An effective linguistic technique to get your messages out comes from Bill Clinton's media strategist in Clinton's book Behind The Oval Office.
Clinton was frustrated by the fact that he had created millions of jobs and cut the deficit, but it went largely unnoticed and unaccredited.
His Media Stategist Bob Squier suggested that two messages be combined creating a presupposition for one of the messages. The idea, said Squier, was to talk about the jobs that had been created while also talking about what you are going to do.
Squier continued, "For example, the seven million jobs we've created won't be much use if we can't find educated people to fill them. That's why we want a tax deduction for college tuition to help kids go to college to take those jobs."
This turned out to be very effective and works because it assumes or presupposes that part of the message is a fact.
Lets say you want to get the message out:
1 -- This is the worlds safest car.
2 -- Now you can afford it.
Putting both premises across individually will allow some one dispute both messages.
By combining the two messages into one such as:
Now you can afford the world's safest car.
If you disagree with this message, you are disagreeing about the fact that you can afford the car, not that it is the worlds safest car, because the safety aspect is now assumed or presupposed.
In fact this technique has been used by advertisers and politicians for a long time and it's been shown to be an effective way to get a message out because in our busy daily life we assume presuppositions are correct to save ourselves cognitive processing time.
No comments
Post a Comment