter what the thing actually says. The words used to describe it in a sound byte conjure up beautiful, calming imagery. What I am talking about is not just the brilliant Lakoff discussion about framing. We Liberals are so freaking academic, we can't even call it what it is. Marketing.

This is about marketing. Get used to it. As I said before, it has nothing to do with stupidity or ignorance (for the majority of voters), but it has a lot to do with the way information is presented. I'll outline my suggestions below, and their target markets for the next round of elections in 2006, and carrying into 2008.

A woman's right to choose = Healthy Baby Initiative
An initiative that does everything possible to prevent an abortion. This includes fully funding sexual education and community health clinics, so that mothers can get adequate prenatal care. It does not, however, change any law allowing or preventing a woman from making her own choice about her body and baby.
target: Fence-sitting pro-choicers... the ones who think abortion is wrong, but don't agree that a woman's right to choose should be outlawed.

Tax cuts = American Starvation
If the red states want tax cuts, let them have their tax cuts. The blue states are happy to fill their own gap with state taxes. I'd like to see the red states try to raise their state taxes. Eventually, they'll get tired of driving on crumbling roads and intermittent power, and vote their leaders out of office. This may take a while, and sorry to our blue friends in red states... Thanks for taking one for the team.
target: Red state politicians. This is nothing more than a way to make them look bad. We've got to cut off the pork steadily flowing from blue to red.

Tax-break rollbacks = Economic Security
Let's see the Republicans vote against something called the Economic Security Bill. They should be pounded over the head day and night. Our country needs those billions now, and Bush isn't going to give in. This will be another chink in the armor though.
target: Red state politicians. "Gee, Tim, I don't know why Senators Thune, Coburn and DeMint are against American Economic Security. It is vitally important for America to maintain Economic Security in this volatile world market, where we are vulnerable to attack and jobloss."

These are a start. I want you to think about frames, nay, brand names for our liberal causes. Even the most difficult ones. How about hooking up gay rights with all equality laws? Call it Freedom Security? Or rebuild the laws governing broadcast media, and call it The Fair and Balance Act. "Gosh, Brit, I'm not sure why conservatives would be against ensuring fairness and balance on the airwaves. It's widely agreed that the media is biased."

More to come in Politico-Marketing 201.