Positive vs negative messaging in campaigning
Posted: January 17, 2012 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: activism, campaigning, negative messaging, occupy wall street, positive messaging, poster Leave a comment »Here in activist land, we often talk about ‘positive vs negative messaging’.
Quit smoking ads and skin cancer ads almost always make use of ‘negative messaging’. Sad ads featuring puppies in the RSPCA or starving children in Africa are others examples. It appeals to people’s inborn fears – fear that they’ll die, fear of pain, fear of losing one loved ones, fear of poverty, fear that their life in undeservedly more comfortable than that of others. The hope here is that people become so sad, so guilt-ridden or so afraid that they’ll get up and do something.
It’s a powerful tool because it has the power to move people deeply, but it can be dangerous if overused. People can become ‘turned off’ and thus discouraged.
Environmentalists used negative messaging at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit. Their platform was “it’s now or never” and “this is our last change”. The sense of urgency was meant to instigate change. Of course, nothing miraculous happened at COP15. So with all their chips spent what were environmentalists to say at this year’s climate change talks in Durban? “Um, you know how we said Copenhagen was our last chance? Actually, THIS is our last chance. For reals this time.”
These days most campaigns try and use positive messaging. Positive messaging tries to inspire people to strive for a better and more beautiful world. One of the best examples must be the recent and incredibly successful GetUp! campaign ad. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should.
It’s simple, beautifully made and leaves you feeling all gooey inside about how awesome love is. No wonder it’s garnered over four million views in less than two months. The campaign for marriage equality usually relies on ‘negative messaging’ – the tone is normally one of indignant anger, or sadness, about the injustice of a homophobic law that bans same-sex marriage. So I think this ad is unusual in that is uses ‘positive messaging’.
In truth, both positive and negative messaging have their place. (Note, when I use the word ‘negative’ that doesn’t mean bad, it’s just a technical term.) And sometimes great campaigns make use of both. Take the Occupy Wall Street poster:
The rioters at the bottom is ‘negative’ – they represent anger against an injustice system. But the ballerina is ‘positive’ – she inspires us to prevail and create something wonderful.
A most unlikely city gets OCCUPIED
Posted: January 6, 2012 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: hong kong, hong kong domestic helpers, occupy hong kong, occupy movement, occupy wall street, protesters 1 Comment »
Yesterday my Greenpeace colleagues in Hong Kong told me of a local Occupy movement, out at the HSBC headquarters. “But there are more Filipino maids ‘occupying’ the park then there are protesters,” they joked.
Every Sunday thousands of Hong Kong’s live-in Filipino and Indonesian domestic helpers gather together and socialise in public areas on their one day off. In fact, I just learned the HSBC headquarters is, along with places like Victoria Park, one of the maid hangouts. Which means that on Sundays the protesters are occupying the space of one of the city’s most disadvantaged groups. Although perhaps sharing is a better word seeing as the maids would outnumber the thirty or forty protesters by 100 to 1.
My photo above taken today, along with a 2006 photo from flickr of maids chilling on their day off. Image (cc) Ljubisa Bojic
Despite the small numbers, I was pretty excited to head to my first Occupy site. Especially in Hong Kong, the most unlikeliest cities. In my last blog post I talked about how Milton Friedman called this “the world’s greatest experiment in laissez-faire capitalism”. Hong Kong is one of the world’s most important shipping ports and financial hubs, so you can safely say has done nothing but benefited from corporate power (and misuse of power).
The sleek HSBC headquarters is nestled comfortably among giant luxury brand stores like LV and Dolce & Gabanna. Two lion statues gaze impassively at the bustling bankers in their sharp suits and now, pretty remarkably, a small but colourful Occupation. The camp has been around since October 15.
It was pretty quiet on a Friday morning, although there would supposedly be more activities later that evening. Hong Kong local Lee is pictured above manning the reception desk. While Anthony from Australia pictured below is just breezing in and out. “I’m in town for a conference and I hit up a couchsurfer who said if I wanted to crash with him here I could!” One of the more original places to couchsurf.
I was pretty amazed by this little island of defiance. Meanwhile on the rest of the island the only hint of revolution looks like this:
UPDATED: Occupy Hong Kong once held a candlelight vigil for equal rights of foreign domestic helpers, with migrant workers turning up in support.
Hey America, life sucks? Welcome to the real world.
Posted: October 21, 2011 Filed under: ARTS, BLOG, WORKS | Tags: America, occupy wall street, Persephone Magazine, recession, united states 4 Comments »Persephone Magazine
Noreen Malone, in writing for New York magazine, has a wonderful image in describing the post-recession world our generation find ourselves in:
“A majority of Americans say, for the first time ever, that this generation will not be better off than its parents. And so we find ourselves living among the scattered ashes and spilled red wine and broken glass from a party we watched in our pajamas, peering down the stairs at the grown-ups. This is not a morning after we are prepared for … “
She paints a picture that is bleak: young people without stable or high-salaried jobs, no disposable incomes, no safety nets. It is a feeling also captured in the Occupy Wall Street related tumblr We Are the 99%, where there are posts like this: “Went to college for my last two years of high school and worked my ass off to graduate college at the age of 18 with TWO degrees. Graduated into a flooded market and never got a single call back or interview. Work at a shitty job living paycheck to paycheck, and usually have to borrow money for food”. There is a loaded implication in these statements. “It shouldn’t be like this.” This isn’t fair. It isn’t just.
