Bloghound

A great conversational marketing strategy is to challenge industry assumptions, and change the context of how an industry or group of people think about a topic (or candidate. ) Speaking this week with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” Barack Obama offered a great example of how he’s trying to do just this.

One of his challenges is that many think he’s too inexperienced to be president of the United States. His approach, as seen in this video, is to challenge assumptions about the value of years and years of experience. “Look at the long resumes of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfield,” Obama points out. “Just goes to show that experience doesn’t necessarily equate to judgment. I need to challenge conventional wisdom and refocus the conversation on judgment. ”

Experience doesn’t mean judgment. Nice strategy. Will be interesting to see how well it works.

Who are many CEOs and sales executives most similar to?

a) Al Gore

b) Bob Kerry

c) Bob Dole

The answer is all of the above. The reason is that most CEOs and sales executives, like unsuccessful political candidates, present litanies of facts, figures, and rational reasoning to try to persuade people, and they overlook (or dismiss) the power of emotions.

They rely on dispassionate logic. Yet, neuroscientists and psychologists have proven that the more “rational” a message, the less likely it is to trigger the emotional circuits in our brains that activate behavior and decisions.

The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of a Nation by psychologist and political scientist Dr. Drew Westen is a fascinating read about the science and practice of persuasion in American politics, particularly about how the Democrats, with the exception of Bill Clinton, have blown it so many times by relying on dispassionate reasoning and policy discussions rather than connecting with people on an emotional level.

People decide by how they feel about you. (Or your company or party.) Republicans and many consumer products marketers are masters at this; most Democrats, business-to-business and professional services are not.

Aside from being a political junkie from a communication strategy perspective, I found the book interesting because the principles of political persuasion are the same for business, and are becoming even more relevant in our video, podcasting, blogging world. Most companies obsessively talk about their products, capabilities, roadmaps, strategy du jour ( Six Sigma, anyone?), and obvious trends (“we’re all about helping customers reduce risk and cut costs.”). But they fail to first connect with people, be they customers or employees, in an emotional way that engenders feelings of competency, trust, and liking.

In my book Beyond Buzz, chapter 3 (“Make Meaning Not Buzz”) explores why emotion is the superhighway to making meaning and understanding. Westen’s exploration of scientific research goes much deeper in showing why the mind is hardwired to tune into emotionally compelling appeals vs. rational reasons, and offers strategies on how to appeal to that neural network of often unconscious decision making.

Here are some takeaways from the book that I found especially interesting for those of us in in business.

On getting attention

“We do not pay attention to arguments unless they engender our interest, enthusiasm, fear, anger or contempt. We are not moved by leaders with whom we do not feel an emotional resonance.”

On driving behavior

“Emotion is one of the most potent sources of motivation that drives human behavior. It is no accident that the words motivation and emotion share the same Latin root, movere, which means to move.”

Thinking beyond the message itself

“The implications of these findings suggest that the choice of words, images, wounds, music, backdrop, tone of voice and a host of other factors is as likely to be as significant to the electoral success of a campaign as content.”

The right feelings vs. the best argument

“As decades of survey research demonstrate, people are driven in the voting booth by their feelings, and these feelings reflect the extent to which they believe a party of candidate is attending to their interests and values.”

“The data form political science is crystal clear: people vote for the candidate who elicits the right feelings, not the candidate who presents the best argument

Beware messaging by focus group

“Virtually every word that came out of his mouth [Gore, 200 presidential campaign] had been market-tested using focus groups and hand-dials indicating when listeners liked and didn’t like what he ways saying in practice debates. Unfortunately, the more his words seemed market-tested, the less genuine they seemed. And the less genuine he seemed, the less likable

The appeal of being clear

“Political scientist Larry Bartels found, as expected, that voters prefer candidates whose values and policies match their own preferences. But he also found that voters prefer candidates who are clear on what they believe, even if it is not what they believe.”

4 questions that matter in deciding

“Voters tend to ask four questions that determine who they will vote for…Candidates who focus their campaigns on the top of this hierarchy and work their way down generally win.

1. How do I feel about the candidate’s party and its principles?
2. How does this candidate make me feel?
3. How do I feel about this candidate’s personal characteristics, particularly his or her integrity, leadership, and compassion?
4. How do I feel about this candidate’s stands on issues that matter to me?

Now, take a look at the sales deck your sales reps are using, the speech your CEO recently gave to employees or partners, the marketing messaging “playbook,” the “look and feel” of your company’s PowerPoint style .

• How do they make people feel about your company?
• Do they tell a compelling story in words and images – or are they a rationale laundry list of capabilities, products, competitive advantages and other dispassionate facts and figures?
• Do people like telling your story? Or are they dispassionate and not genuinely engaged with the ideas?

Tomorrow the United States celebrates its independence and our love for democracy. But perhaps it’s time to reflect on democracy — and how conversations in non-political but highly participatory contexts can shape a civilization. Or how isolation and apathy can erode its soul.

My good friend and the brilliant director, playwright and Trinity Rep artistic director Curt Columbus recently talked about this notion with graduating students at Brown University, and shared his notes with me.

Curt explains that throughout history people have defined their selves and negotiated the rules of their societies by participating in raucous public forums, where all voting citizens participate. And these forums are theaters.

• Think of the influence of the play Persians on the Athenian culture – after the Athenians had just defeated the Persians. The play empathizes with the Persians rather than just hero worshipping the victorious Athenian warriors. And the Athenians choose to be a civilized society rather than ruthless conquerors.

• Or how Shakespeare influenced the culture during the Elizabethan era, helping people to understand what it meant to be English in that turbulent time.

Curt contends that today we need theater and its shared conversations and experiences more than ever. Here are his views:

“So you might say, Curt, these are interesting demonstrations of the theater’s historical importance, but what does this have to do with us in a 21^st century, technologically sophisticated American democracy.

Noam Chomsky said, ‘The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.’

I will go a step further. The most effective way to restrict democracy is to hand over decision making power, and then become increasingly isolated, increasingly unwilling to collect, to connect, and to converse.

I believe that we reached another of those historical moments when the culture needs the theater.

The media in our cultural has raised its volume to a deafening roar. People are starving for a genuine point of interaction, a way to fight the isolation of television and film and internet. They want to find meaning through conversation, through community. And they want to collect in a room with other people to find themselves engaged, enlightened and entertained. The theater is at the crest of a cultural tidal wave in America, if we will just take our place there.

The American archeologist Howard Winters said, ‘Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term ‘we’ or ‘us’ and at the same time decreases those labeled ‘you’ or ‘them’ until that category has no one left in it.’

And University of Chicago educator Robert Hutchins said, ‘The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.’

I’m sure there is a small amount of self-aggrandizement in thinking that theater can save American democracy. But I know that the great Theater is a place where you see the other, walk in their shoes, which is the ultimate humanist act, and where you rub up against the rest of the world, outside your limitations, outside your comfort zone. And that is where the democratic impulse begins at the very least.”

Happy 4^th of July.

 Crisis communications has taken a whole new meaning in Estonia in the past couple of weeks. I’m not talking about the PR kind of crisis, but a new type of cyber crisis that happens when a country’s Internet systems are attacked by another country, bringing down government systems.

Last year while speaking at a marketing conference in Estonia, several Estonians explained to British PR strategist and professor David Phillips and I that there was a great deal of tension about a Soviet war memorial statue in the center of the capital of Tallinn. The Estonians wanted to move it as it represented a symbol of Russian occupation. The ethnic Russians in Estonia ardently opposed the move, saying it was a tribute to Estonia’s liberation from Nazi Germany. Robin Gurney of Altex Marketing took David and I to visit the statue and we shared some opinions on how Estonia might diffuse the growing tension based on our public relations experience.

But I never envisioned what has happened.

The Estonians moved the statue. Rioting broke out between thousands of Estonians and ethnic Russians. And then, worst of all, cyber attacks were made on Estonia’s state Web sites, allegedly by computers linked to the Russian government, as well as by individuals’ computers from around the world.

In covering the situation this week, The Economist article, “A Cyber Riot,” underscores the magnitude of the crisis:

“To remain open to local users, Estonia has had to cut access to its sites from abroad. That is potentially more damaging to the country’s economy than the limited Russian sanctions announced so far.”

“The alarm is sounding well beyond Estonia. NATO has been paying special attention. ‘If a member state’s communications center is attacked with a missile, you call it an act of war. So what do you call it if the same installation is disabled with a cuber-attack?’ asks a senior official in Brussels.”

If the Internet is used as a weapon, just how should countries and NATO respond? This is a situation worth watching.

[cyber attack] [Estonia] [crisis communications]

French presidential candidate Segolene Royal — who today announced her 100 point-platform — is shaking up politics-as-usual in France, and using two successful marketing practices to do so : listening to the people, and giving constituents a direct say in governing.

Like companies trying to be be more customer-centric, Royal said her new platform is based on ideas from voters. According to yesterday’s Wall St. Journal, Royal’s ideas com from approximately 6,000 town-hall meetings with voters, smaller coffeehouse sessions called “cafe Segolene,” and the 2.8 million people who have visited her campaign Web site.

As president of Poitou-Charentes, Royal has allowed her constituents to have a say and direct role in governing. Parents and teachers decide via secret ballot how to spend 10 percent of the regional budget for high schools. And she introduced new ‘citizen juries” — where residents are randomly chosen to evaluate laws for their communities. If elected, she says she’d apply these same principles nationally, setting up a citizens’ juries to evaluate the work of the National Assembly, for example.

Royal’s fresh citizen-centric approach has helped her shake up the old-guard French politicians, referred to as “elephants,” to become a front runner for France’s highest office. But will listening and involvement be enough to win?

Possibly, as her social program programs, like more low-income housing and increasing minimum wage, are likely to appeal to so many French citizens. What France really needs, however, is a way to make the country more business friendly, keeping and attracting employers.

While involving customers in businesses is a successful strategy for growth and loyalty, is it also a valuable strategy for electing leaders? Royal promises to give voters what they want, but is what they want in the best interest to France?

Segolene Royal political marketing

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s new “Let’s begin the conversation” style bodes well for her presidential election chances.

Last year as I finished writing my upcoming book, Beyond Buzz, I held Sen. Clinton up as a brilliant leader with a poor, “learned lecture” communications style, a lawyerly tone that tends to be more off-putting than sincerely engaging.

Yet in announcing her run for U.S. President this past weekend, Clinton showed that she has radically changed her communications style, from learned lecture to conversational. This is a very smart and critical strategy for creating an emotional and intellectual bond with voters.

As part of her announcement Clinton released a video where she sat in her cozy living room and talked about how she was “beginning a conversation with you and the country,” and wants to “start a dialogue about your ideas and mine.”  She also said she’d be starting live online video “chats” this week to talk with people about their views and hers. Brilliant move.This new style, combined with a message that together Americans can still achieve the promise of a better life, is hugely refreshing from the current administration’s style of dictating one-way messages about uncertainty and fear, and “we know best.”

We are the we. And Clinton seems ready to invite us into the conversation.

Moving forward she will need to carefully scale this style, and be sure she really listens and recognizes what people have to say. Real conversational communications is two parts listening, one part talking.

Is there a correlation between the intensity of election conversations and the big voter turnout expected at the polls tomorrow?

I think so. It’s no secret that the more engaged people are – whether in a political or business decision – the more likely they are to act.

But although the voter turnout is suppose to be strong, which is great, the interest in engaging in political conversations is waning, which is not so great.

According to pollster Frank Lutz, “In most parts of this country it is very difficult to have a civilized conversation between two people that fundamentally disagree.”

Intellectual food fights are part of the foundation of democracy. Let’s not judge and close our minds to those who disagree with us. Instead, let’s celebrate that people care so much about their communities, their states, and their country that they are passionately involved, have an opinion, and plan to vote on it.

A better place to redirect our irritation is towards those who don’t care enough to have an opinion and don’t make their voices heard by voting.

Election Day and all the sometimes uncomfortable dinner conversations leading up to it are a reason to celebrate. Cheers for democracy. Today is a day to celebrate no matter what the election results.

  Pope Benedict XVI is working hard to mend relations with the Islamic religious community after he offended many Muslims during a Sept.12 speech. How is he doing in the crisis communications front? I’d give him a B-.

The Pope met today with Muslim diplomats in Italy, which is a postive step. Face-to-face meetings where people can have conversations are crucial; dialogue helps people understand one another as people, demonstrate respect, and assess the genuineness of beliefs and comments. Issuing formal statements rarely quells an emotionally-charged issue, which was the Pope’s first action.

While today’s meeting was good, it would have been better for the Pope to go to a predominantly Muslim country and to have had this face-to-face meeting earlier. When grave misunderstandings occur, it’s best to get talking sooner than later, stemming swelling anger before it causes irreparable riffs.

For the Pope to keep up his crisis communciations grade point average I’d encourage him to get out of Italy and have more conversations with moderate and respected Muslim diplomats in the months to come. — on their turf. I also recommend that he not cower and toss aside his beliefs that religiion and violence don’t go together. That would be disingenuous.

Similarly, I’d encourage Muslims to not simply issue statements and protests when upset, but engage in a conversation to help foster understanding. The Pope’s comment that religion and violence shouldn’t go together is on the minds of people around the world. If Islam means peace, many in the world need moderate Muslims to be more proactive in helping the world to understand this.

Pope and Islam crisis communications

Should the United States Post Office be in the business of promoting direct mail?

Yesterday I received a copy of “Deliver,” the USPS’ expensively produced, 32 page magazine. USPS sends the free bi-monthly magazine to 350,000 marketers.

The
business world is moving to a paper-less, digital world, but the Postal
Service is trying to promote the value of direct mail and other
“innovative marketing tools.”

“Finding innovative marketing
tools is a must for any company that needs to promote its brand and
products to the consumer,” according to USPS press release announcing the magazine last winter. “Today the U.S. Postal Service is
Deliver-ing a magazine for marketers about strategies and trends that
are shaping the world of marketing and advertising.”

My view is
that the USPS has no business trying to be in the marketing advice
business, especially as their advice is grounded in the old print
world, which is hardly innovative. That's just a bad use of our tax
dollars. Not as bad as the USPS' huge sports sponsorship spends a few
years ago, but still rather irresponsible.

USPS should take the
hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on the magazine and
address its real issue: how to create a new USPS business model for a
world with less and less mail.

Now, back to getting my tax returns completed…

Women stepping up to run countries were in the news today.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a 67-year-old Harvard-trained economist, is being inaugurated as the president of Liberia, the first woman president in Africa. Michele Bachelet, a doctor and former political prisoner, was yesterday elected as Chile’s first woman president. German Chancellor Angela Merkel just finished a visit to the White House. And Finland’s first female president, Tarja Halonen yesterday failed to win enough votes to secure re-election, forcing a runoff against a conservative challenger.

Why is it that women are succeeding as CEO’s of countries, but not of businesses?

I believe it’s because people today are screaming to be heard and to be understood, and women use a conversational communications style that recognizes those voices.

Look no further than the online world for evidence of wanted to be heard and involved. An estimated 50,000 new blogs start every day. Millions share product reviews and recommendations online. Communities are thriving. MoveOn.org has changed political advocacy, making it easy for people to be heard and get involved.

Women‘s communications styles tend to be more engaging, involving, and conversational than men. Most men talk more than they listen, not recognizing other people’s voices. Women, it seems, may have the inside track on knowing how to genuinely connect with people.

In her fascinating book, “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,” Deborah Tannen explains that men are more comfortable using “report-talk” while women use “rapport-talk.”

“For most women the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships,” she writes. “For most men, talk is primarily a means to preserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order.”

In Alice Walker’s novel “The Temple of My Familiar,” the main character falls in love with a man because she sees in him “a giant ear.”

Maybe women are succeeding because they are giant ears, and people prefer to be led by big ears instead of big mouths.