Speed Up — and Power Up — Your Political Messaging with the Right Positioning
People love to accuse various politicians and/or parties (i.e. Democrats) of having a “messaging” problem — but most of the time they’re actually looking at a positioning problem.
To get a handle on the difference, think of it this way: the job of “messaging” is to communicate a “position.” Messaging looks good when the position is good. But messaging that effectively and memorably communicates a bad position is still good messaging, no matter how much it rubs you the wrong way. It’s just the position that needs work.
Even without changing a single policy or issue stance, positioning can be the difference between everything you say tying together in the minds of your audience vs. falling short of making a connection with people. Strong positioning is what makes a Mercedes a luxury vehicle and a Ford truck tough, not to mention what made Donald Trump irresistible to Social Dominance Orientation voters.
There are many dimensions you can consider when establishing a positioning framework for yourself: emotional, social, self-expressive, values-driven, etc. You don’t have to use every dimension to achieve strong positioning (a good guide 🙋 can help you choose where to focus), but fleshing out just about any of them will leave you stronger than the sum of your policies.
Not for nothing, there are also important practical benefits to putting in the work to establish strong positioning, especially in modern times.
Gone are the days when you can cram the precise wording of a poll question into a :30 second TV commercial and control your message completely. Now you have to be able to communicate quickly and succinctly in :15 second and :06 second ad formats.
Actually, that was four years ago. Now you also have to navigate the increasingly important world of social media influencers and creators, where getting full value out of the partnership means surrendering script control to the talent. It’s not going to work if it’s too ornate.
A well thought out position helps simplify what you need to communicate to the point where it will fit into those shorter formats, where you can give a creator nothing more than general direction and have them stay completely on message, where you don’t have to spend all day negotiating the wording of everything because it’s the positioning that counts.
If defining and strengthening your positioning to better resonate with your vision could help you, let me know. I’m always happy to talk.
