Luntz words that work-pages-1.pdf

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS T his is the part where most authors describe their efforts as a “labor of love” and then list all the special people who “made this book possible.” I can’t. The truth is, this was the single most difficult task I have undertaken—and it ensured that I did not get a decent night’s slee...

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS T his is the part where most authors describe their efforts as a “labor of love” and then list all the special people who “made this book possible.” I can’t. The truth is, this was the single most difficult task I have undertaken—and it ensured that I did not get a decent night’s sleep for the past year. The person most responsible for my lack of fitful rest is my agent, Lorin Rees, from whom I mistakenly took a call on a rare Sunday when I actually wasn’t working eight hours. He convinced me to use that afternoon to write up a book proposal that somehow he managed to sell at exactly the minimum amount I was willing to accept. He has never received a pleasant e-mail from me during this entire process. At least he made some money out of it. Next in line is Jonathan Karl, who has spent the last half decade endlessly nagging me into writing this text. He doesn’t know this but on several occasions during the more stressful periods I actually thought about having Dr. Kevorkian pay him a visit. I have to be careful not to say anything bad about him: He’s one of the best reporters in Washington, D.C., and he’s liable to go out and dig up dirt on me. The person who has the right to be most angry with me is my editor, vi Acknowledgments Gretchen Young, who took this assignment after my initial editor departed Hyperion. She must have done something terribly wrong in her previous life to have been given this book. She has suffered the most, and so to her only, I apologize. (If you ever mistakenly consent to write a book, insist that she be your editor. She’s a saint.) I also have to thank the entire Hyperion team, who compassionately laughed at all of my bad jokes and never once made me feel like the linguistic geek that I am. My staff at Luntz Maslansky Strategic Research also shoulders some of the responsibility. From the interns who sifted through a billion pages of Internet material to help me find the pearls of wisdom to Amy Kramer, who actually read much of this text four times, they got to enjoy my frustration on a daily basis—up close and personal. Bill Danielson deserves an acknowledgment of his own. Not only did he help with the initial draft of this book but he happens to be one of the best young writers in America today. I also have to personally thank Michael Maslansky, my business partner, for helping me sell my company (and John Wren from Omnicom for buying it) in the midst of this effort. Even if no one anywhere actually buys this book, his success will allow me to enjoy life on eBay forever. Time is a precious commodity, and so I express particular thanks to Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, Norman Lear, Bill Maher, Robert Shapiro, Aaron Sorkin, Jack Welch, and Steve Wynn for graciously allowing me to plumb their words of wisdom. There are certain individuals who had absolutely nothing to do with this book, thank God, but nevertheless had a life-changing impact on my professional life that is deeply intertwined with this text. In chronological order, they are: my parents; Dr. Robert Derosier, the best teacher in America; Senator Jim Buckley, the most principled political figure I ever worked for; Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the most successful leader I ever worked for; Speaker Newt Gingrich, the smartest politician I ever worked for; Tony Blankley and Tony Coehlo, the best personal advisors one could ever hope for; Lawrence Kadish, the definition of a Great American; Frank Fahrenkopf and Steve Wynn, who were responsible for my first Language Dictionary; and Steve Capus, Phil Griffin, and Jonathan Wald, who put my private focus groups on national television. I can never adequately express my appreciation to them for all that they have done for me. This is just my latest failed attempt. INTRODUCTION “Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way.”1 —George Orwell (1946) S eptember 18, 2004: Writer, socialite, political gadfly Arianna Huffington, a conservative-turned-liberal political-activist-to-the-stars, invites thirty-five of Hollywood’s most important power players to her Brentwood home. These are not your run-of-the-mill Democrats. They are members of the Hollywood political elite, deeply concerned about the direction of the U.S. presidential campaign and in outright panic about the state of the nation. For them, election 2004 is the battle royale for the heart and soul of America. Having watched their “victory” in 2000 “stolen” from them by the Supreme Court, they feel they are witnessing once again the disintegration of a national election before their very eyes. Hollywood Democrats had gladly flocked to John Kerry, but now they think he is blowing it in the wake of the Republican National Convention and the drip-dripdrip of the Swift Boat Vets’ attack ads. Bush has surged to a five- to eight-point lead, depending on which poll you believe. Everywhere, Democrats are asking: Why is the President winning when the economy is weak, the war in Iraq isn’t going well, and gas prices have climbed above $2 a gallon for the first time ever? Why isn’t Kerry connecting viii Introduction with the public? What’s wrong with the words he’s using? What’s the problem with the way he’s communicating? And so the luminaries of the Hollywood Left arrive at Huffington’s Brentwood mansion to listen to a guest speaker from Washington, D.C., and talk things through. They drive up in their open-air Mercedes, BMWs, and Jags that cost almost as much as a house in Omaha. Warren Beatty is there, sitting next to Rob Reiner. Larry David walks in a little late and stands off to the side. Norman Lear, creator of All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, and a dozen other TV shows, positions himself toward the rear, just behind actress Christine Lahti. Well-known writers, directors, and producers with Oscars and Emmys on the mantels of their pool houses crowd around. People of impeccable Hollywood pedigree, all. And who do they come to learn from? Remarkably, a “Republican” pollster. There I am, the man who helped develop the language to sell the Contract with America and deliver a Republican majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years. The man who worked for Rudy Giuliani, two-time Republican mayor of a city where Democratic voters outnumbered Republicans 5-to-1. The man who has been working behind the scenes for the past ten years—in debate prep sessions and television network green rooms, in the halls of Congress and in state capitals across the country—playing my own small part in the Republican ascension and in the Democratic collapse.* Why have I gone there, into what some of my clients and many of my colleagues would consider enemy territory? More importantly, why do the Hollywood elite welcome me? How do they know I’m not part of some nefarious Karl Roveian disinformation campaign, plotting political pranks and electoral sabotage? The answer is simple: Although my political clients may come from one side of the aisle, what I do is fundamentally nonpartisan. The ideas and *Twice I was responsible for prepping GOP congressional leaders in their nationwide televised PBS debates, first, in Williamsburg, Virginia, in October 1996, when House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott faced off against Democrat House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, and again four years later when GOP House Conference Chairman J. C. Watts and Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel debated against Senate Democrat Minority Whip Harry Reid and House Democrat Minority Whip David Bonior. At that second debate, held at PBS studios in Arlington, Virginia, I actually had to hide for forty-five minutes in an upstairs bathroom after Reid accused the Republicans on air of being slaves to “Frank Luntz’s talking points.” I can only imagine what he would have said if he knew I was actually in the building at that very moment. Introduction ix principles about effective language I was to share with them in Brentwood that afternoon apply equally to Democrats and Republicans. And, frankly, I wanted to see the inside of Arianna’s house. Indeed, the lessons of effective language transcend politics, business, media, and even Hollywood. My polling firm has worked for more than two dozen of the most elite Fortune 100 companies. We have written, supervised, and conducted almost fifteen hundred surveys, dial sessions, and focus groups for every product and politician imaginable—representing more than a half million unique individual conversations. What we have learned applies to bankrupt airlines and overbooked hotels, soft drink makers and fast food providers, banks and credit unions. Good language is just as important to twentieth-century trendsetters like IBM and twenty-firstcentury innovators like Google as it is to blue-blood law firms whose partners’ ancestors were on the Mayflower and twenty-one-year-old soon-to-be entrepreneurs who’ve been in the United States exactly one month. Language, politics, and commerce have always been intertwined, both for better and for worse. What I presented to that glitterati crowd—and what I proffer to my political and corporate clients every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year (literally)—are the precise tools and insights of political and commercial wordsmithing. These tools apply broadly to almost any endeavor that involves presenting a message, whether it’s a day-to-day event like talking your way out of a speeding ticket or into a raise, or something more substantial like creating an effective thirty-second commercial, crafting a fifteen-minute speech to your employees, or writing an hour-long State of the Union address. In the pages that follow, my basic advice to readers will be the following: It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. You can have the best message in the world, but the person on the receiving end will always understand it through the prism of his or her own emotions, preconceptions, prejudices, and preexisting beliefs. It’s not enough to be correct or reasonable or even brilliant. The key to successful communication is to take the imaginative leap of stuffing yourself right into your listener’s shoes to know what they are thinking and feeling in the deepest recesses of their mind and heart. How that person perceives what you say is even more real, at least in a practical sense, than how you perceive yourself. x Introduction When someone asks me to illustrate the concept of “words that work,” I tell them to read Orwell’s 1984—and then see the movie. In particular, I refer them to the book passage that describes Room 101—or as Orwell basically describes it, the place where everyone’s personal, individual nightmares come true. If your greatest fear is snakes, you open the door to a room full of snakes. If your fear is drowning, your Room 101 fills to the brim with water. To me, this is the most frightening, horrific, imaginative concept ever put on paper, simply because it encourages you to imagine your own Room 101. Words that work, whether fiction or reality, not only explain but also motivate. They cause you to think as well as act. They trigger emotion as well as understanding. But the movie version of 1984 denies the viewer the most powerful aspect that makes Room 101 work: one’s own imagination. Once you actually see Room 101, it is no longer your vision. It becomes someone else’s. Lose imagination and you lose an essential component of words that work. Just as a fictional work’s meaning may transcend authorial intention, so every message that you bring into the world is subject to the interpretations and emotions of the people who receive it. Once the words leave your lips, they no longer belong to you. We have a monopoly only on our own thoughts. The act of speaking is not a conquest, but a surrender. When we open our mouths, we are sharing with the world—and the world inevitably interprets, indeed sometimes shifts and distorts, our original meaning. After all, who hasn’t uttered the words “But that’s not what I actually meant”? Just ask former President Jimmy Carter. On July 15, 1979, three years to the day from his triumphant nomination at the Democratic National Convention, he addressed millions of Americans to explain what he called America’s “crisis of confidence.” That phrase means nothing to most Americans—we all know it as his infamous “malaise” speech, despite the fact that he never uttered the word malaise even once. What led up to that linguistic misrepresentation of historic proportions will be addressed later in this book. Or ask former secretary of state Colin Powell, as I did, about the origin of the so-called “Powell doctrine” of military success. When it was first articulated in 1991, his exact words referenced the strategy of “decisive force.” Moreover, “U.S. National Military Strategy,” the Pentagon’s annual report on military threats to the United States, called Powell’s theory “the theory of decisive force.” Introduction xi In the hands of the reporters and even the historians, however, it has ended up translated as “overwhelming force” and is often now called “the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force.” Today, when you search the LexisNexis database for references to “Colin Powell” and “doctrine of decisive force” in U.S. newspapers and wires from 1990 to 2006, you get a mere seven returns. When you run the same search, but using “doctrine of overwhelming force” instead, you get 67 total returns. The same is true for the less limiting phrases of just “decisive force” and “overwhelming force,” which return 135 and 633 results, respectively. Again, almost five times as many references to “overwhelming force.” To the average reader, this may appear to be a difference without a distinction. For Powell, the distinction still matters—a lot. To him, decisive meant “precise, clean, and surgical,” whereas overwhelming implies “excessive and numerical.” 2 The former is smart and sophisticated. The latter: heavy-handed and brutish. So how did this happen? How does history manage to rewrite itself? The answer is more in the translation than the message itself. Powell did use the phrase “overwhelming force” publicly, but just one time, in 1990, and he used it to describe the force necessary to ensure that America “wins decisively” every war it engages. In almost every other instance, and even in his 1995 memoir My American Journey, Powell reiterates his desire for “decisive force” because it “ends wars quickly and in the long run saves lives.” Ultimately, it is the professional—the journalists, historians, and academics who translate words into stories—who hold the key to language dissemination. They have to grab people’s attention, and “overwhelming force” just sounds more captivating than “decisive force.” It creates an image in the mind that goes far beyond the dull, policy-based decisive force terminology. Overwhelming force is about process. Decisive force is about result. Yet no matter how hard Powell has tried to correct and clarify the public record, the world will always think otherwise, and the consequences of that misinterpretation can be seen in Iraq every single day. Ask former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, as I did, why he chose the word “détente” to describe American-Soviet relations in the 1970s. The first diplomatic application has been attributed to an anonymous Russian, spurred by a 1959 meeting between Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in which Dulles advocated for open relations with the communist states of Eastern xii Introduction Europe.3 So it did have pedigree—but it came with other baggage as well. Said Kissinger: I didn’t choose Détente. Someone else gave it to us, and it was a mistake. First, we shouldn’t have used a French word, for obvious reasons. And second, it simplified a complex process and helped critics attack the policy. If we had called it an “easing of tensions,” which is what it was, no one would have complained. The person responsible was probably Raymond Garthoff, a Brookings scholar and former State Department official, who had labeled the concluding of the SALT agreements “the charter of détente.” 4 The label not only stuck, but the word proved to be so powerful within its context that it summarized in a neat package nearly an entire decade of international foreign relations, making a complex policy easy to defend... and easy to attack. Kissinger, arguably the greatest diplomat of our era, understood— as you soon will—that the simple choice of simple words can and will change the course of history. This book is about the art and science of words that work. Examining the strategic and tactical use of language in politics, business, and everyday life, it shows how you can achieve better results by narrowing the gap between what you intend to convey and what your audiences actually interpret. The critical task, as I’ve suggested, is to go beyond your own understanding and to look at the world from your listener’s point of view. In essence, it is listener-centered; their perceptions trump whatever “objective” reality a given word or phrase you use might be presumed to have. Again, what matters isn’t what you say, it’s what people hear. IN DEFENSE OF LANGUAGE For the record, I love the English language. I have built a career attending to matters of rhetoric, to the painstaking and deliberate choice of words. I love the soft twang of Southern belles and the gum-popping slang of Southern California valley girls, the gentle lyricism of the upper Midwest and the in-your-face bluntness of Brooklyn cabbies. I’m enthralled by the bass rumble of James Earl Jones, the velvet smoothness of Steve Wynn, the upper-crust sophistication of Orson Welles and Richard Burton, and Introduction xiii the sexy intonations of Lauren Bacall, Sally Kellerman, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. When spoken well, the language of America is a language of hope, of everyday heroes, of faith in the goodness of people. At its best, American English is also the practical language of commerce. The most effective communication is the unadorned, unpretentious language of farmers, mom-and-pop shopkeepers, and the thousands of businesses located on the hundreds of Main Street USAs, as well as the no-nonsense, matter-of-fact, bottom-line language of men and women who built the greatest companies the world has ever seen. I am pulled to the language of dreamers and pragmatists both. Of outspoken strivers fighting against the odds, and quiet men and women simply grateful they live in a country that gives them the freedom to spot their neighbors’ needs and provide a product or service to meet them. The words of average Americans are at once a language of idealism and a language of common sense. I listen to and love it all. I am best known for my work in the political sphere, starting with Ross Perot’s half campaign, half rant in 1992, followed by Rudy Giuliani’s upset victory in New York City in 1993, and capped off with the Contract with America in 1994 that was widely credited with returning control of the House of Representatives to the Republican Party for the first time in forty years. In some fashion, either individually, in small groups, or as an entire caucus, I have advised almost every Republican senator and congressman since then—as well as several prime ministers on several continents—on issues of language. In preparing for this book, I realized with some pride that my firm has polled more than half a million people, and I have personally moderated focus groups in forty-six of the fifty states—and I fully intend to listen to the good people of Idaho, Montana, West Virginia, and Wyoming as soon as they have a reason to hear from me. I am a committed advocate of political rhetoric that is direct and clear. It should be interactive, not one-sided. It should speak to the common sense of common people—with a moral component, but without being inflammatory, preachy, or divisive. In a perfect world, political language would favor those with enough respect for people to tell them the truth, and enough intelligence not to do so in condescending tones. In 2005, my 170-page memo on language, A New American Lexicon, raised a storm of protest in Washington and the blogosphere because it genuinely sought to establish a common language for a pro-business, xiv Introduction pro-freedom agenda. Having served as the pollster of record for the Contract with America a decade earlier, liberal critics took a baseball bat to this work. They came after me with a vengeance for both ideological and political reasons. Daily Kos, the leading left-wing blog, accused me of “spinning lies into truth.” Another blog, thinkprogress.org, asserted that I wanted to “scare” the public about taxes and “exploit” the 9/11 tragedy; they even set up a “Luntz Watch” section of their site just to track and “analyze” my language.5 And the National Environmental Trust created “LuntzSpeak,” a Web site devoted entirely to my messaging of environmental and energy issues, which, in their words, represented “an exciting new way to put a positive spin on an abysmal environmental record.” They even created a “Luntzie Award” for the politicians they believed best used my language. As much as I disliked the criticism, I have to admit I did like their cartoon character that was created to look like me: he has better hair, whiter teeth, and a healthy tan. I wasn’t surprised by the reaction. We live in a partisan era, and most Web-generated political language has taken on a vicious partisan tone. I essentially stopped working in domestic political campaigns years ago because they were filled with such a harsh negativity, which seemed to grow more vicious and inhumane with every election cycle. The more ideological Republicans, brilliant minds like William Kristol who understand policy much better than politics, sometimes grumble that my words don’t have sufficient bite and that they soften what they think should be the sharp edges of philosophical debate. The more ideological Democrats, particularly the bloggers, object to what they perceive to be my effort to obscure the truth behind gentle-sounding terminology. To a limited degree, they are both correct. My personal philosophy may be right-of-center, but my political words are always targeted at those essential, nonaligned voters—the not so silent majority of Americans who reject ideological soundness in favor of the sound center. Unlike some of my colleagues, I try very hard not to allow my own beliefs or biases to interfere with my craft. Whether it’s a political issue I wish to communicate or a product I wish to sell, I seek to listen, then understand, and ultimately win over the doubter, the fence-sitter, the straddling skeptic. My language eschews overt partisanship and aims to find common ground rather than draw lines or sow separation. The words in this book represent the language of America, not the language of a single political party, philosophy, or product. Introduction xv Some critics will accuse this book of advocating and even teaching manipulation, but as a retiring magician decides to reveal his tricks and then fade away, I seek only to throw open the doors of the language laboratory and shine a bright light on how words that work are created and used. I asked the brilliant Hollywood writer Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and Sports Night, and someone with a very different political orientation from mine, to explain the difference between language that convinces and language that manipulates. His answer stunned me: “There’s no difference. It’s only when manipulation is obvious, then it’s bad manipulation. What I do is every bit as manipulative as some magician doing a magic trick. If I can wave this red silk handkerchief enough in my right hand, I can do whatever I want with my left hand and you’re not going to see it. When you’re writing fiction, everything is manipulation. I’m setting up the situation specifically so that you’ll laugh at this point or cry at this point or be nervous at this point. If you can see how I’m sawing the lady in half, then it’s bad manipulation. If you can’t see how I did that, then it’s good.” Sure, you’ll learn what to say to get a table at a crowded restaurant and how to get airport personnel to let you on a flight that has already closed, but is that really language exploitation? You’ll learn the language of the twenty-first century, the words and phrases that you’ll be hearing more of in the coming years, but is that truly message manipulation? Hardly. We have certainly seen instances in which language has been used to cloud our judgment and blur the facts, but its beauty—the true power of words—is that it can also be used in defense of clarity and fairness. I do not believe there is something dishonorable about presenting a passionately held proposition in the most favorable light, while avoiding the selfsabotage of clumsy phrasing and dubious delivery. I do not believe it is somehow malevolent to choose the strongest arguments rather than to lazily go with the weakest. For example, education is not only my own personal hot-button issue—it’s the top local issue in America today. The public is demanding further education reform to the “Leave No Child Behind” initiatives that were passed into law—but how those reforms are explained determines their level of support. I have been active in the so-called “school choice” effort, and in my research work I have found that calling the financial component a “voucher” rather than the more popular “scholarship” xvi Introduction trivializes the powerful opportunity and financial award that children from poor families receive when their parents have the right to choose the school they will attend. In fact, I’d argue that it’s more accurate to call it “parental choice in education” than “school choice” because it really is the parents who are deciding the schooling for their children. Or, considering how such a program equalizes education for rich and poor alike, the most accurate phrase may well be “equal opportunity in education”—and it certainly tests best in the polling my firm has done. Most of the stories you will read in the pages that follow were created for causes and customers that sought to build up rather than tear down, for that is far more memorable than the slash-and-burn of the modern campaign. Even the least political among us has a piece of stirring political rhetoric that touched us when we first heard it and has stayed with us for years, decades and even generations. “Ask not what your country can do for you...” “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself...” “Some men see things as they are and ask why...” “The shining city atop a hill...” “I have a dream.” In the end, the ongoing battle over political language is more about comprehension than articulation. There are at least two sides to almost every issue, and people on each side believe in the deepest recesses of their souls that they are right. I help communicate the principles of the side I believe in, using the simplest, most straightforward language available. Sure, I seek to persuade. My goal is to fashion political rhetoric that achieves worthy goals—to level the linguistic playing field and to inform Americans of what is truly at stake in our policy debates. Straightforward communication is equally important in the sphere of private enterprise. American companies have great stories to tell. From the stunning advances in pharmaceutical medications that are prolonging the lives of people with AIDS, to breathtaking innovations in microcomputing and artificial intelligence; from groundbreaking agricultural technologies with the potential to banish hunger around the world, to less disruptive, more environmentally sound techniques for extracting oil and natural gas from the earth—corporate America is imagining and building an exciting new world for the new century. What a tragedy that their language is Introduction xvii trapped in a Harvard Business School textbook from the 1950s instead of a plain-speaking John McCain–esque twenty-first-century approach. True, Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, and even Martha Stewart failed not because they had bad language but because they had bad morals. But for the rest of corporate America (Martha Stewart aside), the convoluted language they continue to use is part of their image problem, not part of the solution. Just pick up almost any 2007 annual report and leaf through to the standard CEO letter. Circle the words, phrases, and concepts you don’t understand, you don’t like, or you just aren’t quite sure about. You’ll need a lot of ink. That’s where pollsters and wordsmiths like me come in. This book will offer readers a proverbial look behind the curtain at what has worked for companies in the past, and at the new strategies they are developing for this new millennium. We’ll take a historical look at the way political leaders have presented themselves to the American people—and how that process has changed forever. We’ll also cover the language being used right now to communicate the hottest issues of the day that are sure to dominate the election cycles ahead. And finally, we will turn our attention to the future, to what companies should be saying now and in the years to come—and to what you can expect the politicians to be talking about in 2008 and beyond. This is not a book about policy. It doesn’t matter, for the purposes of our discussion, whether libertarian comedian Dennis Miller or liberal comedian Al Franken is the better American or whether Bill Clinton or George W. Bush is the better President. This book is addressed equally to Democrats and Republicans, to liberals (or, as they now like to be called, “progressives”—a fascinating change in terminology that we’ll get into later) and conservatives alike. This book will not take sides in the burger wars, the automotive wars, or the cola wars, either. But those who sell products, and the rest of us who buy them, will find just as much value in these pages as those who sell political ideas. For in the end, the best products and the best marketing campaigns involve ideas, not just packaging. A few—very few—publications have explored the strategic intersection between politics, business, Hollywood, the media, and communication. This book hits at the intersection of all five and introduces a brand-new element: an explanation of how and why the strategic and tactical use of specific words and phrases can change how people think and how they behave. The book recounts personal stories of how commonly xviii Introduction identifiable language and product strategies came to be, describing the process that created them as well as the people and businesses who articulated them. And it will provide the reader with the specific Words That Work—and those that don’t—in dozens of circumstances. From the political world, we will explore: How the “estate tax” became the “death tax,” turning a relatively arcane issue into a national hot button How Rudy Giuliani moved from a “crime agenda” to a “safety and security platform” in his successful campaign for mayor How the Contract with America revolutionized political language in ways its authors never intended How “drilling for oil” became “energy exploration,” frustrating the entire environmental community From the corporate world, we will explore: How effective language can be used to prevent a strike and promote employee satisfaction How a large Fortune 100 company stalled and then stopped the SEC from implementing popular “corporate accountability” measures by reshaping the message and redefining the debate How “gambling” became “gaming” and how Las Vegas impresario Steve Wynn discovered the value of his own name and attached it to the most expensive hotel ever built How the CEO of Pfizer, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, has revolutionized the industry by applying the language of responsibility and accountability and changing the focus from “disease management” to “prevention” And from the personal world, your world, you will learn: How to talk yourself out of a speeding ticket when you and the officer both know you’re guilty How to talk yourself into a reservation at a crowded restaurant and onto a plane that has already closed its doors How best to apologize when you know you’re wrong... and make it stick Introduction xix These are the challenges I face every day, and discovering the answers is the task that I set for myself when I began my professional career nearly twenty years ago. My subjects of study are my fellow citizens—not just in America but worldwide. My laboratory is both the day-to-day life that people lead and organized invitation-only discussions I often host at night. All of these anecdotes come from my own personal experience, but you’ll hear from other, more notable people as well. The lessons I’ve drawn from a decade and a half of work on behalf of business and political clients are based on empirical studies and quantitative research—not merely opinion. Everything you read here will be based on scientific market research, not idle speculation. The purpose of this book is to tell you what I tell governors, senators, and members of Congress; what I tell the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable; and what I present to CEOs and entrepreneurs every day across this country: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear. This book is part guide, part exposé. It explores how presidents and Fortune 500 CEOs craft messages that have the power to revolutionize what we think about politics and products in our day-to-day lives. You will get a peek behind the scenes of the actual process by which some of America’s most powerful brands have been created. And you will learn how our country’s political and business leaders are developing a brandnew lexicon to address changing public anxiety: the twenty-one words for the twenty-first century. This book is not merely for politicians or business leaders; it’s for everyone who has an interest in or who makes a living using and listening to the language of America. It is for anyone who wants to harness the power of words to improve his or her own lot in life, and to ensure that the true meaning of these words is heard as they intended them to be. Read the following pages, and you will learn about the language of America. You will also find the words to tell your own story. T H E WA R O F T H E W O R D S “Don’t tell me words don’t matter. ‘I have a dream’—just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’—just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself ’—just words? Just speeches?” —Barack Obama February 16, 2008 T hose powerful words help explain the magnetism of the Obama presidential campaign. His words do more than inspire. They transform. They move people. But I have to ask: Would these words be less persuasive if you learned that they had been spoken by another candidate for another political office just two years earlier? Consider the speech delivered by Deval Patrick two years earlier in his successful campaign for Massachusetts governor: “I hear it a lot from [my opponent’s] staff is that all I have to offer is words, just words. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ just words? Just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words? ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ Just words? ‘I have a dream’—just words?” Whether this is a case of political plagiarism or just a sharing of sound bites between close personal friends is absolutely relevant. If words are supposed to be the window into the soul, how are we to know whose soul we’re viewing? Doubts aside, Barack Obama became the Pied Piper of hope, opportunity, and change, and in the process, he has revitalized xxii The War of the Words the lost art of speechmaking. His prose is musical in its delivery, combining the poetry of Paul Simon with the wistful sounds of Art Garfunkel—and millions of Americans whistled his tune right to the ballot box. On paper he may have been among the least qualified of all the viable candidates, but that doesn’t matter. To much of America, his words, the way he delivers them, and who he appears to be and represent are more important than his experience. And words that work breed campaigns that win. “There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.” So said Will Rogers about seven decades ago, but he could just as easily have been talking about the language from the 2008 presidential field. At various points during the campaign season one presidential hopeful declared his belief in UFOs, another couldn’t decide between diamonds and pearls, the professional actor in the field fumbled for his lines, several rejected evolution, and a true blue Yankees fan committed the cardinal sin of backing the Red Sox in the World Series. And as the primary season moved on, for every candidate who moved forward, many more punched out. For every successful linguistic retort, there were so many more that bombed. They learned the hard way—or not at all—that language is like fire: Depending on how you use it, it can either heat your house or burn it to the ground. Yes, words matter. In fact, the only people not closely connected to the language of America are the journalists who report their words. Attempts to summarize voter aspirations in a single word not only fell flat—they were downright wrong. If experience were the most important attribute in the 2008 presidential campaign, Santa Fe would be the new political hotspot and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson the front-runner. If it were intelligence, Joe Biden would be popping champagne corks across America. If strength and leadership in the face of terrorism and crisis were the essential character trait, Rudy Giuliani would have basked in the Florida sunshine. But they aren’t because they missed what really matters to the one hundred and twenty million American voters in these uncertain, anxious times. In a word, it’s optimism. This is not, as the pundits and the pollsters would have you believe, a change election. Change is inevitable, but not all change is positive change. The word “change” doesn’t go even halfway to explaining what Americans want from their next president. Rather, The War of the Words xxiii this is an election of hope, of dreams, and of the collective aspirations of a nation that has fallen on hard times politically, financially, and emotionally. In plain English, we desperately want to believe again. When I wrote Words That Work, America was in a genuine political funk. You could hear and feel the deeply rooted cynicism as people wondered aloud whether politics and elections mattered anymore. There were no political heroes, no political dreams, and frankly, not much hope on the horizon. But thanks to a bevy of unique candidates on both sides of the aisle, dozens of televised political debates that were actually watchable (and often re-watchable, thanks to cable news saturation), and an election calendar that started out faster and more furious than a Jason Bourne film, this campaign cycle has been like a NASCAR race—pileups included. Thanks to Roger Ailes and Fox News, I have traveled to more than thirty states during the past twelve months, conducted dial sessions at almost forty presidential debates, listened to thousands of people faceto-face, and learned their second-by-second reactions to every word from every candidate. From the county fairs of Iowa to the diners of New Hampshire, from the biting cold of Boston to the warmth of the Florida sun, I’ve seen candidates come from nowhere to score a rhetorical knockout, and I’ve seen front-runners blunder their way to defeat. I have performed this electoral excursion every two years since 1992, but this one stands out—not just because it was the most intensely competitive election of the modern era but because we have had a genuinely viable black candidate, a female candidate, a Mormon candidate, and a Latino candidate—all for the first time. And in my travels across the linguistic landscape of contemporary American life, I have discovered new language that should be added to my original list of the Twenty-one Words That Work for the Twenty-first Century. In particular, there are seven additional words that have particular powers of persuasion in the world of business, politics, and everyday life, starting with the most powerful: “consequences.” Seemingly mundane and neutral in its application (there can be good consequences as well as bad), no other word instantly personalizes and dramatizes the potential result of a particular action. When someone talks about “the consequences,” the listener immediately thinks, “What does this mean for me?” In these uncertain economic, social, and geopolitical times, no other word has such a profound implied impact on the American psyche. The best example of the political power of consequences comes xxiv The War of the Words straight from the mouth of President George W. Bush, in whose mouth one pundit once said the English language goes to die. Support for the war in Iraq has steadily decreased throughout his second term—almost to the point of free fall. But when Bush skillfully talked about the “consequences of failure” in reference to Democratic efforts to oppose his troop “surge,” it stopped the slide and prevented the Democrats from gaining the rhetorical upper hand. So while the war remains unpopular, so too do Democratic calls for immediate withdrawal. The consequences of failure are just too high. “Impact” has a similar effect on the listener in that the word is ostensibly neutral but remarkably influential. Thanks to my firm’s extensive work in corporate social responsibility, I found this one word—more than any other—caused listeners to assume that they will see and feel a measurable difference. No longer is it enough to talk about “effort,” or even “solutions.” Both words have a “been there, done that” feel to them. Rather, Americans want to see action—and results. Companies that can demonstrate impact in social responsibility (don’t call it “corporate citizenship”—in a time of economic anxiety and retrenchment, people see companies as centers of profit, not people) will generate positive feelings among existing customers as well as considerable growth in new clientele. The next additions—“diplomacy” and “dialogue”—have their origins in the work I have done in two dozen countries and counting over the past decade, though they apply domestically just as much as globally. A post9/11 fatigue factor has set in that is as much emotional as it is rhetorical. Americans are tired of and frustrated with all the aggression and negativity internationally, locally, and even at home and in the workplace. “Dialogue” and “diplomacy” represent a deeply desired departure from the policies of the Bush administration—and the sentiment transcends international politics. With so much anxiety having seeped into the collective mindset, Americans want a period of peace and quiet in their lives. From tense union negotiations to local zoning disputes, “diplomacy” and “dialogue” are words that help deliver peace of mind. The fifth word, “reliability,” had been left off the original Twenty-oneword list, but it shouldn’t have been. Thanks to increasing dependence on technology, coupled with dwindling free time, more and more people have come to conclude that the reliability of a particular product or service is at least as important as its price, and in some circumstances—automobiles, cable television, and personal communication devices to name but