“Don’t Buy It” with Anat Shenker-Osorio

Understanding how narratives dictate outcomes and determine the future.

Ottawa recently hosted a three-day consultation related to immigration that resulted in a Canada-wide gathering of more than different 400 organizations that work with and serve refugees and migrants. In addition to offering up various themed workshop sessions, one of the perks for attending the conference was a keynote presentation on the power of communication by strategic communications expert, Anat Shenker-Osorio. The theme for the keynote presentation was based on Shenker-Osorio’s book, “Don’t Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy” (2012), adapted to fit the consultation’s theme focusing on immigration.  What made the presentation so good was that Shenker-Osorio provided a communication road map and detailed the power of “narratives” in a way that everyone could understand: it can change lives and reshape the future. She  explained the critical ingredients required for this.

1. Say What You’re For

“Saying what you’re for” is rooted in identifying ways to counter opposing messages and narratives while establishing one’s own message. For instance, if all a person does is talk about their opposition, they will end up repeating the opposition’s message, which is not good. Instead, it is possible to continue calling out the opposition, but it requires focusing on not repeating their positions. That means focusing on establishing things like what you are for and what kind of things could be made possible.

There were two examples that were referenced to demonstrate an evolving message and the power of effective messaging. The first example was a human rights campaign related to Australia’s policies of “caging people”, and how messaging around that human rights issue had evolved from 2013 to 2015 to 2016. The second example referenced a commercial that highlighted an immigration policy separating families and focused on humanizing the issue. Both examples were described as fitting into the “beautiful tomorrow” opportunity that every situation possessed, a better tomorrow that all people desire for.

2. Remember: People Do Things

Societal problems have always been the result of people-created problems. If people can create problems, then people can fix the problems they create so long as it is clear about the origin story of the problems and how they are people-created. That is the essence of “people do things”.

The norm across today’s advocacy landscape features lots of messaging that involves “inagentive constructions”, language that makes it unclear who exactly causes specific harms. Examples of inagentive language that were highlighted included, “People are losing their homes. Peoples’ health is declining. The wealth gap is growing.” All these examples have inagentive language used to describe problems, but the circumstances around those problems remain unclear. For instance, people may lose their house keys, but people never “lose” their homes. So, home foreclosures required getting attributed to economic greed (2008 recession).

Establishing the “people” role of a problem from the outset is something that is mission critical. If society can be helped to understand how problems are people-made then it can be made to believe that problems can be people-fixed.

3. Sell the Brownie, Not the Recipe.

A walk down the baking isle promises to feature boxes with pictures of cakes and brownies: boxes that house ingredients on the inside and a recipe on the backside. Now, consider what people are more likely to buy first: a box with a picture of ingredients (powder, milk, eggs, etc.) or a picture of what a baked good could look like? Marketing psychology tells us that every single person is guaranteed to choose the box with a picture of a tasty-looking baked goody over ones with a picture of ingredients.

Whether a person wants to sell someone brownies or a policy solution, it is the same, nothing can be better than selling an outcome or final product. The example referenced when describing how to “sell the brownie” had to do with the U.S.’ healthcare system. A contrast between selling “universal single-player healthcare” and selling how “you can see the doctor that you need and not worry about the bill that comes later”.

Selling the feeling that people will have because of an outcome or final product was described as the master key for opening up “resistance locks”. Because our brains generally make sense of abstract ideas or complex things in terms of tangible ideas and simpler things.

4. Order Matters (Values -> Villain -> Vision)

Messages need to land for them to activate, and this is best done by opening up with a value or ideal that is shared across society. Instead of starting off by listing a “problem”, it is better to stick problems in-between the desirable things a society believes in and that can be made possible.

When it comes to crafting a message that will land with large audiences, the order he suggested works best is “values -> villain -> vision”. The way it was explained: “values” are things that would be most broadly shared, “villains” are those who created problems and violated shared “values”, and “vision” paints a picture of a world that is possible if people act together. These three steps were described as the best way to create cognitive dissonance, then resolving it with a closing idea or vision of a future that could be made possible.

5. Politics is not Solitaire

Recognizing the science behind strategic communication is essential when it comes to changing lives and reshaping the future but, more than that, rarely has anything worth remembering been achieved alone. Arguably the biggest obstacles in society were rooted in “us versus them” mentalities, despite that lines of difference were lines that people could step over or even erase altogether.

Native-born versus immigrant, insured versus un-insured, educated versus under-educated, privileged versus under-privileged—battles like these did nothing other than create enmity, disgust, and distrust between people. All of it undermined the truth that divisions have always been structural, and that broad-based prosperity is possible, and that the world was created with everyone in mind. Simply put, solidarity is important, as is being there for people who we may not always agree with—because the future will always be one that is shared.

6. If your words don’t spread, they don’t work

Hearing suggestions from those closest to us has a different effect than hearing things from people we have no connection to. That is why Miracle Whip spends 95% of every advertising dollar to advertise to their consumer base, because of the power of “word of mouth” advertising. Those advertising principles also apply to other messages, determined by the kinds of words we used.

Most people can be persuaded to toggle between conflicting ideas, switching whenever they hear a good point from either side, so it takes more than common sense to make ideas a permanent fixture. The real power lays in language that is rooted in helping people get beyond a place of “good point”, by using words that connect to the core of who we are as people. Because it is a lot easier to toggle between ideas than it is between who we are and what we stand for.

How to Make Believe

Understanding where people are—that is, what resonates with them, and what makes sense to them—is important. Meeting people where they are, with the kind of ideas that they may find appealing tends to be inadequate because where people are and the kind of ideas they find appealing can suck. Yet, the reality in all of it is that there actually is no such place where people are, all of it is rooted in human cognition, and everyone can be brought to a place of cognitive ease.

Whether a person ends up being someone who takes the temperature or someone who can change the temperature comes down to how they communicate—a superpower that every person has within them. Tapping into that superpower lets us bring people from a place of where they are to an understanding of where they can go through words and images. Seeing is believing, which means that we must never surrender the narrative for the vision of how we can change lives and reshape the future in a world that was made with everyone in mind.