James Davis is the founder and president of Touchdown Strategies, a public affairs consulting firm.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Federal Newswire: How do you communicate with audiences that may not agree with you?
Davis: It's a bit of a process. We start with saying, okay, these are your goals. Who are the audiences that we're trying to reach? What are the messages that will resonate with those individuals? We might do polling or focus groups to do that. But then who are the credible messengers that can deliver those stories?
We do a bit of a discovery process with each of our clients to say, okay, what stories have you heard from your own business that really help illustrate the points that we're trying to make here? We steer things into headlines. We say this is the headline you want to get across.
These are the proof points that we want to use to get those headlines across. We look at the facts and figures in the stats. Of course that's important. We also look at the stories and the anecdotes that can get those things important. There are better ways to get across facts and figures than we currently do.
You have to think about the sequencing of your message. You want to start with an idea, a phrase, some words that really articulate the problem, because most of the time we can agree on the problem. It's the solutions where we might have some deviation in what we're talking about. You want to articulate the problem.
Federal Newswire: How do you break through disagreement in DC?
Davis: It goes to finding an area of agreement and then illustrating some stories that bring people together. The facts and figures appeal to that logical part of the bond. The stories actually appeal to that creative part of that mind, the static part of your mind, the part of your mind that also says, “hey, I want to buy those jeans, even though I probably shouldn't.” That is the way you want to communicate to people.
Those are some of the proven techniques of driving people toward your idea. What you see a lot of times, in the social media space in particular, is just shouting at one another that doesn't change anyone's mind. No one's moving off of that…It might be entertaining for some, but it's not actually getting to the heart of changing people's minds. Part of being able to change someone's mind is being able to listen.
My wife is a biblical counselor. She reads tons and tons of books about the human mind and how to help people really get past some big issues in their lives and big problems. I absorb all of that material as well.
I tell you that I've taken a lot of lessons from the counseling side on how we actually appeal to people in the public opinion side, which is that we don't have to say that they're right in order to validate their concerns. We can say people feel like they've been left behind. People feel like they've been marginalized. That's a true statement. People do feel that way. Once you do that, then you're able to start out, you're able to have some currency to have a deeper conversation with them about the issues.
Federal Newswire: Are you pursuing any other ventures?
Davis: We just launched a new podcast called…Game Plan, and [we want] to tackle relevant media events, but also pull out some of the ideas around communications and marketing and really discuss some of those things.
Our next podcast is going to tackle media relations and the presidential campaigns. What can we expect the game plan for Republicans to be? What can we expect the game plan for Democrats to be? Ultimately, what are the media relations approaches for each of these campaigns? What's effective and not effective? Hopefully folks will join in.
You can find us on Spotify and YouTube. You can look me up on LinkedIn. I'll have posted there as well. I hope it's a good resource for people who are interested in the public affairs arena.
