Write your message
Now that you have identified and built a relationship with your audience and done your research, it's time to put it all together in a succinct, persuasive way. A good message has these qualities:
- Credible
- Clear
- Concise
- Connects with people
- Communicates values
A good message is credible: it is based on truth and fact and it rings true with your audience. Your credibility is evident if you know your audience and forge relationships in the communities in which you are working. If the campaign is grounded in the community, understands the issues confronting the community, and delivers a message that is realistic and does not pander, it will have a far easier time connecting with its audience.
A message should be clear and concise. No one will remember a ten-point program. People lead busy lives, and a campaign has precious little time to deliver a compelling message. Too often, progressives have unfocused or disparate messages that try to do too much. We tend to over-explain our positions and wade into policy minutiae, forgetting to start back at the values level, where common ground should exist. But there is no reason that we cannot deliver crisp, clear messages.
A good message connects with a person's interests and values, starting with what a person already knows and thinks, and moving them to where you want them to be. One way to do this is to think about message as a conversation. Any campaign is essentially engaged in a conversation with its audience - voters, policymakers, citizens, or any other group that the campaign is trying to influence. The quality of this conversation depends on the same set of attributes that comprise a good conversation between two people.
A good conversation is mutually respectful, interesting, and informative. We walk away from good conversations feeling good - that we have shared and learned new information, met someone who shares our values, or made us feel empowered. Above all, the conversation has to be important to both parties, which is why a commitment to a style of campaign that invites citizens into the conversation is so important. If the shared values and understanding of the issues exists in the campaign, the message will flow logically from there. Without those qualities, the message will come across as mere sloganeering.
A good message communicates our values. Progressives can learn a lot by looking at how the conservative movement communicates. The linguist George Lakoff has done important work that examines how progressives and conservatives relate to voters. He argues that conservatives have been successful because they have very effectively framed issues in a way that citizens can understand. Writing about conservatives, Lakoff says:
"They say what they idealistically believe. They say it; they talk to their base using the frames of their base. Liberal and progressive candidates tend to follow their polls and decide that they have to become more ‘centrist' by moving to the right. The conservatives do not move at all to the left, and yet they win!"
To overcome this apparent monopoly that conservatives have on successfully framing values, Lakoff reminds progressives that citizens vote their identity and their values, which is not always the same thing as voting with their self-interest. He suggests that progressives speak from a moral perspective; instead of speaking about policies, speak about values. For example, don't just talk about a plan for retraining workers who lose their jobs; talk about the value of ensuring economic opportunity for all Americans. Or, in a discussion about the environment, don't get caught up in policy language about reducing greenhouse emissions; talk about the need to improve health care with "poison-free communities." Think about this kind of concise re-framing of the issues you care about and how you can link those issues to your core values better.
So what are our core values? To some extent, this is in the hearts and head of the beholder, but Lakoff provides a great summary of progressive values and principles in his book, Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (Chelsea Green, 2004). He describes the progressive core values as "family values - those of the responsible, caring family." They include:
- Caring and responsibility, carried out with strength.
- Protection, fulfillment in life, fairness.
- Freedom, opportunity, prosperity.
- Community, service, cooperation.
- Trust, honesty, open communication.
Lakoff goes on to describe a set of core progressive principles, including:
- Equity.
- Equality.
- Democracy.
- Government for a better future.
- Ethical business.
- Values-based foreign policy.
Lakoff's central point is that we progressives need to start the conversation with citizens with these values. This is what we lead with, not what we end with. The programs and policies are natural outgrowths of these values and principles.