Last weekend, Chris Hayes, Editor at Large for The Nation magazine and host of a Saturday and Sunday morning political analysis and commentary show on MSNBC, uncovered an amazing story. He had acquired a proposal memo written by a Washington D.C. lobbying and political consulting firm (CLGC) to the American Banking Association. This memo clearly demonstrates the principles of the political messaging that Jeff Reading spoke of in our class last week: strategy and execution.
The memo carefully frames the the consequences that the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) The subject of the proposal is the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. Whether the proposal was solicited by the client, or provided as a preemptive and opportunistic document by the consulting firm is unknown, and not really relevant. What is important is the content of the document. The memo authors present a coherent and persuasive case for establishing a plan and preparing the groundwork for a messaging campaign that could be launched on a moment's notice to counter the growing positive trend of public opinion toward OWS. The fundamental elements of their plan "include: survey research and message testing, opposition research, targeted social media monitoring, coalition planning, and advertising creative and placement strategy development" (Clark, Lytle, et.al , 2011).
Clearly, there is growing concern among conservatives and republican operatives that the OWS is gaining momentum, building an organization with goals and targets, and growing in support by mainstream Americans. This seems to strike fear in the hearts of wall street firms from an image standpoint, but also from a fear that their Republican defenders may actually be turned against them by public support for OWS. This memo proposes building a tool box of messaging tools that can be deployed at will by a coalition of Wall Street firms with the shared interest of stopping or minimizing the effectiveness of the OWS message. They propose using opposition research to employ the narrative paradigm theory of persuasion (Dainton & Zelley, 2005) to turn public opinion against OWS.
The plan is thorough, methodical and logical, but I sure hope it fails! Somehow it just seems a bit slimey to me when the best strategy one has is to smear and discredit the other side. Using negative story telling and embellishing potentially negative details to paint a mean and scary opponent rather than sell the merits of one's own position is reminiscent of "Swift Boating". It may be legal and common in politics, but I question how ethical such political communication is.
A Copy of the proposal memo can be found here.
This is the breaking news segment from Up with Chris Hayes (approximately 5 minutes long)
Reference:
Dainton, M., and Zelley, E. (2005) Applying communication theory for professional life: A practical introduction. New York, NY, Sage
Clark, S., Cranford, J., Lytle, G., and Gelgudig, S. (2011) Memo to: American Bankers Association. Washington D.C. Gelgudig & Cranford
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