Why words count…
How a brochure risked alienating voters
CONSIDER THIS. You work for an influential environmental advocacy organisation. An election is coming up. You produce a brochure to convince people to vote for a particular political party. You think it provides a stark choice but what it does is simply cast undecided electors as part of the solution or part of the problem. There’s no middle ground, no grey zone between the black and white polarities, no space for those undecided.
Yes or no. For or against. Good or bad. Them or us. Solution or problem. It’s a simplistic binary choice. If you are an undecided voter, how would you feel at being told that if you don’t ‘green your vote’ then you are a problem? A bit insulted? How would you vote?
This is what the Bob Brown Foundation did in the recent Tasmanian state election in trying to convince poeople to vote green. ‘Green your vote or be part of the problem’ was the choice in big bold text over a photo of a pristine forest and a contrasting forest that had been logged.
The Foundation is a respected advocacy with a long and successful track record. It has the support of Tasmanians who want to change how forestry is done in the state. Encouraging people to vote green implies a vote for the Tasmanian Greens. That’s another organisation with a long track record. It is the world’s first green party.
Flip the brochure over and we find what could have been a more convincing message to voters than the binary choice on the other side:
‘Imagine if $1 billion had been spent on Tasmania’s hospitals and schools over the past 30 years. Instead, $1 billion dollars has gone to the job-shredding native forest loggers under Labor and Liberal governments’.
The text goes on to discuss government subsidy of the forestry industry and its impacts on wildlife. It raises the contradiction that forestry as currently practiced and the goverment handouts to the industry stand in contradiction to maintaining the natural systems which sustain Tasmania’s biggest industry and a lot of the state’s jobs — tourism.
Jobs, financial management and the natural environment are important points which ring bells in the electorate. Why were they not concisely encapsulated on the front of the brochure instead of what the Foundation presents voters with — a simple, stark statement telling them that if they don’t vote the way the Foundation says then they are a problem. That message in big bold text is what people see first, not the message about subsidies and jobs. How many people got past the first message to read the smaller text on the flip side? I would have expected a more sophisticated approach by the foundation.
The message here is when it comes to wording advocacy material, try to bring people along with you rather than set them up in opposition. Your organisation already has the support of those your message resonates with. Don’t take them for granted. Retain their support and try to bring along the undecided. That is how you build your numbers and advocacy power.
