A New, Better Message for Democrats
By: Alex Bennett
Tags: Communications Strategy, Politics, Messaging, Branding Strategy, Elections

A New, Better Message for Democrats

This piece explains why “Get Ahead in Life” would be a good message for Democrats — and Lord knows they need a good message!

However, the purpose of this piece is more to explain how to develop a good message than it is to claim this is the best message or to explain why this is the best message.

In his Nov 18 piece If You Want to Defeat Republicans, Stop Trying to Defeat Republicans, Douglas Giles argues Democrats need to say what they are for. I agree, adding Democrats also need to keep it short and simple. The piece you are reading now is an off-the-cuff answer to both these needs.

I did branding, advertising, publicity and other communications and marketing for 10 years, part of that time at Apple. I developed and implemented two brands that succeeded in their respective markets (elementary school teachers and mechanical manufacturing engineers).

As brief background, one of the biggest problems America faces is repairing the socio-economic damage done by Republican administrations over the last 50 years, starting with Reagan — funneling money to the rich, gutting social programs, and deregulating corporations.

Whether or not they would blame Republicans or describe the problem in the terms above — or even admit the problem exists — almost all Americans are upset by this damage — and of course, to our ruin, every political camp has a different solution.

“The dogs aren’t eating it”

If Democrats say they have the best solution, they have to sell this solution. In a nutshell, Democrats say re-focusing government — turning the ship of state around — is the solution. This message works with people who believe the government has the capability to be the solution.

However, many people (let’s call them “nihilists” to avoid problematic labels) believe the government does not have the capability to solve the problem. Instead, nihilists believe the answer is one or more of the following: (1) demolish the government, (2) play ostrich, or (3) attack subsets of the population. They don’t want to hear about a government solution.

So from a messaging (communications, marketing, branding, advertising, etc) perspective, it makes sense — in fact, it is practically essential — to subtract the government from the solution, and to subtract other people from the solution. (Even when Democrats don’t talk government, they talk about “the people” and the nihilists don’t care about the people, they care about themselves individually or their chosen identity group.) In other words:

The message “How to Get Ahead in Life” doesn’t directly invoke anybody other than the individual recipient of the message.

It doesn’t directly invoke a problem or cause, it only invokes improvement — however, the improvement speaks to the conditions we want to escape.

“How to Get Ahead in Life” has some advantages as a brand message:

It’s short — the words will fit on a bumpersticker or billboard.

It’s positive — something almost universally desirable.

It already has meaning in our culture — almost a cliche.

“Hum a few bars…”

Cliches are often good when branding. Nobody is going to seriously struggle to understand or visualize “getting ahead in life.” What the phrase means is well established in people’s minds, precisely because it is cliche-ish — because so many others have used it so many times. So when it is attached as a descriptor to “Democrats” it has instant meaning.

Also, starting off “How to…” has been proven in advertising to draw attention, because it promises information — a route to somewhere you might want to go.

Another good thing about “How to Get Ahead in Life” for branding is you can build off it, or subtract from it:

Get ahead

Get ahead in life

Vote Democratic to get ahead in life

Reduce healthcare costs — to get ahead in life

Working two jobs? Time to get ahead in life

Read the Dem platform — support for you to get ahead in life

Candidate Joe — he wants you to get ahead in life

Vote! It’s all about getting ahead in life

Of course it’s tiresome to read the phrase over and over. But when people talk about staying on message, or having a clear, focused, disciplined message, this repetition is a big part of what they mean. (Ugly as they are, consider the disturbing ‘success’ of “death panels” and “stop the steal.”)

Another little advertising fact — on average, people can’t even remember seeing an ad until they’ve seen it four times — which is often when advertisers get sick of seeing it over and over.

What if you saw your name in a headline?

Lastly, imagine a page on a website or newspaper with the headline splashed across the top of “Here’s How You Can Get Ahead in Life” and the text below — written word by word to elaborate and deliver on the headline — contains every message Democrats have been trying to get across for years — every message about their candidates, their platform, their achievements, their vision — messages that keep disappearing into thin air in so many polls and elections.

The point is, the headline can serve as an umbrella for all the other messages. That way every time someone sees the headline, they remember whatever more substantive messages they’ve absorbed in town hall meetings, speeches, news coverage, opinion columns, etc. This is precisely what branding is about in a messaging strategy.

If you are not sold on the phrase in this piece, I hope you think of an alternative — and use this piece as a checklist to assess how good yours is. Any dialog in this direction just might help save our democracy.