Yesterday I happened to wake up to a conservative talk show on the radio. As I was listening I was struck by how much the host leaned on fear as the story he was telling. So I had been thinking about the effectivness of using fear as the story to sell your idea, position, brand, or whatever (Then of course later that day the RNC’s fear strategy document came out, so i was thinking about it even more).
If the future belongs to the story tellers like so many say, then we have to be able to tell an effective story. The fear story can be effective of course, but I would rather be sold something positive then negative.
So, I was thinking, if somebody is going to use a fear story on me what does it take for it to be effective? The talk show host was 100% ineffective on me, if anything he convinced me not to listen to him again. To be effective on me he would have to:
- not be sensationalist. Your sensationalism only convinces me your prone to exaggeration.
- tell me what I should be afraid of. Be specific. I’m not really afraid of this nebulous idea of “America changing”. There might be some things that should change. Give me some specific things that I should be afraid of, and why (and to the shows host..”it’s un-american” does not count as a reason)
- give an argument for why what I fear is likely to come to pass
- acknowledge the possibilities that you might be wrong, or partly wrong. If said talk show host had said “the current administration is doing X. This has the possibility of leading to scenario A, which is bad because 0f Y, or scenario B which is less bad because of Z” I might have listened.
Just some thoughts. By the way, conservative talk show hosts are not the only ones that do this, everybody does (see global warming and Hell House). He just happened to be the one I heard that morning.
poolhousered 