Hope our President reads this week's starter before Wednesday's speech: He has to take responsibility for losing control of the healthcare message to regain it. Controlling the dialogue means controlling the definition of your topic. It must be simple and compelling. He lost control of the message by complicating it - People are confused by the jargon and the detail of it - so we are debating DETAIL instead of the main message - leaving the door open for naysayers and fear-mongers. He has to own this to move the dialogue forward.
What do you believe the President must do in his address to regain control of the Healthcare message?
I think the country is more concerned about jobs. While a slight turnaround exists, big leaps are needed. i understand why he wants to act now, he has election momentum. But his momentum after a job creation based recovery would be far stronger. Now it is too late and I doubt much if anything will get passed by the Senate.
Fran,
As usual this is brilliant! Great advice although it is highly unlikely he will pursue this end I love that you are standing in your opinion and advice, admirable.
Lisa Melby
Fran,
When you're up to your ass in Alligators it's easy to forget that your original intention was to drain the swamp!
The President might find it useful to cut through all the conflicted discussion (Health Care Reform as "all good and all bad"), by using compelling stories and metaphor. This might help remove him from the nitty-gritty detail and get him back to the purposeful Big Picture. Return to his vision with e-motional stories to make his message more resonant and feel more intuitively right!...and get people moving,
Neil Saunders
I sent out my comment on this week's Starter to align it to a real life example of how you can lose control of your message. I’ve never done this with a Starter before. Because this is an issue on the edge of teetering (again), thought it would be interesting to create a dialogue on how one controls the definition of a message, which when done correctly, sets the tone for how it is discussed. I’ve always believed that people in public life provide lessons we can learn from. Exciting to see stellar and thoughtful commentary!
Fran....any of us that know you have come to look forward to your Monday starters and I agree wholeheartedly with Lisa Melby. The President should have you for his media consultant---now THAT would be money well-spent! I resent that we are always referred to as "consumers"--we are thinking, feeling human beings! Keep fighting the good fight, Fran!
There is an important marketing message here. Tailor your message to your audience. The president is saying "i know best what you want and need." People aren't buying it, partially because of the arrogance of the message and partially because of the complexity of the product. Any marketing guy with half a sense will tell you that you can't sell a product that people don't want. Instead of tailoring the message (and the product) to his audience, his product approach and therefore his message smacks of elitism.