Notes on Crafting a Campaign Message
What defines a winning political campaign? Though it’s indisputably a nuanced question without a single correct answer, according to Josh Becker, a candidate in this year’s election for the California State Senate, having a compelling message is just about the most important thing you can do for your campaign. Becker, who recently spoke in a session of the Reputation Management course at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, shared his insights on the components of crafting and communicating your successful political message, including a clear and confident awareness of who you are, why you are campaigning, and what you wish to accomplish. Along the way, he presented several essential qualities the message should impart: authenticity, humility, transparency, empathy, expertise, and commitment. Without further ado, let’s dive deeper into the key takeaways and see how we can apply them.
Doing Your Research
To connect with your audience, Becker says, it is important to know your audience and know what your campaign is about. And to do this, research will need to be involved. Starting from the basics, by combing through census data and voter records, the demographic makeup of your constituency — age, gender, race, level of education, party affiliation, income, etc. — can be determined relatively easily. After that, you must learn what issues matter to them. Especially at the local level, voters are looking to identify candidates who can make positive changes to their day-to-day lives. Studies reliably reveal that most voters are concerned more about what you can accomplish than who you are (although these two are usually intertwined).
There are several ways of finding out the important issues that matter to voters, the most straightforward way of which is to directly talk to them. This could be through conducting visits house-to-house or through larger town hall meetings. Not only will this allow for a deeper understanding of the core issues at stake, but it will furthermore increase voters’ familiarity with you, the candidate. Other methods might include sending out public polls or using text messages to reach out to voters. Coupling this newfound knowledge as well as demographic information, you will better understand both what to say and how to say it. After you have gathered all this data, it is time to do some deep contemplation. How do you align what matters to your voters with what matters to you? How do you align what voters expect of you with what is within the realm of possibility for you to accomplish?
Elements of a Compelling Message
Authenticity. Becker reinforces the significance of authenticity over and over again. And remember that you will not be able to fool your audience. Regardless of what your values are, you should aim to do what you say and say what you do, to the fullest extent possible. Performing research to find out what message would resonate most with the target voter may appear at first to be a form of pandering or inauthenticity. However it does not have to be so; rather, the research informs you what issues you should prioritize (after all you cannot do everything) and how you should frame your message (including the language you use and the stories you choose to tell). And what if there are mistakes you have made in the past? Transparency is Becker’s answer. Owning up to mistakes demonstrates humility and vulnerability, and showing what you have learned as a result and how you have changed demonstrates prudence, all of which help you connect with voters.
Once your message has been formulated, it’s important to keep it consistent — both across various platforms (appearances on mainstream media, social media, political ads, town halls, etc.) and across time. From a practical standpoint, this ensures that your audience does not get confused about who you are. But moreover, this also further boosts your authenticity and trustworthiness; it also serves as a way to keep yourself accountable.
Conveying the Right Values
Despite the divided current state of affairs in American politics, Becker is confident that public trust in political institutions can still be salvaged among voters. Demonstrating your strength of character — via empathy and commitment — and expertise are the two pillars through which you can convince voters to heed your message. This is true regardless of which political ideologies you lean into, whether what matters to you is reforming the local economy or local healthcare or the environment or crime control. Notably, Becker maintains an air of optimism throughout his speech. His final advice: Faith. In yourself. In the process. There is no magical solution, no shortcut. But long as you put in the hard work and get yourself out there, it’s possible.
