In a recent workshop, someone asked me, “What do I do when I am working our booth at the county fair, and some red-hat guy comes up and attacks me?” You don’t have to convince him. He’s not buying what you’re selling. Instead, use that attention to make your best positive case to everyone within earshot.
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Why is political communication the same as selling ice cream?
We’re selling ice cream. Republicans are selling frozen yogurt. Some people just don’t like ice cream. We don’t have to please those people. We’re never going to get them to like our ice cream.
We have to convince people who like both ice cream and frozen yogurt, that our ice cream is flat out better than their frozen yogurt.
We want those people to love our ice cream so much that they never buy frozen yogurt again. And, if we keep talking about how wonderful our ice cream is, people who already like ice cream and don’t like frozen yogurt might buy our ice cream more often or even tell their neighbors how good it is.
What does this tell us?
We’re at our booth, selling our ice cream, and some dude in a yogurt hat comes up and screams in our faces. He starts yelling about how our ice cream is disgusting and filled with toxic chemicals.
What could we possibly say to convince this guy to buy our ice cream? Nothing. We can say that he’s getting bad information, that he’s being lied to. We can say that it’s actually frozen yogurt that’s bad for you and filled with toxic chemicals. But you know what? This guy doesn’t like ice cream. He’s never going to like ice cream. Nothing we say is going to change that.
So, what is our goal in this interaction? Who are we really communicating with?
We’re putting on a performance for all the people who stop what they are doing to see what we do when yogurt-hat guy screams at us.
Yes, we’re talking to the thirty or forty people who are listening in, some of whom may be future customers, even if we don’t know which ones.
We tell yogurt-hat guy that our ice cream is the best in the world. We tell him about the pure ingredients. We can tell him about how it has been hand churned with love. We can read him testimonies from people who love our ice cream.
We know it’s not going to get through to yogurt-hat guy, but when he leaves, we might get some new customers from those who heard us and are now craving some of our delicious ice cream.
And guess what? If yogurt-hat guy is being an out-of-control asshole, and we’re being really chill and nice, people are more likely to believe us.
What should we NOT do?
If Republicans tell people that our ice cream sucks, should we stop saying that our ice cream is good? No. They have a vested interest in convincing people that our ice cream sucks. Why should we let them tell us how to sell our ice cream?
Republicans have no standing to make decisions about how we promote the Democratic Party.
If Republicans say that our Cherry Berry ice cream is full of toxic chemicals, do we stop selling Cherry Berry ice cream? No. If we stop selling Cherry Berry ice cream, people will think that we also believe that it was full of toxic chemicals.
If we change the name to Cherry Surprise ice cream, Republicans will tell people that Cherry Surprise ice cream is full of toxic chemicals, and so on. Eventually, people will believe that all of our ice cream is full of toxic chemicals.
Our best strategy is to stick to our original Cherry Berry ice cream. It makes no sense to say, "Buy this ice cream! It doesn’t contain any toxic chemicals!” We tell people what it does contain: that it is made with pure grass-fed organic cream and hand-picked sour pie cherries stewed in sugar, and that it tastes the way summer felt when you were ten years old.
If we stop using terms or promoting our policies because Republicans attack them, we only validate their criticism by making people believe that we agree that there is something wrong with those terms and policies.
Here’s how this plays out.
We’re at our booth at the county fair, and MAGA hat guy comes up and calls us groomers who teach CRT which makes kids racist against white children.
Is there anything we can say to change his mind? No. The fact is that he doesn’t like what we’re doing. He’s never going to like it. We’re never going to convince him that what we are doing is right, because he is judging based on criteria for right and wrong that is fundamentally incompatible with ours.
Who should we be talking to? The people observing our interaction.
What happens if we say, “We’re not teaching CRT in schools”? We’re communicating to observers that there is something wrong with CRT.
Do we have to defend CRT? No. That’s their description of what’s being taught, not ours.
Do we say, “We’re not grooming children”? No, that only makes people associate primary schools with sexual predators.
We can’t argue on our opponent’s terms. We have to talk about why what we’re doing is morally right. In doing so, we articulate the standards by which observers should judge what’s morally right and what’s morally wrong, so they can determine for themselves.
What are we selling?
We’re “selling” a public education system that teaches and practices the universal American values of equality, kindness, and respect; where everyone is valued no matter who they are or who they or their parents love; where we teach the truth about our history; and where we are working to root out long standing prejudices against some of the diverse gender identities that exist naturally among human beings.
Republicans are “selling” an education system in which parents are allowed to force their privately held religious beliefs on other children and on their parents, schools and communities, without regard for how it hurts those children. They are seeking institutional and legal protection for the religious bigotry, parental vigilantism, state surveillance and censorship they wish to impose on our cherished public school system.
I just described both our beliefs from our perspective. When you describe the situation using our values as the criteria to judge right and wrong, our position appears logically and morally right.
The Bottom Line
There’s no point in trying to sell ice cream to someone who doesn’t like ice cream. You can’t argue with people for whom imposing Christian nationalist values on our entire society is the feature, not the bug. The reasons they hate our policies and positions are precisely the same reasons that we love them.
Our target audience is the people watching the debate.
We should never change our messaging or positions to meet the criteria of people who fundamentally don’t like what we like. We want observers to judge our policies and positions based on what we like about them – that they embody our values and beliefs about how the world works.
Thanks, as always, for reading and subscribing! I hope you are able to use this in your work and your activism!
In solidarity,
Antonia
Wow, you sound like somebody trained by Charlie Kirk and Chris Rufo to search the web for random mentions of gender identity, and pretend to attack from the LEFT, while really spreading a bunch of right wing disinformation! Am I right? Or are you working for a global interest seeking to divide the American Left? Readers, take note of this technique. Learn how to identify it! Then block anyone who does it!
I think there’s a chance the “Randal” commenter here does not understand the legacy of our Founding Parents of liberty n justice for ALL. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not parroting Russian talking points. Regardless, awesome ice cream metaphor, Antonia! I’ve used the following clip from the movie Thank You For Smoking to illustrate a similar point n the difference in the way Dems n Repub typically communicate. Fast fwd to the mini ice cream flavor debate between father n son. (hint: It’s about freedom!) https://youtu.be/xuaHRN7UhRo