People on the news are talking about terrorists in Iraq. It's Sunday afternoon and I did a taped interview on Fox News this morning, to support my film, Our Brand Is Crisis. Since then I've been watching television, waiting for my interview to come up. Now there's a debate going on about whether or not civil war is going to break out in Iraq, and one pundit seems bent on dispelling the notion that civil war is even a possibility.
"This is the work of outsiders," he says. "Of terrorists." How can we fix the problem?, asks the moderator. "Kill them," says the man. "Kill the terrorists."
I am amazed at the simplicity of this message -- the clarity of the goal. No matter the infinite complexity of the actual situation. Here is something we can all understand and aim for: we must find the terrorists and kill them. Then, it is implied, everything will return to normal. I wonder -- how many people hear that man and agree with him? How many people are convinced? And if the message is effective, why do we so easily accept an expert distilling such a complicated situation into such black and white terms?
"Our Brand Is Crisis" follows the Greenberg Carville Shrum political consulting firm to South America, as the U.S. advisors run a presidential campaign for Bolivian candidate Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada ("Goni"). It's a movie about the all-American art of crafting and targeting messages and, since filming the campaign with intimate access to poll presentations, focus groups, ad-making sessions and strategy meetings, I've become very sensitive to messages, wherever I see them.
It seems every campaign needs a simple slogan like "Kill the terrorists," whether it's for a product, a politician or a war. Goni's slogan was "Si se puede!" or "Yes, it can be done!" Bolivia's economy was in ruins, with a devastating lack of income and astronomical unemployment. The consultants came in believing Goni was the man who could find the solution; he had, after all, brought hyper-inflation under control as Bolivia's finance minister in the '80s and had completely reworked the economy with a new form of privatization as president in the mid-'90s. So it seemed logical to choose "Yes it can be done!" as Goni's theme. It conveyed a positive determination, a sense that he was the candidate with the experience and capability to tackle the country's financial crisis. Of course, at the time, no one could have predicted the disaster that would ensue.
While I was filming, I talked to the consultants about why a good message needs to be brief. Time, they told me, was key. People don't have enough of it in modern life, and they don't want to waste precious moments reading or listening to more than need be. So a good message must be simple and easily absorbed while reading a poster on the subway or watching an ad on TV.
And of course part of the pressure to speak in simple catch phrases comes from the medium television itself.
At the start of my interview this morning, I asked how long my answers should be. "Try to keep it brief," said the interviewer. "I only have a two-minute slot."
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