A frame says what the issue is about. A message is the handful of words you will repeat until your audience can say them back. Good messages are short, concrete, true and repeated, and every piece you write should carry the same one.
Do this
- Write a core message of 15 words or fewer. It should contain the problem or the promise, and the action. If you can't fit it, you haven't decided what the campaign is about.
- Make it concrete. "Buses every ten minutes" beats "better public transport". Numbers, places, times and objects stick; abstractions don't.
- Pick three supporting points, no more. Each should be provable with one source you can name.
- Repeat it everywhere. Use the same words on the flyer, in the op-ed's last line, in the speech and in every post. Repetition feels boring to you long before your audience has noticed it once.
- Contrast, don't just describe. Most winning messages set up a choice: this, not that.
- Stay disciplined. When asked about something else, answer briefly and come back to the message.
What the research says
Simple, concrete, unexpected ideas stick. Heath & Heath (2007) summarise research on memorability as SUCCESs: simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, stories. Concrete language is easier to picture and recall.
Repetition makes statements feel true. The illusory truth effect (Hasher, Goldstein & Toppino, 1977) means repeated statements are rated as more true than new ones. Fazio et al. (2015) found this holds even when people know the correct answer. See Illusory truth effect. This is why message discipline works, and it is also why repeating a false claim is so effective. The honest use is repeating true claims; the ethical duty is to make sure yours are.
Easy-to-recall examples feel common. The availability heuristic (Availability heuristic; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973) means vivid, repeated examples make a problem feel bigger. Use real examples, and don't present one vivid case as a trend.
Worked examples: real campaigns
Messages from across the spectrum and several countries. Each is short, concrete or contrastive, and was repeated relentlessly.
| Campaign | Message | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Bill Clinton, US, 1992 | "The economy, stupid" (an internal war-room reminder by James Carville, alongside "Change vs. more of the same") | Message discipline: a note to staff to keep coming back to one issue. |
| Ronald Reagan, US, 1980 | "Let's Make America Great Again" | Promise plus restoration. Donald Trump's 2016 campaign used "Make America Great Again". |
| Barack Obama, US, 2008 | "Yes we can" | Collective efficacy; echoes "Sí, se puede", the United Farm Workers slogan associated with Dolores Huerta (1972). |
| Indira Gandhi, India, 1971 | "Garibi Hatao" (Remove poverty) | A single concrete promise that became the name of the campaign. |
| BJP, India, 2014 | "Abki baar, Modi sarkar" (This time, a Modi government) | Contrast and a named choice in six words. |
| Australian Labor, 2007 | "Kevin 07" | The leader's name and the year as the whole message. |
| Australian Coalition, 2013 | "Stop the boats" | Three-word promise tied to one policy. |
| Vote Leave, UK, 2016 | "Take back control" | Three words; the frame and the action together. |
Worked example: you applying it
Invented case: Riverton's Measure 12, a half-cent sales tax for buses every ten minutes.
| For | Against | |
|---|---|---|
| Core message | "Buses every ten minutes. Your evenings back. Yes on 12." | "Keep Main Street's prices fair. No on 12." |
| Point 1 | Six routes go from every 40 minutes to every 10 (source: the measure text). | Riverton's sales tax would be 0.5 points higher than the next county's (source: state tax tables). |
| Point 2 | Costs a typical household about $X a year (source: the council's fiscal note). | Shops within five miles of the county line report customers already crossing it (source: Chamber survey, with its sample size). |
| Point 3 | Endorsed by the Parent-Teacher Association (a real, named endorsement). | The county transport grant could fund two of the six routes without a tax (source: grant documents). |
| Contrast | Ten minutes, not forty. | Fair prices, not a tax that sends shoppers away. |
Placeholders like $X are there on purpose: fill them with the real figure, or drop the point.
Where it crosses the line
- A message that is only a virtue word, with no checkable promise, is Glittering generalities.
- Repeating a claim you know is false, relying on the illusory truth effect, is disinformation. It is also how Firehosing works at scale.
- Claiming momentum or majority support you can't source is Bandwagon.
- Saying something bold in the slogan and retreating to something modest when challenged is Motte and bailey. Make sure your slogan and your small print describe the same thing.
Go deeper
- Illusory truth effect, Availability heuristic, Anchoring
- Next chapter: Narrative
Sources
- Heath, C. & Heath, D. (2007). Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Random House.
- Hasher, L., Goldstein, D. & Toppino, T. (1977). Frequency and the conference of referential validity. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 16(1), 107–112.
- Fazio, L. K., Brashier, N. M., Payne, B. K. & Marsh, E. J. (2015). Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(5), 993–1002.
- Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5(2), 207–232.
- Matalin, M. & Carville, J. (1994). All's Fair: Love, War, and Running for President. Random House.
- Luntz, F. (2007). Words That Work. Hyperion.