Memo to the Obama campaign. (UPDATE is here.)
Rather than getting lost in the weeds of charge and counter-charge, or letting the media dictate a narrative, you merely need to put some meat on the bones of what change means to win.
Change, repeated often enough, just becomes another word. It becomes a brand, like Coke, which is fizzy water, not a solution to real problems.
There is plenty in Obama’s current program to put the meat on changes’ bones. I don’t have to invent a thing.
I’m not a videographer. Maybe you can produce this. I’m going to describe it as a series of lines and scenes. See if it makes sense to you.
What Change Means (Voiced by the candidate)
- Change means bringing our boys and girls home — Pictures of troops returning to families, reunions, parades.
- Change means engaging all our assets — Pictures of Obama meeting foreign leaders, shaking hands.
- Change means making things to pay our bills — Pictures of people in modern factories making windmills, solar cells, computer chips, etc.
- Change means serving one another — Pictures of young people in nursing homes, teaching, etc.
- Change means consensus, our common humanity, living what we believe and seeking new mountains to climb — A jumble of hopeful scenes.
I see the rate of change in the photographs increasing as the spot goes
on. You want it to be uplifting, as your past spots were, but you also
want to make it clear that change means we all change, that we start
earning again, go back to traditional financial values again, basically
go back to work again.
The most important message to get out is of a positive future. We’ve had 30 years of dystopian futurism, and we’re all scared to death. Turn that around.
This has been missing in Obama’s message not through
any fault of the Obama campaign, but because it wasn’t necessary, the
word itself providing plenty of branding. It got your foot in the door. In order to close the
deal, not just for the party’s nomination but for November, I’m certain
the Chicago Boys know they have to go beyond the word to its meaning.
Now ‘s a good time to do this, with the whole country watching to see how
this primary campaign will play out. They’re all waiting for Obama to
sock Clinton in the nose. Don’t do it. As a transformative leader,
describe the transformation. Let all her specifics become transactions,
tiny battles with no meaning outside Washington and New York.
It’s like selling anything. Tell me what it means to me. Tell me what
your product will change in my life. Make it about me and I’ll buy.
Make it about you and I won’t.
P.S. — One more thing. Very important. Don’t take my word for anything. Test your messages on the Web before you spend money to run any of them. Run what works best, especially among those groups which have been going the other way.
