Framing framing
A thorough article from the Times Magazine -- gives good insight into the new way the Dems are trying to out-Republican the Republican Party. Is it a good thing if it is effective?
posted by Dumplingeater @ 7/17/2005
2 comments
2 Comments:
I'm in basic agreement with you Mark. But the article makes some very good points about the drawbacks and superficiality that can come along with the push towards "framing." The basic point is that by changing their language only, without coming up with better positions, Democrats will not gain any real advantage. The Republicans have certain advantages in that their policies and stances are inherently simpler and amenable to "framing." And the article suggests that many Democrats seem to think tinkering with language is end goal, without grasping the underlying complexities and inherent weaknesses of framing as a strategy. I don't know if you've read the article, but it does a very thorough job of looking at framing from different angles.
Also, recently I have seen where some progressive organizations are overly enamored with "marketing" techniques, and devote energy to marketing efforts that to me seem ill conceived at best, a waste of time at worst. Fancy adds, websites, commercials and high priced marketing consultants who have endless focus groups to test how issues should be framed, sometimes might be effective, but are certainly always a poor substitute for shoe leather, knocking on neighbors' doors, and sound policies (no matter how their "framed). Those of us outside of the corporate world tend to have an inflated sense of the efficiency and efficacy of corporate marketing strategies. PWC, a company that hires out high-priced experts to help companies develop marketing campaigns, spent $110 million, that's $110 million, on a "rebranding exercise" and came up with the brilliant idea to change the name of its consulting arm to "Monday." Let me ask you, couldn't you have told them, for maybe 1 or 2 million dollars less, that their new name was a stupid choice? Shortly after beginning, this rebranding exercise was dropped -- a complete waste of money. And I think a healthy dose of skepticism should be added to the mix as the Democrats create a whole industry for studying how to "frame" their arguments.
where to begin?
if you want to take the article at face value, then the dems must in the course of framing the argument, place it in the larger context of a culture. That is what republicans offer. Strange as it seems, they tie into the revisonist history that things were better way back when. Since that works with a lot of people, the framing for them is more about harkening back to things everyone USED to believe in, not what democrats focus on which is how much better things CAN be. But getting people to buy into a future, any future, is much harder than asking them to step back into a more comfortable past. That in essence, is the republican marketing. So, on the business side, the framing issue goes hand in hand with another business marketing tactic called bundling. Wanna buy a sandwich? That comes with a coke. Wanna get your car washed? Don't you also want the air freshener? Wanna fix social security? That comes with prayer in schools. Once you find the primary selling proposition for a particular group, you then begin to cross sell and upsell to other more important issues. Dems don't do that because the first hurdle, which they cannot jump is that their stuff is new. At best, if they finally get the masses to believe in the one issue, those same people are too risk averse to buy into the broader set.
So, I think the framing is a good start, but I really think they need an equally good position as the republicans that they can build upon.
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