The Elements of Persuasion

EDWARDS STARTS SWINGING

It takes time to get control of political turf. Grass roots outreach is enormously manpower intensive. Both terms – grass roots and turf – link to our political story element Earth, and so to Hero. A politician’s political base (their Earth) can’t be built electronically – though it can be contacted that way. It requires old style retail politics. The only base a candidate can really count on is the people who have looked them in the eye, shook their hand, liked what they saw and told their friends.   

For the last two years Edwards has been proving himself an old fashioned Hero - At living rooms get-togethers in Idaho and over flapjacks in New Hampshire diners. Now he moves on to the next phase of his campaign story – defining his Antagonist.  He’s doing it the right way. He isn’t attacking other Democrats personally, just their policies.  When he says, “The Lincoln bedroom shouldn’t be for rent,” we know who he means, but his larger point – that New Democrats have gotten a little too cozy with the wealthy donors and lobbyists - resonates broadly with many party regulars. As a southern gentleman Edwards can’t take a swing at a lady. But his wife Elizabeth can. She has come right out and said what many pros admit: Hillary’s strong negatives could be a real problem in swing states in the general election.

Having invested in building real political capital, when Edwards says these things, they won’t be dismissed as cheap shots.

Story Intelligence

In The Elements of Persuasion we explain why, when Warren Buffet speaks, we listen. He’s said there are two types of people in the world, “…those who get in their own way and those who don’t.” As an executive coach I spend most of my time helping clients get out of their own way. The five-element story model is a powerful tool for this sort of change.

Jim is CEO of a mid sized tech company that has begun to flounder in the last year. Observing Jim in action I saw that what he was telling his team either confused them, or worse, bored them. Asking around, I realized Jim was on the verge of becoming irrelevant because market conditions had shifted. His corporate story was growing stale. To refresh it, I had Jim go to his direct reports and work with them to redefine the problems his company was facing in a way everyone could agree with. In five-element story terms I had him polish his Antagonist. Jim was getting in his own way by holding on to old models of the competition that no longer applied. Once he let go of the past his company rallied behind him, and is now rapidly getting back on track. 

Jim never lacked brainpower (he developed two important patents for gosh sakes). What he lacked was not IQ but SI, Story Intelligence. In the marketplace of ideas, SI – Story Intelligence - is the most important sort of smarts to have. 

OBAMA

In a Rasmussin poll done in May, 49% of Americans said it was likely, or very likely Obama would be elected President. But in the latest polls, only 20% of Democrats say they will actually pull the lever for his nomination. What gives? Why can’t Obama close the deal? 

Look at it across the political story elements. Obama has Passion. He is a natural politician dripping with electoral mojo. He has a good grasp of the problems the country faces (our common Antagonists) and brings fresh Awareness to solving them.  His speeches are all about Transforming politics as usual. What he lacks is a clearly defined constituency - the base, or earth, a Hero needs to stand on. By trying to run as everyone’s candidate he ends up being no one’s (but everyone’s second choice).  Other candidates feel safe taking shots at him because without a solid sense of the ground beneath his feet, he can’t hit back with the sort of bone crunching punch and does real damage. Their barbs are mostly cheap shots, but they come from all directions and all Obama seems able to do is roll with the punches. We want more from a President. Don’t get me wrong. I think someday Obama will be President of the United States for the same reason Willie Mays played center field – because that was what he was born to do. But this election cycle it is Edward’s story that is most likely to throw old pro Hillary off her game.      

HEROES AND SCANDALS

It is nice to think you control your own story. It's rarely that simple. In politics, it never is. In a standard stump speech the candidate first gets our attention by being Passionate, then offers us a view on the world we feel comfortable sharing (Hero), defines the problems we confront (Antagonist) and finds inspiring solutions (Awareness). We leave the rally fired up and Transformed. This follows the basic presentational pattern we recommend in our book The Elements of Persuasion. But in the real world the sequence of the elements is not so easy to control, with voters often perceiving the problem first, and only then shopping for the hero most likely to have the solution.

Take the Republicans. Their biggest problem isn’t Iraq; it is Scandal.  Senator Craig’s sordid tale set in a Men’s Room at the Minneapolis Airport is only the latest in a very long list of shockingly destructive stories tainting the GOP. When confronted with scandal you look for a cop, so it is no coincidence that the two leading candidates – Giuliani and Thompson – both have reputations as tough New York City prosecutors. Giuliani was one. Thompson plays one on TV.  But Thompson’s credentials aren’t purely fictional. He earned his political bones as an investigator during Watergate, and went on to expose a nasty cash-for-clemency scandal in Tennessee that indirectly led to his film career. Whichever candidate most successfully (and directly) confronts the scandal issue will have a strong issue to run on down the stretch.

HILLARY’S STORY

In political stories timing is everything. Hillary Clinton began the democratic primaries with a tremendous head start – most of her story elements were already clearly defined and working together seamlessly. Her Passion to be President is white-hot. She hit the ground running with two key democratic constituencies: The old Friends of Bill network of operatives, and donors gave her a money raising lead (sure to get media coverage) and as the only woman running she had an automatic leg up with Women Voters (and the media got a prepackaged narrative featuring Hillary as Hero). Her Clinton name-brand guaranteed the very best of enemies. If Karl Rove actually did resign so he could start the attack on Hillary it would be tremendous story blessing – an Antagonist Democrats love to hate. Instead of starting attacks, Hilary needs to respond to them, and prove she is bloody-minded enough to be truly presidential.

Hillary’s weakness is in Awareness – the moment of inspiration that makes us actually pull the lever under her name. She is killer smart, but her solutions to problems seem overly calculated and leaden. (her failed 1993 Health Care Plan is an example we are still living with). Positioning herself as the experienced candidate, she has forced herself to carry a lot of baggage making her responses in the debates seem prepackaged – particularly on Iraq where fresh thinking is desperately desired. A lighter, quicker Obama, or the more naturally eloquent Edwards, may take advantage of this weakness on the stump. Edwards in particular seems to be zeroing in on the chinks in her armor. Will Hillary be Transformed into the nominee? I don’t know, but her story is getting interesting. 

AL GORE FOR PRESIDENT

At FirstVoice Bob and I aren’t in the politics business. We are in the story/communications business.  But politics is a good place to see how mass media stories work. Right now, today, Gore’s campaign story is the strongest one out there.

Why? His has all five of our political story elements fully developed.  Well, four and a half anyway, and we’ll get back to Passion in a minute.

As the Hero of his story he owns one of the major issues of this election – energy and ecology. Any other issue can be seen from that Point of View. That is his territory – the ground he stands on – and the worldwide Live Earth concert last month shows how broad a political base that potentially is. His Antagonists (big oil, big coal, Haliburton) are wildly unpopular and already strongly associated with the opposing party. Awareness is covered. Contrary to Washington conventional wisdom winning an Academy Award for his slide show  “An Inconvenient Truth” proves Gore can be inspiring on the stump. Best of all, having been away from Washington for eight years allows this once ultimate insider to now very legitimately run as an outsider – an agent of Transformation – which is what most voters say they want. Staying out of the current endless cycle of cable debates actually reinforces this outsider image. So it all comes down to his Passion. Does he really WANT to be President?

I don’t know. He might not know. Thomas Jefferson denied he wanted the job almost until Election Day. He still won. He still did a great job. And passion can be borrowed. It is visceral. Stand next to it and you have it. Just pair Gore with a passionate VP. Say Obama. Gore/Obama might be unstoppable. But the same can be said about the Hillary Clinton machine. We will talk about her story next. 

GOT PHAAT??

The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee is looking for the best slogan for its bumper stickers. Over at Salon they had a contest of their own and the results are witty, literate and just dreadful. Check them out, then scroll down to: ”Look a Shiny Object”.

An effective slogan is one of the most difficult tasks of corporate or campaign communication but the five-element model helps. A bumper sticker is a physicalized form of viral advertising. As we mention in Chapter 8 “Under the Radar” of our book The Elements of Persuasion the key to a viral message is to focus exclusively on only one of the five elements, knowing that the rest of your message is already in your listeners brain somewhere waiting to be activated Your slogan doesn’t need to be funny, it just needs to be a fact wrapped in an emotion that activates an already established neural pattern of past memories – many subconscious. It is most effective it if elicits very basic emotions – loss, dread, hunger, lust – to which there is an understood response.  “Got Milk?” is a great example.

The Dems might want to focus on the element of Antagonist and the emotion of betrayal and distrust (that comes up a lot in their speeches).  Our entry? “WHAT ELSE AREN’T THEY TELLING US? Dem 08” Not great, but hey, you can do better. Go over the DSCC website and give it a try – if you are a Dem of course.   

Political Persuasion - PHAAT Refined

The five-element story model we use at FirstVoice is based on the five elements of the ancient Greeks (fire, earth, water, air and space). This makes it extremely adaptable. In our book The Elements of Persuasion, we introduce the pneumonic acronym PHAAT and describe the five story elements as: The Passion with which the story is told; the Hero who allows us to see the story from a particular point of view; the Antagonist or obstacle the hero must overcome; the moment of Awareness that allows the hero to prevail; and the Transformation that results. PHAAT.

These words work, but sometimes it is helpful to go back the elements and find different words that fit better in conventional debate. Describing the political stories of the current crop of candidates is one of those times. In political storytelling Passion describes the famous “fire in the belly” that makes a candidate need to run. Hero is the candidate themselves, but also “the earth they stand on” – their consolidated base of support. Antagonist is their opposition, which they themselves define. Awareness is the ability of the candidate’s story to inspire us and see the world in a new way. And of course, Transformation is how they want to change things once elected. In coming days we will be looking at how the various candidates - Democrats and Republicans – are using the five story elements to get their message out. Just a teaser: as it stands now Al Gore has by far the best story going.   

Stories On Your Plate

At FirstVoice, we define a story as “A fact, wrapped in an emotion that compels us to take an action that transforms our world.”  In our book The Elements of Persuasion, we use the story “All Gone” to show how infants use story to react to an empty bottle and transform their world. How strong is the connection between food and story?  Does the food on your plate meet our story criteria? The answer, unsurprisingly is “Yes!” The FACT is an uncooked rack of baby back ribs. The EMOTIONS are added by the cook (sauces, spices, presentation); if those baby backs are being served at our favorite rib joint, Mr. Cecile’s on Pico, they truly make your heart sing. When they arrive at the table we are COMPELLED to chow down and so TRANSFORMED.

What started us thinking about this, is the work of Hugo Liu, a rising star at the MIT Media Lab. Dr. Liu developed a computer “cookbook” named Gulp Fiction which custom creates recipes not only by ingredient and cooking technique, but also includes emotional and aesthetic factors. At your next dinner party it could create a main course that is “whimsical”, “primal”, and somehow relates to “Popeye”.  The program is currently behind a fire wall at the Media Lab, but you can see its recipe for Ceremonious Ice Cream, and visit Dr. Liu’s website. We find his work inspiring (connected to our element of Awareness) but incomplete. We’re beginning a thread here that deals with food across all five of the story elements. Stay tuned and contribute. And check out Hugo’s website, it is more than worth the click though we have to say that anyone whose website begins with a quote from Nietzsche and who isn’t also sporting a tasty set of prison tats loses a certain amount of philosophical street cred with us.

The Cliff Notes Version

A few days ago I mentioned that you might want to shoot over to Amazon to get our new book because the story I checked at was running low of copies. I love Amazon (no duh) but I miss the browsing quality of flipping through paper pages before I buy that you get with brick and mortar bookstores. Amazon makes up for this with its “look inside” feature, but for reasons we are still trying to figure out, this isn’t set up for The Elements of Persuasion yet. Luckily there is a workaround. Shoot over to Marshall Goldsmith’s e-column at Business Week. We had a long talk with Marshall about the book and he did his usual masterful job of cutting to chase and synthesizing the real meat of our conversation. You can read it here.