VALUES MATTER
Strategic Morally Grounded Communication
Training & RESEARCH
Election Night - 3 November 2015
Click here to listen to Federico E. Cura's radio interview of two newly elected local officials
Know Your Local Leaders
Tue. 24 Nov. 2015 Interview of Katie Cristol & Christian Dorsey
Arlington’s own radio station . . . WERA 96.7 FM
Shedding light on your local leaders' lives beyond the usual policy details, countless handshakes
and smiles of the campaign trail or public events
Click here to watch the TV version
Read a few published opinion columns written by Federico E. Cura:
Redistricting Failures Hurt Arlington
on Women’s Health Centers
July 30, 2015
Contact us:
Let's talk, explore together how I can add value to your organization by maximizing your impact and advancing your cause.
When you complete this form and click submit, I (Federico) will get an email message on my end. You may also call (or text) 202-841-2749 to get in touch.
Here’s a great quote from a writer illustrating the importance of emotional impact in general:
“People may not remember what you did or said,
but may never forget the way you made them feel.”
– Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
(Award-winning, American author, poet, dancer, actress and singer)
I conduct strategic communication trainings aimed not only at learning what words to use and to avoid, but at helping participants understand how conceptual framing and branding work and why they are so powerful in changing public opinion. In a one-on-one or workshop training, I encourage participants to know how to briefly verbalize and systematically brand what they stand for as well as the overarching moral worldview they have in common with others. In getting a message across or changing public consciousness, participants learn the essential tenets of strategic comm: what people hear can be much more important than what we specifically say. Also, given than perception remains 95% of reality, a politician, for instance, must strike a balance between being a statesman and a salesman. They can no longer afford being just one or the other. You can be both. In fact, you can be both while communicating truthfully and with conviction.
Although US politics still is shaped by these two guiding principles: "It's the economy, stupid," and "All politics is local," we must pay much more attention to two additional principles that have guided politics all along: "ALL POLITICS IS MORAL," (Lakoff) and BRANDING WORKS!
You are likely familiar with fact-and-logic-based messaging and you may be great at this on some issues. That’s not what I focus on. My trainings are NOT about using bare, unframed facts, stats, ideas, and policy proposals to persuade people to vote for us or buy into a particular point of view. My trainings are about using inspiring, morally grounded words such as when President Obama made a case that chief among our deeply traditional American values is the simple idea that "we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart." Saying something like this only once can inspire an audience, but may not make a difference. Branding must come into play.
The training includes one role-playing practice exercise on word branding in which when participants are asked a tough question about a personal policy idea, they are expected to deliver a message containing morally grounded key words and use repetition. The exercise stresses the importance of a participant focusing like an eagle on what the policy idea isor does, while avoiding at all cost saying what the idea is not especially using the other side's "toxic" terms.
Among other things, this site provides the basics of strategic, morally grounded communication, also known as strategic values-grounded communications, conceptual framing, values framing, and politics of conviction among other things. It refers to political communication centered on the strategic use of evidence-based approaches from the field of cognitive science and marketing.
Research into how the brain works and processes information is booming in fields like cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics. Obama compared today’s international race to learn how the brain works to the 1960s space race. Cognitive science and neuroscience research is going into classrooms, into marketing and branding, into public relations, and into right-wing politics where the other side is at least a decade ahead of us.)
Where are Democrats in the use of strategic, morally grounded communication? We are years behind the other side. There is a lot to do, and though a few tasks seem almost unsurmountable, they aren’t.
In his 2014 book — the new, revised, 10th-year-anniversary edition of Don’t Think of an Elephant (first available in the months prior to the disappointing 2014 elections), prominent linguist, cognitive scientistist, and University of California Prof. George Lakoff, PhD, paints a rather grim picture, but there are ways to turn around the other side's language dominance.