As anyone with even the most rudimentary marketing and communications knowledge knows, defining and fine tuning your key message is critical when promoting your brand identity, unique selling point or company ethos.
Clear, concise yet direct messages will always have impact.
Just as important, and something we stress on our media training and public speaking training courses, is understanding that delivering your message without evidence or examples to support it is just pure rhetoric.
Business will always pledge to “put customers first”. Really? Hardly going to put them last, are you? In what ways do you put them first? How is your business client-centred, visionary or innovative? Use as many adjectives as you like but, without substance, people are unlikely to believe. “It don’t butter no parsnips”, as one of my veteran broadcast colleagues often says.
Now Donald Trump appears to have turned all of that on its head. With absolutely no public office or political experience, he has promised to double the US economy, bring back thousands of jobs to the manufacturing sector and build That Wall. Prior to the election there seemed little forensic debate on either candidate’s policies and manifestos as discussions barely moved past personality clashes and character assassination. So without clear and convincing domestic, foreign or fiscal policies, how did he do it?
Amid the “anti-establishments” arguments, the millions of dollars spent on campaigning and the distrust of a woman who carried the “burden” of 30 years of public office, there will be plenty of analysis, discourse and discussion. But one view taken from a US TV report yesterday, the opinion of a working class “blue collar” middle aged, white man (the group who carried the billionaire businessman to power) perhaps said it all.
Standing in a bar with a beer in one hand and a pool cue in the other, this voter from the Rust Belt said, “Trump speaks my language”. Could it have been as simple as that? Trump made simple, some may say impossible, promises and claims. He kept repeating the message. Wherever he went. “We’re gonna build that wall!”, “Let’s Make America Great Again”, “This will be Brexit, plus, plus, plus”. While we in the UK are still trying fathom out the meaning of Brexit on every single level, Trump has already adopted and adapted the slogan.
His language was clear and often crude. After every claim, he kept repeating “I truly believe that, I really do.” Was he trying to convince us or himself?
The simple hand gesture to reiterate points looked to me like he was holding an invisible baton as he conducted his own soap opera. He played to the crowd (or on their fears) and appealed to the masses of the “forgotten”, as he refers to them.
The billionaire New York-based property developer has likened himself to the working classes that came out in droves from poor, rural areas to vote for him. “I am just like them but with a bigger bank balance”, he once said. Indeed. As media trainers we always impress the need to empathise and connect with the audience and that was one of the many criticisms of Hillary Clinton.
While she had a wealth of public office experience, she lacked charisma and freely admitted to this. Ironically, her heartfelt speech following the result in which she implored young voters to hold the dream and keep believing showed her at her most authentic.
But it is Mr Trump’s time. Whether he can truly empathise is a matter of debate but he (and team Trump) clearly tapped into the fears and frustrations of a disaffected and disconnected demographic.
But will he deliver? And can he Make America Great Again? Come January, we will soon discover. Whether money, fears or a demand for change got him to the post of Commander in Chief, the rhetoric still needs that evidence - and needs it soon. Otherwise the crowd may turn as bitter as those unbuttered parsnips.
Media First are media and communications training specialists with over 30 years of experience. We have a team of trainers, each with decades of experience working as journalists, presenters, communications coaches and media trainers.
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