The Elements of Persuasion

TRANSFORMATION

Transformation – change – is the last of our five elements and the goal of every story. When you see it, it is incredibly powerful. Change as a human experience – not as a bumper sticker, not a slogan, not as something to be achieved in the future – but as a here and now reality is what all elections are about.  This ad, which I found on Andrew Sullivan’s site, lets change show through unadorned. Changing the world starts by changing your mind. What more is there to say?

 

ALASKA NOIR

Sarah Palin is not the only interesting story coming out of Alaska. Ted “Hell No” Stevens is on trial for failing to report “gifts” from “lobbyists.” His is also running for reelection. The DNCC put together this little gem. I don’t like negative ads, but this one is too genre perfect to pass up. If you still have doubt that great political ads are story driven, this 30 sec spot should lay them to rest.

A quick 5-elements analysis: The Passion (irreducible core) of the ad is carried by the opening sound track – a cross between a political thriller and a local news stations investigative reporter theme. It establishes beyond doubt that this will be a crime story. The people in the van are our Heroes (we even see Stevens' house on a video monitor stressing their point of view is our point of view). Stevens is the Antagonist “He thinks he is above the law”. And crucially there is a moment of clear awareness when one “reporter” says disgusted, “And I voted for him.” Finally a transformative tag line “It’s not about Alaska anymore.” This is great stuff.

BTW, if anyone has any great Repub ads I’d love to analyze them. Most of what I’ve seen from the Repubs are tired retreads, but I’m probably missing something. Enlighten me, please.

BARACK CLOSES THE DEAL

We said yesterday that Obama needed to come out swinging in his acceptance speech. If you saw it – and shame on you if you’re interested in story and didn’t – you know he did that in spades.

If you missed it – hey things happen – you can see it here.

It was a classic five-element story line. The crowd was wildly PASSIONATE before he spoke, having been fired up by Al Gore and Stevie Wonder so he wasted no time and moved on to immediately accept the nomination, becoming the Dem official HERO. The vast majority of his time he spent defining his ANTAGONIST by methodically connecting McCain to Bush’s unpopular policies – specifically linking him to the failure to catch Bin Ladin (“Don’t say you will follow Bin Ladin to the gates of hell. You won’t even go to the cave where he lives!) and to higher gas prices (“Senator McCain has voted 26 times against alternative energy sources… More drilling is just a stop gap measure”). Then he went for the jugular, bringing up the issue of “judgement and temperment” on a day when McCain’s nasty side had surfaced in an interview with Time magazine, throwing the press some fresh meat and making “temperment” a point in the upcoming debates.

At the same time Obama was laying out specific policy initiatives – that is, he was giving us clear AWARENESS of how we as a nation can get back on the right track. And he ended on his theme of Change – TRANSFORMATION. So the speeches storyline was complete. He touched all the bases, and that is the very definition of a homerun.

I’m not usually a big fan of Chris Mathews, but as a political speechwriter himself he did a great analysis of this speech. Check it out here. I particularly like what he said about “attacking from a defensive position.”

But maybe Al Sharpton had the best one-line summary, “Obama took the gloves off but never stopped smiling, and that is a very dangerous opponent for John Mc Cain.”

ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING

With his loss in South Dakota Barak Obama accumulated the magic number of delegates to win the Democratic Nomination of the first ballot – theoretically. And the media says it is in the bag. Of course, they have been saying that for months. And may be it is. But for a campaign whose slogan is “Change We Can Believe In” the Obamistas seem deeply certain that none of their over 2000 delegates will change their minds in the long months until Denver, months in which McCain will begin his attacks and Obama’s responses will be judged.

Remember that none of the Super Delegates are legally bound to vote the way they say they will when talking to the press. And most of the elected delegates are not legally bound to vote the way they said they would on the ballot. As Yogi Berra said “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” And it ain’t over until the Convention calls the role, counts the votes, and all those balloons drop. It IS all over but the shouting, but shouting is what a good convention is all about. That and silly hats.

As the Dem activist ladies chanting “McCain ‘08” in front of the DNC rules committee Saturday made quite clear, it could be a very fractious convention. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – unless of course it is 18 million of them. And I'm not sure even Hillary in full compromise mode can control that. This is actually a very good thing for the Dems.

Why? Because so far there really hasn’t been a clear moment of Dem awareness. The penny hasn’t dropped. Until that moment no real transformation can occur. I’ve been looking for it; I’ve been waiting for it, but haven’t seen it yet. But we will see it as the smoke clears. And that will be what we are dealing with as the blog gets back into gear.

In the mean time there were THREE important speeches last night, and TPM Election Centraol has all three. Hillary ,Obama and McCain. Check them out. They are the tea leaves from which the future can be read. You can see them by clicking over.

THE FINAL QUESTION

At the CNN Dem debate last night Hillary Clinton gave one of the finest closing statements – hell, one of the most effective story moments period - at any debate in memory. Better than anything in JFK-Nixon, (even Nixon’s sweating lip) and better than Reagan’s exquisitely timed, “There you go again,” against Carter.

The final question was “Describe the moment in your life when you were tested the most.” You can see Hillary’s response by clicking here. It is worth careful study.

Hillary responded with a broad smile, reminded us of the crises she has faced without having to list them – they are part of our collective memory - then deftly took the answer to another level. She talked about her attendance at the dedication of a medical center for rehabilitating wounded warriors back from Iraq. She and John McCain were the only two elected officials invited, which allowed her to skillfully link herself with the presumptive Repub candidate, but she kept the visual imagery on the wounds and suffering of the troops and their heroic struggle to recover. And she took her time doing it. She was making us SEE why this election matters. It is about real people, real medical care, and the real consequences of presidential decisions.

In story terms Hillary moved the debate from her struggle with her Antagonist (Obama) to the next story element – our Awareness. In The Elements of Persuasion we say that every successful story needs a moment of Awareness that allows the hero – that’s us in an election - to make the decision that will lead to real transformation. This moment is often fleeting and easy to miss. Not this time. At the San Antonio CNN debate the moment of Awareness was Texas Big.

In many ways Hillary’s answer was a call back to her earlier spontaneous answer to a question at a diner in New Hampshire that some felt turned the tide in that state’s primary. You can see that one again here.

Will one moment in the San Antonio Debate be enough to transform Hillary’s downhill slide? Hard to say. But the it was definitely a story moment for the record books

CHRISTMAS GIVING

If like us you have spent hours searching the malls for the perfect gifts, you will be happy to know that you are going to get all that time back! At least that is the statistical result of recent studies that show generous giving is a positive survival trait in humans. One reason may be the neurotransmitter Oxytocin.

Oxytocin is stimulated by such things as touching and being trusted and is shown to facilitate the bonding of mother and child. If you are building a brand, this is the stuff you need your customers producing when they hear your name. And it is clearly connected to giving. A report published by the journal, ONE, shows that giving test subjects Oxytocin made them much more generous. It seems to be a two-way street, so the act of generous giving gives you a shot of this hormone as well. And Oxytocin is a gift that keeps on giving – to you! The hormone is known to reduce heart rate and blood pressure, promote wound healing, and reduce the effects of stress.

The best gifts to give are the most personal. Giving of your own time trumps all the rest. A review of over thirty studies on the subject done by the Corporation for National and Community Service found that people who volunteer time to help others have lower mortality rates, function at a higher physical and cognitive level, and are less likely to be depressed than others. You get more benefit if you are older, and if you give more than 100 hours a year. We’ve said before that one of the smartest career moves you can make is to find and support an important social cause at work. Now it turns out it might just save your life. 

Merry Christmas!

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

If you have been a regular reader of this blog you noticed a stunning transformation a few weeks ago. We suddenly went from being a bland off-the-typepad-shelf way to post words, to being an actual blogsite designed to tell a story. The change involves more than just new colors and buttons. It involves a whole new point of view. The Hero responsible? We owe it all to Amy Lenzo, Creative Director of Clear Light Communications.

If you are a very long time reader you will remember Amy’s website Beauty Dialogues. We raved about it in one of our very first post because Amy's photos are such stunning examples of images as stories. But in the intervening months (has it really been that long?) she also has added written content that is not to be missed.

Her thinking on the link between design, the Internet and community is profound and, yes, beautiful She tells a great story. She knows all the facts and wraps them in such good-hearted emotions that we are compelled to see things differently. And the more we work with Amy and Clear Light the more we know “we ain’t seen nothing yet.”

We often tell our clients that story is not a marketing add-on - something you come up with after you have a good idea to sell it. Story is how you have that really good idea in the first place. This is particularly true of design stories. Great design, the type Amy does, doesn’t just present information, it reveals the stories underneath. Great designs are acts of discovery. Check out Amy’s website and discover for yourself how design can help build a living web community. You will really thank me for this link.

FALLING STARS

Whether you are a Repub or Dem your front-runner’s poll numbers are collapsing quicker than a dynamited Vegas casino. What gives?

With Hillary it is all about likability. She may be the most tactically skilled politician of her generation but she is far from the most natural. That allowed Obama, who IS a natural, to make his move. Paul Krugman has been writing for months that Obama’s positions strongly slant right. When Hillary says attacks are “straight out of the republican play book” that is what she means. With Karl Rove’s love letter to Obama now on open display in the Financial Times and available to use in Hillary's counter-attack  things are set to get nasty. Stay tuned; Edwards could be the big winner in this dust up.

On the Repub side Giuliani’s campaign has always been a train wreck waiting to happen, but his signature sneer and swagger plays well in the clinches so he might still pull it off. Mitt Romney’s problems are more hard-core. The Repub spin machine spent twenty years associating the words “liberal” and “Massachusetts.” Even a master like Frank Luntz would find it hard to reverse field now. And the simple fact is that Mormonism is not fundamentalist Christianity. There is no Book of Mormon in the King James Bible. For some, like Florida preacher Bill Keller, pretending otherwise is flat out Satanic. Keller may be extreme, but in the Republican South Carolina Primary, extreme is normal. 

Mitt made things worse by electronically stuffing the ballot box at the Value Voters Summit. We think that is what really kicked church-based social networking into high gear, fueling the Huckabee surge in Iowa. We said at the time it was going to be trouble. Hell hath no furry like a born-again scammed.

 

JOHN E. IS BACK!

This site tries not to play favorites. But we have to admit that in recent weeks we’ve spent more time looking at the Repub campaigns than at the Dem’s. Well, who doesn’t gawk at a car wreck when you drive past one on the freeway? And Hillary’s careful consolidation her base has all the excitement of watching ice form on a New Hampshire pond. Now, finally a Democrat has done something really worth paying attention to.

John Edwards – you remember him; southern boy from a hard scrabble family with a silver tongue and a twinkle in his eye married to that feisty lawyer lady (gee, that reminds me of another Dem who once ran for President and won) – has made A GREAT SPEECH. If you like political storytelling you owe it to yourself to read the whole thing.

Notice how it follows our five-element model.

1.    First, Edwards discusses the moment that he and his wife had to decide what they really cared about – their PASSION.

2.    Then he describes the American People with their HEROIC “can do” spirit – this is the base he is hoping to win over.

3.    Next he defines his ANTAGONIST – the corrupt, lobbyist-laden mess that has become business as usual in evil old Washington DC. He very skillfully links Hillary to the bad guys without demonizing her and actually saying she herself is corrupt (though he comes awfully close).

4.    Now he uses a quote from Abraham Lincoln to make us AWARE of why this matters so much. The dream of America won’t be destroyed by foreign enemies, but by our own moral failures.

5.    By the end of the speech he hopes he has TRANSFORMED our sense of what the campaign is all about.

Whether he did it or not is hard to say. But at least he gave it one hell of a good shot.

HILLARY RUNS THE TABLE

Hillary Clinton’s appearance on all five Sunday Political talk shows was political storytelling at its finest. It used all five of our story elements.

Her goal was to parlay the interest in her health care plan (an issue people feel enough PASSION about to actually tune in early Sunday Morning) into a lasting home-field advantage in the Primaries. To do that she needed to address one remaining issue – could she (or any woman) be truly “Presidential?” (ie. our national HERO) 

To prove herself, she turned to her true political base  – the Washington Puntocracy. Underlining the message that she owned the territory (as we say in Elements of Persuasion Hero=Earth=Territory and Brand) she actually gave all five interviews from her own home in New York. It was a masterful touch. Not only did it allow her to appear completely at ease, but it also subconsciously linked her performance to the fireside chats of FDR – always a good branding move for Dems.

Her answer to the question “Isn’t your new plan socialized medicine,” won the day. On all five shows her response was essentially the same - the most charming of laughs. Totally beguiling. It dismissed the question with a sly and unstated “Come on, we both know that isn’t what it is, and it is so nice of you to fall into my trap by asking.” It is how we all wish we could handle an ANTAGONIST - with easy good humor. She followed with a series of concise talking points that quickly provided the AWARENESS we needed to see things her way and presto-chango Hillary was TRANSFORMED from A candidate to THE candidate. It is a very hard act for her opponents to follow.