What President Trump and Prime Minister Johnson can teach the business community.

What? In a few words – the success in simplicity – the clarity of their communication strategy.

Both political leaders positioned themselves around one key message during their elections. The message was clear and unambiguous.

In the US Elections – “Make America Great again” was the rallying call for Trump.

In the UK Elections – “Let’s get Brexit done” was Johnson’s core message.

Both well researched messages - US elections tend to be won and lost on ‘the economy stupid!’ so the message was totally on point. UK clearly wanted to move past Brexit contrary to what so many had thought.

All opportunities to invoke the power of repetition were used by both leaders to reinforce this core message. In debates, regardless of the questions posed; both leaders were able to bring it back to these messages. To this day, President Trump takes every opportunity to reinforce the message even wearing a rather unflattering red baseball hat c/w core message when faced by the World’s media.

So the question for you as a business owner/leader/manager -  What is your core promise? What is your core message? What is your unique selling proposition?  #whatsyourstory

Why the big deal? Because we are living in an attention deficit world? It’s difficult to get your message to stick. The average attention span as highlighted in many posts is 8 seconds – goldfish are more attentive with a span of 9 seconds. By repeating a clear simple message, you geometrically improve the chances of it hitting your target’s consciousness.

If you are unaware of your key message and decide to position yourself as a master of many things; your message will likely get lost in the atmosphere.

Years ago, they decided that seven was the magic number when they were considering the length of a phone number. In more recent times, people argue that people can only retain three peices of information - the power of three.

Regardless of how challenging it is; your core message needs to be communicated in as succinct a soundbyte as possible…..maybe even in a hashtag.

In 2017, we conducted a very successful fundraising campaign that generated over $500k for local sporting facilities – the campaign name #fiveraweek. This message was communicated via numerous platforms including even on some very colourful fundraiser’s teeshirts!

Just today, further confirmation of the fact we are living in a soundbyte world was the results of a study highlighted in the Guardian. It showed that people absorb their news in headlines with many not even clicking through to read the full article.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/15/what-we-learned-about-the-media-this-election?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet

So for now the advice is clear…..MISS - Make it simple stupid!!!