Developing and Delivering a Winning Message
By Ali Ahmad
Office Director
American Muslim Alliance

No matter the political affiliation, the strategies in forming winning and effective campaigns usually revolve around the same essential ingredients of: polls, strategy, advertising, organization, fundraising and message. Packaging and marketing a candidate’s message succinctly to one’s electorate is critical to success. Hence, for those interested in running for political office, having a strong and effective message that resonates with voters is paramount to garnering votes, creating a responsive public persona, and ultimately securing a seat in public office.
Candidates from any political party must develop a sound message that catches the attention of voters and the media. This means staying consistent with specific policy proposals and how that ties with your message, values and, reasons for running for office.
De
Developing the message

A message, in this instance, is “a set of symbols that contains a theme or a big idea, and ties a problem to a solution, a community to a cause, and a candidate to desirable goals and outcomes.” (Saeed, 2005).
Part of an overall strategy involves defining the right message(s) to be communicated to specific target groups, or the electorate as a whole. Whatever the message, it should be clear and easily understood by everyone.
In formulating a message the first and most important question a candidate must ask is ‘what do I stand for’? It requires the candidate to understand his values, illustrate to voters why he is running and demonstrate to them how he will do a better job if elected. If you can’t articulate in 25 words or less why you are running, then nothing else matters; your race will be over before it begins.
According to Ronald Faucheux , author of Winning Elections, a “campaign message may be based on a candidate’s personal virtues and flaws (i.e. experience, competence, independence, integrity, compassion, stability, preparation, etc.); or (b) ideological and partisan differences (liberal vs. conservative, moderate vs. extreme, inconsistent vs. consistent, pragmatic vs. purist, etc. or (c) the situational context (change vs. status quo, right track vs. wrong track, reform vs. the old way, etc.; or (d) a combination of any of the above.”
The campaign’s message is what is said to voters to position one’s candidacy; it’s the reason you give voters as to why they should elect you over the opposition.
A campaign message isn’t merely an empty slogan or catchy sound bite. It isn’t meaningless rhetoric or a generic theme. A campaign message is about substance, it is about real things that matter to real voters.
Mr. Faucheux recommends constructing a “message box” to illustrate the campaign message. A simple diagram divided into four quadrants, explaining a) what your campaign will say about your candidacy, b) what your campaign will say about the opposition, c) what do you expect the opposition to say about themselves, and d) what you expect the opposition to say about you.

To develop a message, which resonates with one’s constituents, a candidate must determine the district makeup of his constituents. For instance, if a Muslim American were to run for a local city council seat in his district, he/she should intimately know the issues that face the whole community. If advantageous, he/she could gain positive notoriety by developing policy proposals to help bridge the understanding between immigrant communities and the American public at large.
A prospective candidate can also utilize his/her community involvement combined with his/her understanding of many cultures as a way to illustrate his leadership skills. Immigrants who wish to run for office can utilize a variety of examples in order to hone their message by evaluating election cycles and view how candidates work with their media operatives to help in their campaigns and ultimately win elections. Even in the post-9/11 world, we Americans are looking for candidates that have answers to the problems we face not only abroad but in our local city, district or state.

ROLLING A MESSAGE FORWARD
In his remarks at a recent DNC conference, Toby Chaudhuri, Communications Director for the Campaign for America’s Future, noted that it is important for candidates and their campaigns to understand a message and how to move it forward.
The essence of political strategy is to concentrate your greatest strength against the point of your opponent’s greatest weakness. This is done through positioning- which is, in effect the development and delivery of messages that present voters with a choice based on candidate differences that are clear, believable and connected to reality.
Most Muslim candidates who are running for office are challengers running against established incumbents who have more money, experience, and established social and political networks. With this in mind, Muslim candidates must understand that while this may be a disadvantage, they can take advantage of certain strategies that will help perform effectively on the campaign trail.
The challenger in most races generally calls for a change in direction and leadership, while the incumbent asks for continuity. For a Muslim American running for a school board seat, for example, and against an established incumbent, one way to gain attention and a positive message is to contrast themselves with their opponent, and demonstrate why they would be the better choice.
The importance in developing goals and a plan to help market the candidate through “contrast messaging”, contrasting himself from his opponents---this does not mean resorting to negative tactics to win elections—although negativity has proven to keep the attention of voters and ultimately decide elections—voters are capable of remembering candidates if they have a unique message that keeps getting repeated.

OFFENSE OR DEFENSE?
Many campaigns according to Mr. Faucheux like to start positive but wait until the opposition throws the first punch. But other campaigns prefer to frame the choice right out of the box, explaining from day one the differences between your side and the other side.
The saying ‘Defense may win football games but staying on the offense wins wars and political campaigns” to bring home the magnitude of adopting an offensive strategy. “Keeping one’s opponent at bay” (in this case by keeping them on the defense) allows one to more easily define the issues, oneself, and one’s opponent, rather then being defined by them.
This requires analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent. What did they accomplish while in office? What were there difficult times in relation to formulating policies and gauging support among their constituents and colleagues?
A candidate must also be careful not to diffuse his/her message(s). It is better for a candidate to concentrate on a few strong messages than offer a laundry list of 12 or 15 messages. If your opponent has a tarnished record, then ‘character’ may be a powerful message- but if he happens to be a person of impeccable credentials then ‘character’ wouldn’t be appropriate.
“Messages,” says Mr. Foucheux, may be used to de-emphasize candidate qualities and to highlight issues or, inversely, to de-emphasize issues and highlight candidate qualities. The bottom line is that you want to frame voter’s choice around those factions that are most favorable to your candidacy and most unfavorable to your opposition.”

 

 

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
© 2004 pakistanlink.com . All Rights Reserved.