En tu idioma / In your own language

Eduardo del Buey
Foto: Carlos Ramos Mamahua
La Jornada Maya

Martes 6 de diciembre, 2016


Get your messages out first.

That is key to a successful campaign, be it political, sales, or any other attempt to position yourself with the media.

Donald Trump knew this from the start. From the first day of his campaign he said many outrageous things – things guaranteed to get media attention and hold it. But he also used a strategy to ensure the daily media conversation revolved around him, gaining very valuable coverage that saved him millions in campaign advertisements.

Very early in the morning (sometimes in the dead of night) he would begin tweeting messages about his opponents or about some issue that caught his attention. His opponents then spent the rest of the day defending themselves from these attacks, while Trump basked in the glow of a winning media strategy.

He captivated the media and used them effectively, all the while bashing them as though they were his electoral opponents. The media played the role of faithful handmaidens, and ensured he received all of the attention he craved, at the expense of his opponents, and with little criticism. Indeed, media outlets like CNN hired Trump surrogates to spread his message 24/7 across the breadth of its programming, pretending that they were journalists, and placed them on an even playing field with such personalities as Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, and Erin Burnett.

But Trump was not the first politician to espouse the rise early and set the agenda strategy.

In his 1999 campaign for the mayoralty of Mexico City, leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO to Mexicans) would get up in the dead of the night and hold his daily campaign press conference at 6 a.m. He would set out his agenda for the day, get his messages out, and then watch as his adversaries scrambled to respond or try to get their messages out. Opponents would invariably fail to make a dent, and he won the mayoralty handily.

And this was before social media and the 24/7 news cycle.

Get your message out first, make it captivating, and then manage the news cycle boldly.

Get the media to do your work.

Say interesting things, say them early, loudly, and often.

Set the communications agenda first.

Throughout the campaign Trump was available to the media 24/7. Even when he was criticizing journalists at his campaign stops, he was constantly phoning television and radio networks and spreading his messages. It was all Trump, all the time.

Clinton shone by her absence throughout the year prior to Labor day weekend, holding only one news conference during that period, and afraid to address the issues that eventually turned many voters off – her management of her email account and her relationship with the Clinton Global Initiative. She thought that avoiding the media would help her avoid discussing these issues. But her absence only made things worse, as the media wound up speculating and discussing all of these issues in a negative way, affecting her standing with voters. By the time she became accessible to the media, the game was done and Trump was the master.

Create a public persona that grabs attention, and that ensures your message will fly above the noise of the daily media grind.

Making news is what a campaign is all about. A politician wants to make the conversation about himself or herself, drowning out the opposition.

As a candidate fighting for votes, you want to be the first to define the issues, discuss your proposals for addressing them, and show your concern for the voters. If you succeed in doing so, you will do so in a language and style that makes you look good (or at least as good as possible).

If you leave the opening salvo and the subsequent conversation to your opponents, they will use inimical language to paint you negatively, and ensure you get bad press.

Hence the value of being first off the mark, managing the conversation, being omnipresent, and ensuring that you are seen in the best light.

Mérida, Yucatán

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