The Message Is the Message: Occupy Wall Street
October 14, 2011
Half of any battle is controlling the media perception of “us” and “them.” Despite its decentralized nature, Occupy Wall Street has been characterizing itself as “speaking up for the 99% who have no voice in government” and “representing the marginalized” by repeatedly providing quotes and sound-bytes of that nature to news sources both reputable and not. In doing so, they’ve applied a strategy frequently undertaken by politicians and their cohorts: Keep talking, and you’ll change what people talk about.
Image Credit: {link:Image via http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/gallery/occupy_boston_camp/}boston.com{/link}
In the wake of the November 7th election in 2000, the Bush campaign flooded the airwaves with commentary about honoring absentee ballots, focusing especially on American soldiers stationed abroad. By constantly talking about overseas voters, they did a masterful job of drowning out the Gore Campaign’s call for recounts and re-directed the attention of the press towards what they wanted the press to focus on. In contrast, Christine O’Donnell stumbled on this very point in 2010 with her now infamous “I am not a Witch” campaign ad; by drawing attention to the issue instead of letting it die, she kept the issue in the news cycle and the conversation focused on a topic that did her campaign no favors. OWS, on the other hand, has firmly planted their topics and their issues at the center of the dialog this election cycle.
In point of fact, whatever you think of the OWS protesters and their cause, you can’t turn on the news these days without stumbling across them. (Even if I didn’t walk by their camp on my way to work every morning, I would know that protesters were camped there.) Everyone from the GOP candidates to TV’s talking heads has an opinion and all of them are sharing it – keeping press attention and conversation firmly focused on the movement.
It’s an interesting tactic, and a good one for any marketer or entrepreneur to learn: Talk about what you want everyone else to talk about, control the topic of discussion, and keep all eyes on you.