CLICK BELOW FOR

A PHRASE BOOK FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE ADVOCACY

​Oct. 2015

MARKETING 101: BRANDING

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DEM AND PROGRE LEADERS NEED TO BUILD AN IMPACTFUL ***BRAND*** OF THEIR OWN

WHILE SYSTEMATICALLY SUPPORTING (activating) A COMMON BRAND (a mental frame) SUCH AS THAT OF DEM, PROGRE, AND "WE'RE ALL IN IT TOGETHER."

How does one measure the impact, influence, overall power of a BRAND?

THE GOAL: Build a resilient, strong individual and common brand that has much EMOTIONAL RESONANCE.
A brand is about people's PERCEPTION & EXPECTATION.  Here’s a formula to measure a brand's effectiveness in reaching a goal:

[a prediction of what to expect] * (times) [the emotional punch, weight, power attached to that expectation] =X (brand's impact, influence, overall power)

or simply. . .

[prediction, plain factual expectation] * [emotional punch attached to it] = X [B.I.] 

Common factors affecting a brand's impact: perception of the # things the brand does, is or represents
For example, at one point FEDEX was considered a powerful brand because the perception was clear: you always got what you expected, and the relief you got from their consistency was high

(when a business wants a package to arrive the next day, it's usually pretty important, which affects "emotional resonance.").
AT&T was perceived as a weak brand because the perception was that you almost never got what you expected because they were doing so many different things and because the value of what they created had little emotional resonance.
When a brand is perceived (predicted) to do many things, then the expectations tend to be all over the place and the emotional resonance tends to fade.
If the predictability of your brand starts to erode its emotional power (a restaurant that becomes boring), then you need to become somehow more predictable.
If you want to grow a valuable brand, one possible strategy is to keep awareness close to zero among the people you're not ready for yet, and build the most predictable, emotional experience you can among those who'd tend to care about you (eg: a politician's base).

SOURCE: Derrick Daye, brandingstrategyinsider.com/2007

A powerful brand strategy combines ‘the logic and the magic’ – that MIX OF RATIONAL & EMOTIONAL elements that, together, combine to boost a brand's engagement, connectedness, distinction, and focus.

An effective BRAND STRATEGY tends to include these 7 components:

1. RESONANCE – how will people react? Brands need to elicit an emotional reaction. So what’s the emotion that’s being generated here and how intense is it? Does it talk to people’s needs in ways that feel personal, relevant, wonderful or touching on people's moral values?
2. RESILIENCE – how strong is the strategy competitively? Does this really give the competition something to ponder and react to? Does it front-foot them in the marketplace? If not, it’s wallpaper. Just as importantly, for recovering brands, does it mark a clear way back and a strong way forward?
3. RESULTS – what difference will it make? How will it change the bottom line, contribute to the business strategy, earn its keep? Is it going to make its numbers? And if it doesn’t make those numbers initially, where’s the Plan B in the strategy to fix that?
4. RESOLUTION – HOW WILL THE NEW (strategy) GALVANIZE PEOPLE FROM INSIDE OUT? Is it INSPIRING? Does it align with the mission, core values, vision, and the purpose? Does it bring focus and substantiation to the conversations taking place internally? Does it squarely and fairly say “We heard you” to internal stakeholders who were consulted? Does it give permission?
5. RADIATION – will it spread? Are the ideas in this strategy capable of great mobility? Will they get people talking? Will they move the brand beyond the confines of where it now finds itself? IS THERE A STORY EMBEDDED WITHIN THE STRATEGY THAT PEOPLE WILL REALLY WANT TO HEAR?
6. REDEFINITION – is it radical? Does it have stretch? Will it make people sweat (in a good way, yummy Thai or Indian food)? IS IT DISRUPTIVE ENOUGH TO RESET COMPETITIVE MARKERS? OR IS IT JUST REARRANGING THE DECKCHAIRS? What nuances does it unearth? What new angles about the business does it (cover)? How exuberantly does it challenge the status quo?
7. RECOGNITION – does it still have the brand’s DNA? Despite everything that’s being proposed, everything that’s being challenged, does it still feel like an iteration of the brand customers know? Is there enough here for them to recognize and enough here for them to get excited? It may be an extension or an expansion, a shift or a reinforcement, but the connection points still need to be there and the departure absolutely needs to go to a better place for customers (which means there’s still clear comparison points with what it once was).

SOURCE: Mark Di Somma, May 2015   //   The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Positioning Workshop   //   brandingstrategyinsider.com/2015​

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Feel free to ask to see my 2005 laminated WALLET-SIZE FRAMING CARDS, which I used to give out as part of my SMGC training or coaching back then.​

HERE'RE JUST TWO EXAMPLES: ​

Top 5 Strategic Communication Trends for 2015

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American University's Pallavi Damani Kumar

If I had a crystal ball to predict the top five strategic communication trends of 2015, here is what I envision:

1.    Integrated Campaigns Will Be the Norm   As the lines between paid, earned, owned and shared media continue to evaporate, strategic communicators will be challenged to create campaigns that harness all of these opportunities. This will involve working with multiple agencies or departments. Firms that may resist “sharing” the work through an integrated approach will quickly become obsolete.

2.    Content Is Still King   Organizations are seeing the value in being able to control their content and share their story through their own platforms. This means more curated content in the form of directed videos, CEO blogs, narrative podcasts, infographics, more lists and sponsored content on platforms like Twitter and BuzzFeed. Knowing how to create compelling content that can be amplified across various platforms is a skill that strategic communicators will continue to hone.

3.    ROI is Expected   Social media analytics will drive the expectation of ROI. Organizations want to see which platforms are connecting with their key publics, and they won’t have to wait an entire year to decide if their efforts are working. This means strategic communicators need to be agile enough to tweak strategies if campaigns are not performing as expected over a matter of days and weeks rather than months and years.

4.    Harnessing the New Influencers   The old days of hiring a “B” list celebrity to be the face of your campaign are over. It’s the latest social media influencers – think YouTube stars, Vine celebrities and Instagram personalities with millions of followers – who are the new celebrities. Everyone from the White House to film studios are figuring out how to harness the power of social media influencers to reach their key target audiences.

5.    24/7 Crisis Management Will Continue   The sheer seconds that it takes to become fully embroiled in a crisis communication situation will not dissipate. With every moment captured, photographed, recorded and shared, organizations will find themselves in lock-down crisis response mode more than ever. But the silver lining may be that organizations will recover from these crisis’ quicker and with fewer consequences. The reason? Thanks to the 24/7 media cycle and speed to which crises’ form and are dealt with via social media, the public will be distracted by the next crisis and will move on more quickly.
 

About the Author

Pallavi Damani Kumar is a full-time professor in American University’s School of Communication and the Division Director for the Public Communication. Prior to teaching full time, Kumar gained more than 20 years experience in the public relations industry having worked as a vice president in Fleishman Hillard's social marketing practice in Washington, DC, a vice president/account supervisor in Ketchum's healthcare practice in New York as well as associate director of international public relations at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Philadelphia. Pallavi holds a B.A. in CLEG and Public Communication from American University (magna cum laude) and a Master's in Public Relations/Corporate Communications from Georgetown University.

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(Older article that's still worth a read 

HOW TO: Measure the ROI of a Content Marketing Strategy

http://mashable.com/2011/07/04/how-to-measure-roi-content-marketing-strategy/

MAKE YOUR LANGUAGE COME ALIVE

Adjectives (& Adverbs) matter!

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VISUAL FRAMING IS ESSENTIAL

Click here to see many examples of visual framing and persuasion

Revealing news story:

Is the FRAMING of questions

in abortion-attitude POLLS

all wrong?

"Many people are morally opposed to abortion, yet don’t necessarily think it should be out of reach for other people who feel differently,

and they may struggle with not knowing how to represent both of those views equally."

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/04/20/3648051/abortion-polling-issues/​

Best viewed with

Google Chrome

Some veteran CAMPAIGN MANAGERS see the move to DemSpeak 3.0

as something akin to a BREAK to start a game of POOL.

To them, it's a move from ALL-BALLS-(seemingly-)UNDER-CONTROL

to BALLS-FOLLOWING-NO-ORDER-OR-KNOWN-PATTERN.

Some of them may see a move to a DemSpeak 3.0 as not only "risky,"

but as a potential threat to the Dem political establishment.

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I'd argue some of them would benefit greatly from reading up on Lakoff, Romm, Westin, and others in strategic communication.  To me, standing on the way of DemSpeak 3.0 is akim to opposing same-day voter registration.

QUESTION: How many car owners are branding the Tea Party and the Republican ideology daily without fully knowing it?

FoxNews.com: Popularity of 'Don't Tread on Me' plates in Virginia suggests Tea Party still strong

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/28/popularity-dont-tread-on-me-plates-in-virginia-suggests-tea-party-still-strong/

SOURCE for image below: Scott Wittkopf,

AF2 Political Communication Consulting

How Fox News Is Helping The GOP Disingenuously Rebrand Itself

As The Party Of The Middle Class

Research January 27, 2015 3:04 PM EST ››› OLIVIA KITTEL

Fox News is burying Republican policy positions that exacerbate income inequality in order to help the GOP rebrand itself as a party for the middle class.

This effort follows years of Fox figures blasting Democratic policies designed to alleviate income inequality as "class warfare."

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/01/27/how-fox-news-is-helping-the-gop-disingenuously/202281​

CLICK HERE FOR

A PHRASE BOOK FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE ADVOCACY

By the Advancement Project and

​The Opportunity Agenda

Oct. 2015​

FRAMING METAPHORS ​(term I use to describe metaphors, similies, analogies, or other similar

figures of speech) can help bring written text to life. They can help a reader or listener more easily CONNECT OR RELATE to mental frames and to VISUALIZE things.

Best viewed with

Google Chrome

TRAINING MATERIALS

POST-2016 ELECTIONS OP-ED

Dems Will Rise From The Ashes

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/12/1597460/-Dems-Will-Rise-From-The-Ashes

How Talking About Trump Makes Him Normal In Your Brain

GEORGE LAKOFF

13 December 2016

https://georgelakoff.com/2016/12/13/how-talking-about-trump-makes-him-normal-in-your-brain/

15 December 2016

https://georgelakoff.com/2016/12/15/how-to-help-trump/

In this TED talk, writer Simon Sinek talks about something that most inspiring leaders in history have in common: their ability to communicate starting with a WHY, as opposed to most people who tend to start with a WHAT.  He mentioned MLK as an example of an inspiring leader doing this.  He also talked about Apple's ads and how they contributed to the company's success.  I took one of Sinek's graphs and customized it for this training.

I recommend visiting Sinek's website at www.startwithwhy.com.

. . . a WALL of separation between church and state . . . comparing apples and oranges . . . like peeling an onion . . . not everything that shines is gold . . .

smoke & mirrors . . . something fishy about it . . . like being a little bit pregnant . . . looking at a tree instead of the forest . . . barking up the wrong tree

. . . living wages vs. settling for the scraps . . . balancing the budget on the backs of the American people​

CLICK HERE TO SEE WELLSTONE ACTION'S GUIDE TO SMGC, WHICH IT CALLS POLITICS OF CONVICTION 

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VALUES       MATTER

Strategic Morally Grounded Communication

​Training & RESEARCH

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HANDOUT: Three levels of political speech
1 core beliefs – 2 issue areas – 3 actual policies

FRAMING 101 flow chart​

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FRAMING 101 flow chart – practice worksheet

Dem leaders need to methodically, effectively convey moral clarity.  The American public needs to understand what democrats stand for, and not just during election season.  

It requires moral branding.

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Why is it better to aim messages at activating morally grounded mental frames?  How do mental frames work?

Pretend you have no idea who Richard Nixon was, and look at this picture.

Is he an honest man?  A man of integrity?

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UNIVERSAL VALUES INVENTORY

(prints on legal-size paper)

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Encouraging 2012 analysis from CAP on the values front:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/news/2012/10/01/40145/the-new-values-voters-5-issues-that-expand-the-notion-of-what-it-means-to-vote-your-values/
A paragraph from the CAP analysis:
“Since 2004 the notion of what constitutes values issues has expanded. Concerns about economic inequality and fairness, poverty, climate change and the environment, immigration (it’s about dignity and respect for a fellow human being), gay and transgender rights (civil union equality is about love and commitment), and health insurance reform (which is a moral and economic issue) are now commonly cited as issues grounded in a moral and ethical framework.”

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​FrameWorks Institute recently published on its website a well-crafted proposal for framing comprehensive immigration reform, which includes a sailing metaphor and a short video:

http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/toolkits/immigration/index.html

http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/immigration1.html

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Reframing the Education Conversation through a Core Story Approach
A FrameWorks Institute Communications Toolkit

http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/toolkits/ecs/

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Possible question from a trainings: This is all fine and good.  I see how some of these ideas have been used effectively for a long time in corporate marketing, advertising and even in sales.  However, we know what works and what doesn't in political communications, and we should continue doing what we're doing.

Possible answer: Do you believe in science?

Not only have we seen how these ideas work over and over again on the ground, but they are being researched and proven right in the fields of cognitive science and neuroscience.

THIS IS SCIENCE.

Neuroscience, for instance, is not just a medical discipline, but one that literally underpins every human discipline, according to Larry Swanson, president of the Society For Neuroscience.

Moreover, research into how the brain works is booming.  President Obama compared today’s international race to learn how the brain works and to map the brain to the 1960's space race. Neuroscience and cognitive science research findings have been trickling into our classrooms for years improving the way our children learn.

On April 2, 2013, President Obama announced the BRAIN initiative, a 10-year research initiative to map the brain and understand brain activities at an unprecedented level of detail. 

Here's the president talking about it in his 2013 State of the Union address:

“If we want to make the best products, we also have to invest in the best ideas.  Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy.  Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s.  Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation.  Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race.”

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What’s COGNITIVE SCIENCE/s?

We know it as George Lakoff’s field of study, along with linguistics, but what is it?  Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary scientific study of the mind and its processes.  

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It's about how the mind creates meaning.

It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works.
Cognitive science consists of multiple research disciplines arguably including linguistics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, neuroscience, philosophy, and artificial intelligence.  

It includes research on intelligence and behavior, especially focusing on how information is represented, processed, and transformed in faculties such as perception, language, memory, reasoning, and emotion within nervous systems of humans, other animals and machines (e.g. computers).

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HOW CAN A PROGRESSIVE DEM AND A TEA PARTY REPUBLICAN

THINK SO DIFFERENTLY?

THEIR VALUES SEEM SO WIDE APART.  HOW CAN THEY LOOK AT ONE ISSUE AND INTERPRET IT SO DIFFERENTLY?   Scroll down.

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To be effective in strategic communications, we must first understand the five moral buttons.

The   Five   Moral   Buttons


The following chart illustrates the use of “intuitive ethics” — largely referring to gut-feeling moral judgements — in political speech.  Prof. Jonathan Haidt, formerly at Univ. of Virginia, said that conservatives tend to draw from all five modules (see columns), and are widely perceived as more moral; while liberals tend to hyper-value suffering and reciprocity,

while at times distrusting and overruling hierarchy, purity, and sometimes in-group (roughly meaning “group pride”).

Now, to the untrained eye, it seems hard to understand how conservatives could draw at all from "suffering" in today's Tea Party-dominated right-wing politiss, but they do.  Moreover,

it seems ironic that the same people -- conservatives -- who draw from all five moral buttons, including "suffering," also promote, enforce an overly narrow meaning, understanding of what's moral.    
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Pick a policy idea that’s dear to you.  Look at the chart below and use values to persuade a person opposing your idea.  Frame it to push multiple moral buttons.

(Another exercise: Look at the chart below and pick a short set of important values, NOT policies. 

Frame them to push multiple moral buttons across many issues.)

1) Appeal to Intuition, 2) Aim at pressing more moral buttons, 3) Elevate your audience.

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​EVOLUTION BY SOME DEMOCRATIC LEADERS IN THE USE 

OF STRATEGIC MORALLY GROUNDED COMMUNICATIONS

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    http://ava.publicreligion.org/

http://publicreligion.org/research/2014/09/survey-economic-insecurity-rising-inequality-and-doubts-about-the-future-findings-from-the-2014-american-values-survey/

Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI)

PRRI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to research at the intersection of religion, values, and public life.

PRRI’s mission is to help journalists, opinion leaders, scholars, clergy, and the general public better understand debates on public policy issues and the role of religion and values in American public life by conducting high quality public opinion surveys and qualitative research. As members of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), the American Political Science Association (APSA), and the American Academy of Religion (AAR), our research team follows the highest research standards of independence and academic excellence.

PRRI is a charter member of the Transparency Initiative at AAPOR, an initiative to place the value of openness at the center of the public opinion research profession. PRRI is also a member organization of the National Council on Public Polls, an association of polling organizations established in 1969, which sets the highest professional standards for public opinion researchers.

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​​   TRAINING VIDEOS

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Here's an insightful video illustrating how strategic repetition and simple metaphors can greatly enhance a speech. 

Nancy Duarte analyzes Martin Luther King's I-have-a-dream speech.

https://vimeo.com/18792376

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TED TALKS: Playlist: Before public speaking…

Julian Treasure
How to speak so that people want to listen

Amy Cuddy
Your body language shapes who you are

Simon Sinek
How great leaders inspire action

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Sebastian Wernicke
Lies, damned lies and statistics (about TEDTalks)

http://www.ted.com/playlists/226/before_public_speaking

FOR ADDITIONAL RESOURCES ON PUBLIC SPEAKING & DEBATE PREP, CLICK HERE.

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Funny movie clip for those who insist that the plain truth is all you need to win an election.  Just tell it like it it! Right?
Here's something from a memorable film, The Campaign.  Incumbent Rep. Camden Brady: "Rainbowland is fiction."  "You do not have to live in Rainbowland."
In a way, Brady was being effectively framed, and he uninentionally was helping brand a potentially toxic term introduced by his opponent to help define the bottom line, the assumptions, the premises of the discussion. 

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Funny video of the Jimmy Kimmel show interviewing people in the street about "Obamacare" and the Affordable Care Act.  

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There are people on our side who don't want to change the way we communicate at all.  Then there are those on our side who are okay on the values framing part of this, on knowing our values and promoting them from time to time, particularly during election season, but who are also naysayers to the repetition and moral branding part of all of this -- SMGC.  They already own a term, which to me, it's become a little toxic.  The word is "parrot."

Here's Monty Python's John Cleese some time during President Obama's first presidential campaign against John McCain and Sarah Palin.  Question: What happens when you have a political leader using SMGC effectively, but who also doesn't seem fit for the elected office the person is seeking and who shows some degree of ignorance when going off script? (. . .and who also has a troubling political reacord and even a personal life conflicting with messaging)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blesmzddd38

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The following link takes you to an excerpt from a great training DVD titled HOW DEMOCRATS & PROGRESSIVES CAN WIN: Solutions from George Lakoff, which provides an intro to values framing and how former President George W. Bush used it.  (Contents: “How conservatives gained power?”, “How Democrats can influence swing voters?”, “How to debate a conservative?”, “What is framing?” “What are values and why are they crucial for voters to understand?”,” What are the progressive values?”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo4whfUDPcU

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In a video, Lakoff explains what frames are and how we think in terms of frames. To watch, click on the following words:
Idea Framing, Metaphors, and Your Brain - George Lakoff 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_CWBjyIERY

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Lakoff: Video Presentation: The Left, the Right, and the Family View of Government

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RytyWu3zUq8

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Prof. Matthew Nisbet, PhD outlines proven strategies in communicating science
(Matthew Nisbet, American University's Associate Professor of Communication)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iiqnmA2jJg

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Republicans are known for their effective use of strategic morally grounded communications, which at times triggers what in the sales world is referred to as FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).
The use of FUD is nothing new.  Here’s a famous ad that came out the year I was born:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k​

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 Jeffrey Feldman speaks about his book Framing the Debate

Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation (and Win Elections)
by Jeffrey Feldman, George Lakoff (Introduction)
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5QkwukxWx4&feature=relmfu

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Another great speech: The Gettysburg Address

https://vimeo.com/15402603

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IS THERE A WAY TO INCORPORATE MORE VALUES & MORALITY INTO THIS GREAT SPEECH?

Floor Speech in the NC Senate on the 2014 Budget
Jeff Jackson is an attorney and a Democratic member of the North Carolina Senate.

https://vimeo.com/102299905​

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