In politics, you’re either on message or you’re losing. Let’s get to it.
Welcome to On Message, a weekly look at where the battle lines are drawn and who is winning the war of words.
This week… Message Inoculation.
That’s a term used by communication professionals to describe the strategy of staking out your position on an issue before it becomes a problem… otherwise known as getting ahead of the story or controlling the narrative.
I said in a video two weeks ago that Governor Cox was smart to recognize that the message that matters most was quickly going to shift from testing and case rates to vaccines and vaccine distribution.
This past Sunday was that tipping point.
The Salt Lake Tribune published two stories in Sunday’s paper, one billed as an exclusive with the headline: “Utah declines to disclose when vaccines arrive or who gets them, while pharmacies dispute doses are ‘sitting on shelves”
State health officials moved quickly to respond to the story and the Tribune posted a second story that evening.
The Cox team issued a statement to the media declaring that Utah had “administered 100% of the first doses received seven days ago and that they anticipated the same would be true for this week.”
Kudos for the quick response because many people weren’t going to see either story until Monday morning, anyway.
Getting your message out in each story helps you win news cycles, or at least not lose by forfeit. And that daily battle for the news cycle adds up to win or lose the war for the narrative.
But the narrative is so much more difficult to control and even when you have an answer for every allegation, you can’t win if you are always playing defense. Message inoculation is about being on offense to prevent having to play defense. It’s game management.
And it’s an uphill battle. When it comes to vaccine distribution, at some point, people are going to wonder why they don’t know anyone who has gotten a vaccine or they heard from a friend who heard from their neighbor that grandma couldn’t get an appointment. Whether these are real or fake, local or on the other side of the country, they all impact the narrative.
I still believe the Cox team would benefit greatly from more prominent and consistent coverage of the number of vaccines distributed each day or, at least, each week. Get that number in the headlines.
Unlike with daily case counts and death totals, the public doesn’t have a frame of reference yet for what vaccine success looks like.
*Just yesterday, the Governor took a step in that general direction, telling MSNBC the state had burned through a backlog of vaccines and was now using its full allotment of 33-thousand each week. And Thursday he held a press conference to announce more vaccine is on the way.
Still, the administration hasn’t been able to drive home what constitutes a good day or week of vaccination.
Set the expectation by telling the public what the goal is each day and then report what you’ve done. It may seem like a small thing but it can have a significant impact.
In short: Change the narrative to what you are doing well and you’ll have fewer bad headlines to retort.
That’s it for this week.
More On Message in the next issue of the Utah Political Underground. Don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to our new YouTube channel.
Check it new issues of Utah Political Underground every Friday at utpolunderground.com. This week’s cover story is a look at the freshman in Utah’s federal delegation.
Visit the website and sign up for our mailing list so you get you digital issue each week.
