Parts 4 through 7 explained "Why those messages?" via an excerpt from Reading Virtual Minds. This thread is actually a description of how NextStage hones some of its tools. Here we share how honed those tools are and begin the analysis.
One consistent element our analysis showed was that whoever was writing these speeches never had a positive outlook for the country. Each result demonstrated a negative attitude towards either the present or future situations, often both.
George W. Bush's strongest message was "We can help you" in his 23 Jan 07 State of the Union Address. We'll use the relative strength of that message as "100%" and measure all the other messages against that message's intensity. First up, "We trust you":
Message: We trust you Inaugural Jan 20, 2001 25% State of the Union Jan 29, 2002 45% State of the Union Jan 28, 2003 54% State of the Union Jan 20, 2004 53% State of the Union Feb 2, 2005 54% State of the Union Jan 31, 2006 60% State of the Union Jan 23, 2007 57%
First notice that the speechwriter didn't start out trusting his audience very much at first, at least not when compared to the strongest message ("We can help you" in his 23 Jan 07 State of the Union). "We trust you"'s intensity did double after 9/11 and continued to rise (the 3% drop from '06 to '07 is not something that would cause me to recalibrate our tools.) If those numbers drop in '08, then it's worth noting as either a tool slip or indicator of non-conscious emotional content on the speechwriter's part.
(more to follow)
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- NextStage's Predictive Echo Tool
- Political posts and pages
- Politics Aren't Horseraces Any More
- Predicting Election Outcomes via NextStage's TargetTrackTM
- Predicting Business Success links:
- The President Bush's Speeches as Examples of Anthropologic Communications arc:
- President Bush's Speeches as Examples of Anthropologic Communications, Part 1
- President Bush's Speeches as Examples of Anthropologic Communications, Part 2
- President Bush's Speeches as Examples of Anthropologic Communications, Part 3
- President Bush's Speeches as Examples of Anthropologic Communications, Part 4
- President Bush's Speeches as Examples of Anthropologic Communications, Part 5
- President Bush's Speeches as Examples of Anthropologic Communications, Part 6
- President Bush's Speeches as Examples of Anthropologic Communications, Part 7
- TargetTrack links:
- Using NextStage's TargetTrack in Political Campaigns: A NextStage Evolution Research Case Study
(Information in this arc is from Reading Virtual Minds Chapter 4, "Anecdotes of Learning". Text and images copyright Joseph Carrabis and NextStage Evolution 2006-2007)
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