“Saying many things usually leads to not remembering anything significant.”
We are in the middle of a political campaign season as most everyone knows. Team Obama has been hammering away at Team Romney about releasing 10-years of his tax returns. Team Obama is relentless. Even Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) has weighed in with allegations that can’t be documented however, as they say “say something long enough, loud enough and consistently and it becomes the “truth”.
This is the tactic of not just the “Chicago-style politics” of David Axelrod, it is also the tactics of those in history who knew how to persuade, influence, dictate and communicate well – Saul Alinksy, Edward Bernays and even Joseph Goebbels, who credited Bernays’ teachings with his understanding of how to do propaganda, at least that is alleged.
These communicators understood the need to be focused on their message.
One study found that when the same car was marketed with a consistent message about “performance” more than 6% of the people surveyed afterwards indicated they would consider buying the car. However, the same study found that when many different attributes of the car was marketed “performance, economy, styling, luxury, road handling ability” when surveyed people said they would not consider buying the vehicle.
People remember simple messages – whether they are truthful or not – singular focused messages repeated over and over eventually can make a change in the way people think and feel about a product, person or service.
One of our clients has been using the same radio commercial for over 7-years. Why? Because it works. It brings clients into his practice.
Interestingly, Team Romney seems cautious in firing back about Team Obama about releasing his 10-years of tax returns or unsealing his records from his college days – reluctant despite the fact that Team Obama likes to tout how “transparent” their administration has been!
Congratulations to Team Obama.
The learning: get on message and stay on message and that way you don’t have to deal with the real issues and when the message is repeated long enough, loud enough and consistently enough you can make an impact on the way people think and feel.
Alinksy, Bernays and Goebbels would be proud.
Until next time …
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