Content May Be King but Context Rules

Easter is the highest of holy days in Christendom. Nobody does Easter like the Catholics (we Catholics actually, in the interest of disclosure). Easter is so important that the Feast itself actually lasts eight days and the season 50 days. And no Mass is more important than the Easter Vigil, which happens between darkness and sunrise on Holy Saturday. It’s the full-on bells-and-smells, bonfires and candles, baptism of converts, two- to three-hour infomercial with testimonials for the Lord.

It’s a ritual beautiful beyond description and an exhausting experience.

But it’s also the Church’s greatest annual opportunity to demonstrate what the whole Catholic and (in Canon) Christian brand is about.

So imagine you’re the brand manager for the Roman Catholic Church and you see this headline:



This humble off-ramp on the Information Superhighway got its name from an example I used in a lunchroom conversation in 2002. My companion that day, a fellow marketer from another company, seemed to like it so I put it into the repertoire. Later, when I heard it from another colleague who thought her source had invented it, I decided to claim at least some credit in the form of a free URL.

Whatever.

My point even going back to that (exquisite in those days, if you must know) lunch at Cornerstone Brands, was that what your audience believes they know about your brand or your client shapes their perception of every single piece of new information. You can try all your life to tell them what they think – what they know – isn’t true, but unless and until you replace that Dominant Narrative with a new truth, you’re screwed.

And right now, if B16 – an 82 year-old man, btw – saved a baby from a burning bus, the headline in the mainstream press likely would be Holy Father Saves Baby Amid Lingering Abuse Questions.

Live with it.

Language Doesn’t Just Frame the Argument. Sometimes it Decides It.

What are you for? What are you against?

The words used to ask the question can go a long way to framing your perception of the question, and the position to which you commit.

Last month, evil genius public relations consultant & researcher Frank Luntz circulated a memo to his clients on how to frame – and ultimately derail – financial reform legislation in the United States Congress.

No matter how you feel about Lutz’s political position (or that of his clients), you have to appreciate the methodology.

You can praise or curse the effectiveness at your leisure.

Essentially what Luntz and his company Word Doctors are doing is identifying the Dominant Narrative and plugging their clients’ preferred narrative into them.

It’s like dipping your toe into the stream and then deciding which way you’d like to paddle.

And it just might work.

The Arch Narrative of Random Violence

A couple of days ago I promised to get back to the dominant narrative of random violence. There’s an important point here: The Dominant Narrative doesn’t have to be factual to affect the way people think and act. It only has to be true – that is, some significant group of people has to believe it.

Random violence is a very rare fact of life in any society in any time.

Read that sentence again.

At least two members of my own family have been victims of such crimes over the last two generations and all the statistical analysis in the world will not ease their (or my) suffering for it.

Still, that doesn’t make it a common occurrence, just one that gets reported: through the news media, anecdotes told at neighborhood gatherings, emails forwarded to “EVERYBODY YOU KNOW!”

Yet, we all believe it. I say “we” because I include myself in that statement. It’s part of who we are. That’s an arch dominant narrative.

Recently a friend who works in the justice system confirmed my suspicions regarding so-called home invasions. “Twenty years,” she said, “never seen one where they didn’t know each other.”

So why do these myths of random violence persist? Part of it has to do with legal restrictions. When a guy gets shot on his front porch or is found dead in a parking lot outside a night club, the cops may know he was a drug dealer, but it’s a bit awkward to say that about a recently deceased 19-year-old.

Or 15-year-old.

They’re coming for your women

Several weeks ago I received an email from a friend – insisting that I pass it along to my wife for her own safety – about a new gang initiation rite. It seems that “gang members” were being ordered to break into cars and minivans – at random – in the parking lots of local discount stores and then lay in wait to rape white women. Recipients were advised to avoid certain parking lots, park in well lighted areas, and check the back seats and cargo areas of their vehicles.

Good advice. Bad narrative.

Who were these gangs that want to harm white women? If they specifically target Caucasians, they must be something … other. Who are you afraid of?

Who is THEM?

What other arch narrative are we following?


Rule: Check Snopes before you believe anything.



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