The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

I wanted to do that by tying it to a before and after analysis of Senator Fred Thompson's campaign site. It's always fascinating to see how somebody changes their messaging after an announcement.

The casual observer won't notice much different between the site as it was on 1 Sept 07 (on the right) and how it appeared on both 5 Sept 07 and 6 Sept 07. That's a good thing because in politics, it's the positive and familiar that wins votes.

This is the 5 Sept 07 homepage. There's the naturally occuring changes in content that you'd expect on any high traffic site. Both the 1 Sept 07 and the 5 Sept 07 homepages are designed for the V8 Rich Personae.

This is Senator Fred Thompson's campaign site on 6 Sept 07. The changes are more obvious to the casual observer and again, you'd expect them to be after a major announcement. What is interesting to me is that the site is now using a V7 Rich Personae. This was the personae used by Governor Mitt Romney. It was Senator Thompson's use of the V8 Rich Personae and its "You're doing a good job. Let me show you something that might help you out." versus Governor Romney's V7 message's "You're doing it wrong, do it my way. It's better." that I thought would separate Senator Thompson from the pack.

Before I forget, the other modification to Senator Thompson's site is a new "prepage" before you get to what most would consider the real homepage. This is something we saw often during the 2004 campaigns. From a consumer perspective it's not something I would encourage. This page, encountered before all others, essentially asks the visitor to buy the product before learning if the product is a good match for what ails them. The assumption on Senator Thompson's staff may be that he's so well known at this point that anybody coming to the site is coming to join. I'm not so sure. This page, by the way, is designed for a K7 Rich Personae, ie, it has a good, strong, emotional appeal. Just what you'd want if you thought people already knew about you and you wanted them to act in your behalf.

This gets us to what else is encapsulated in NextStage's Rich Personae. NextStage's Rich Personae also reveal most prominent messages, strongest messages, messages in the order they appear to the non-conscious mind, ... It's pretty...umm...rich.

Also, as you begin to get deeper and deeper into the Rich Personae system, you'll learn that the strongest message on, for example, a young female V7 is different from a mature, male V7.

Here, Senator Thompson's strongest message is "Compare me to others and you will see that I can put us on a path and bring structure to this country. You can count on it." Governor Mitt Romney's strongest message is very similar with two significant edits; "[no comparison desired or implied] You will see that I can put us on a path and bring structure to this place. Are you with me, yes or no?" Perhaps Senator Thompson sees Governor Romney as having the audience he wants, hence the deep messaging is the same. The substantive difference between the two sites is that Governor Romney, if he were talking to you, would be saying his message twice as loud as Senator Thompson.

Back in the day when Senator Thompson's site was designed for a V8 Rich Personae, its message was similar except for the missing introductory call to comparison;"[no comparison desired or implied] You will see that I can put us on a path and bring structure to this place. You can count on it."

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Links for this post:

• BizMediaScience Political Posts
• What your marketing is REALLY saying

• Audience Focused Optimization

• IMedia Brand Summit on 9-12 Sept 07
• XChange on 20-21 Sept 07
• DC Emetrics Summit on 14-17 Oct '07
• Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston.