September 8, 2008

Generalizing the layered messaging model

In my introductory post on layered messaging, I laid out two basic templates for enterprise IT messaging. But consider, if you would, the following

General layered marketing template

Clearly, the second of my the two enterprise IT layered messaging templates I proposed,

Enterprise IT product (sustainable-lead messaging stack)

is just a special case of that more general model.

Another special case seems to work well for the other market I tend to write about in this blog, namely US politics. Namely, the template

Political candidates

seems to cover a lot of today’s campaign marketing.

For example, by applying this model to some of this year’s presidential candidates, we could get

John McCain (general election)

Barack Obama (general election)

Ron Paul

Hillary Clinton (late in her campaign)

All of these templates seem to be well-accepted by a large group of supporters. “Large” is of course a somewhat relative term, with Ron Paul’s story ringing true with a lot fewer people than Obama’s, McCain’s, or Clinton. But then, not as many people believe in Paul’s libertarian dogma as accept general US right-wing, left-wing, or centrist political approaches. By way of contrast, it’s hard to come up with a layered messaging stack for Rudy Giuliani that would impress many voters; “Subject-Verb-9/11” was never fleshed out in a detailed way that very many people bought. And the same goes for presidential candidate Joe Biden’s “I’m a working-class guy like you, except that I’m smart about foreign policy.”

Much of what has happened in the campaign could be explained starting from templates like these. Not all, of course. For example, field organization – and particularly Obama’s huge advantage in same in most states, and Clinton’s advantage in a few – goes a long way toward explaining the Democratic primary outcome. But on the whole, I think it’s not too inaccurate to say that candidates tend to do well to the extent voters and influencers buy into all the layers of their messaging pitch, but not so well to the extent one or more layers are seen as being seriously lacking.

Comments

One Response to “Generalizing the layered messaging model”

  1. Enterprise IT marketing — a layered messaging model | Strategic Messaging on September 8th, 2008 1:55 am

    […] Generalize the layered messaging model and apply it to political campaigns […]

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