Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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During my long and rather varied career I was involved in a number of what have come to be called national campaigns: family planning, the environment, women's rights, human rights and children's culture, to name but a few.

Of those involvements I have concluded that a number of principal issues that can be applied in any campaign, like communication. Campaigns depend on communication. It is often said that political campaigning is simpler than social campaigns, because in politics, like in football, there is a goal that has to be reached -- namely, winning. There are no two ways about it.

Campaigns have been described as "conversations with society", "wars of persuasion", and "politics of the people, for the public good". The unfortunate thing, however, is that some campaigns fail -- a few do manage to instill a change, some achieve publicity while others just sink into oblivion.

While there does not seem to be a single right answer, there are some basics that can help. An article in The Independent 's Life and Culture by Chris Rose offers a 12-step programme in what one might call "the art of persuasion". The programme is aimed at a particular field, the environment, but remains, in my opinion, applicable to any other campaign.

The first step is to ask whether there is any need for a campaign. Campaigns, claim Rose, are appropriate when everything else has failed. People "must be persuaded to take an unusual interest in a more that would not normally happen." It is asking people to do things they are not used to doing. In the case of family planning, for instance, the campaign aimed at introducing couples to something new. When I embarked on that campaign as chairman of the State Information Service, I recruited a number of communication experts, Egyptian and non- Egyptian.

Once the need for a campaign is established, the next step to come -- which is, I believe, the most important in the persuasion process -- motivation. I quite agree with Chris Rose that it is motivation not education. Education, in the words of the writer, while good in itself "is a broadening exercise", yet not of much use in campaigns. Campaigning "Maximises the motivation of an audience, not its knowledge." Using education to campaign will lead to the exploration of the issue but not its change. It is through doing, not being given information, that campaigns sullen. Here the writer provides an opinion fit for an edict: "Information is not power until it leads to effective mobilisation."

The 12 steps are defined as follows: analysing the forces at play, getting the right component in the right order, making a critical path, campaigning against the unacceptable, making events happen, saying what you mean, finding the conflict in events and making the news.

I have selected two particular steps to comment upon. The first, "make it simple", is needed in a campaign, according to Rose, "if an urgent problem has to be made public to be resolved." Motivation needs simplicity in message and purpose. Communicate one thing at a time. Use straightforward, unambiguous words that need no explanation.

The other step is "start from where your audience is." In fact, this is what we teach our students in communication as we tabulate the components of the communication process as: source, message, medium and receiver -- and we always start with the last, the receiver. It is important to know who our audiences are -- who is, ultimately, the addressee of the message. Do your research, the article says, and in the light of this, build up your message.