Framing Political Issues and Owning the Conversation
In the United States, the topic of how best to own the conversation in election campaigns is a hot topic among Democrat politicos.
Since the U.S. presidential election last November, some Democratic Party leaders believe they allowed President George W. Bush to own the conversation during the last two presidential campaigns, resulting in defeats for Vice President Al Gore in 2000 and Senator John Kerry in 2004.
According to Matt Bai in the New York Times:
[For Democrats] the problem wasn’t the substance of the party’s agenda or its messenger as much as it was the Democrats’ inability to communicate coherently. They had allowed Republicans to control the language of the debate, and that had been their undoing….
[A] new political word [began] to take hold of the party…. That word was “framing.” Exactly what it means to “frame” issues seems to depend on which Democrat you are talking to, but everyone agrees that it has to do with choosing the language to define a debate and, more important, with fitting individual issues into the contexts of broader story lines. In the months after the election, Democratic consultants and elected officials came to sound like creative-writing teachers, holding forth on the importance of metaphor and narrative.
Choosing language to win a market debate is of little value unless the language is authentic, relevant and compelling to the audience an organization wishes to influence. Inauthentic language only undercuts a brand, and creates a dismissive reaction if any reaction at all, as shown in this unfortunate example.
Just as in 1994, when House Republicans changed the conversation from the legislative agenda of the Clinton White House to a 10-point “Contract For America”, Democrats must establish their unique brand. By itself, framing falls short as a branding tool, addressing only some of the fundamentals needed to craft an engaging brand for a political party, or any organization.
What framing misses is that language by itself is nothing if not backed up by the experience of the listener. To own the conversation an organization must align the language it uses with key beliefs - the promise of their brand - within the context of the audience experience. But the leadership of any organization must first understand these fundamentals as their audience sees them, rather than as leadership believes them to be.
The key to building a powerful brand is to demonstrate its qualities at every point of contact. Creating engagement to which an audience is drawn rather than chased is the essence of great brand strategy.
For people to pay attention, Democrats must be willing to take effective risks and be bold, to change and take control of the dialogue, just as House Republicans demonstrated in 1994.
It’s the only way to own the conversation.
