I know that in left-leaning circles, it’s not really fashionable to talk about politics and marketing in the same breath, but sometimes I get really frustrated when I see people forgetting one of the principal rules of marketing. You are not your customer, and as such, you need to tailor your message to them if you want to have a real impact.
It usually pops up on a blog in the form of an angry rant along the lines of, “Why doesn’t Joe/Jane Sixpack WAKE UP and get outraged about The War / The Bush Administration / Global Warming / [insert latest outrage here]?”. And I sympathize, I really do. I’m amazed at the capacity of people to rationalize and accept things that go against their own self-interest. But the fact of the matter is, they do. Ranting about it might let off some steam and help you feel better, but it’s not going to change the facts on the ground.
The question then becomes, what do you do about it? And this is where a lot of people go off-track. They either write off those people as “sheeple” too stupid to know their own minds, burn out and stop trying, or (if you’re a blogger) write long venting blog posts. What they rarely seem to do is take a good long look in the mirror at why they’re not making any headway.
Let’s say you’re an activist with an Important Issue, and you want to raise awareness about that issue and move people towards taking action on your issue. You can write a blog, and issue press releases, and send mailings to targeted lists, and lobby Congress, and do a LOT of other stuff to try to raise awareness. And if you’re good at your job, sooner or later, you get a group of people who are in your corner, and you feel good. But then, eventually, you seem to hit a plateau. You’re doing OK with your core group, but there’s large numbers of other people you just can’t seem to reach. You get frustrated. Your issue is Important. You’re doing everything right. Why do so few people seem to care?
Good question. This is where the marketing comes in. This is what you might call a market segmentation chart for political action:
In looking at the overall possible audience for your mission, there’s four basic groups aligned along two spectrums: Interest / Non-Interest and Belief / Disbelief. Your initial success is going to be in that group of people who both are inclined to believe you, and are interested in the issue — the Simpaticos. At a certain point, though, you’re going to run out of Simpaticos and need to reach out beyond them. Your next choices are the Skeptics, who are interested in your issue, but for whatever reason, they are not inclined to listen to what you have to say about it, and the So Whats, who have no reason to distrust you but are just not interested in your particular mission. (The Skips are people who don’t trust you and don’t care about your issue. Skip them, they’re not worth the time until you’ve gotten the others on board.)
The problem is, what worked for the Simpaticos is not going to work for the So Whats or the Skeptics. Yet, especially in politics or policy work, many people seem to feel that changing their approach or their message in order to reach out to new groups is somehow tantamount to “selling out” and hurting their original mission.
At which point, I have to ask, what are you really trying to achieve? Do you want to be right, or do you want to actually get something done? If you want to change the world, you have to change THIS world, not the idealized one in your head. And that means accepting the fact that not everyone thinks like you do and cares about what you care about. If you want to reach out beyond the Simpaticos, you need to stop getting frustrated that the Skeptics and the So Whats aren’t listening to you and figure out how to communicate with them effectively.
It’s not easy. Going beyond your comfort zone rarely is. But it beats losing.