Parts 1 through 3 in this arc answered "Why do this exercise?" Parts 4 through 7 discussed "Why those messages?" Part 8 shared the results and analysis of the first anthropologic communication, "We trust you". Part 9 shared the same for "You can trust us", part 10 shared the results and analysis of "This is important", part 11 covered "This is important to you" and part 12 explained "We can help". This time we make it personal. "Who can you help?"
We Can Help You....
We explained the progression of survival messages and this entry completes that progression. It does so by creating a dependency condition between presenter and presentee (the person presenting the information and the person receiving the information). Survival information, as explained in "This is important to you" requires an offer to help if the survival information is to be considered useful. That offer to help must be at the individual level if individuals are to act upon it with a reasonable expectation that their actions will (forgive the pun) bear fruit.
We use the example of the destroyed California orange crop again:
- "The orange crop in California has been pretty much devastated due to freezing cold weather" == "This is important"
- "This means what you pay for oranges, orange juice, citrus fruits, etc., is going to go up" == "This is important to you"
- "Fortunately, Grocerteria Inc has negotiated with Florida orange growers to provide high quality oranges and other citrus fruits for the remainder of the season" == "We can help"
- "Fortunately, Grocerteria Inc has negotiated with Florida orange growers to provide high quality oranges and other citrus fruits for the remainder of the season and we're going to pass these savings on to you" == "We can help you"
The "We can help you" results and analysis are: The Inaugural Address messages were the weakest in the lost and "We can help you" continues that pattern. The "We can help you" messages were the strongest in all speeches and the "We can help you" 23 Jan 07 State of the Union message was the strongest of all communications measured in this exercise. There can be little doubt that a politician broadcasting the non-conscious message "We can help you" is a good thing. My confusion comes from the disparity between "This is important", the weakest communication in the lot, and this one. My first thought was that our tool needed to be recalibrated. We checked that option via seed population studies (get a group of individuals together, calibrate them, ask them to do something, recalibrate, lather, rinse, repeat kind of thing) and our tool was responding within operational parameters, so what else? NextStage routinely analyzes business communications for clients, looking for these and other messagings, and often we'll discover that one message is broadcast much stronger than the others. For example, it's fairly common in US based marketing material to broadcast the message "They're not good people" (something we'll get to further on in this arc) very strongly. However, analyze Canadian based marketing material and that message is practically absent. Why so? Because Canadian companies aren't allowed to demonstrate or infer in any way that they're better than their competitors. One of the first things we have to advise our Canadian customers when entering the US market is to strengthen their "They're not good people" message. This manifestation -- the author's non-conscious belief about what their doing masking the intent of the material (you can find several examples in Seven Things Evolution Technology Can Do for Your Website in Three Months or Less and NextStage's Language Engine Technology in Brief) -- could be happening here. (more to follow) Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics. Links for this post:
Message: We can help you Inaugural Jan 20, 2001 39% State of the Union Jan 29, 2002 71% State of the Union Jan 28, 2003 94% State of the Union Jan 20, 2004 93% State of the Union Feb 2, 2005 99% State of the Union Jan 31, 2006 97% State of the Union Jan 23, 2007 100%
(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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