As I brace myself for this year’s national election debates, I have empathy for the debate moderators, because their role is very similar to what those of us who write copy for a living do every day.
(Another reason I can empathize is that I’ve moderated election forums before, and I know it’s not an easy task. Local candidates are just as willing to ignore time limits, sidestep questions, and imply bias as contenders for the Oval Office.)
What do debate moderators and copywriters have in common? Our primary responsibility is not to the participants, but to the recipients or consumers of the messages. An effective moderator has to defend the audience’s ultimate interest in gaining information from those who wish to control both the message and its delivery. If you’ve been paying attention to the candidates, you’ll note that all of them — all of them — try to steer the discussion so it supports their own strengths and platforms. And you’ll note that all of the moderators have had to dig in occasionally and remind the candidates who’s really in charge.
To be truly effective in their role, debate moderators must operate with objectivity and continually ask themselves whether the audience is getting the information it wants. Proof of that objectivity may be found in the fact that chatter on both sides has suggested that the moderators were biased against their candidates and helping the other guy.
Those of us who develop marketing communications materials also have to approach projects with objectivity and a focus on providing the information the audience needs, even though we’re hired by someone with a real stake in the process. Like the debate moderators, we’re most effective when we become advocates for the audience instead of shills for the organization that wants to send the message, although that can be a tough concept to explain to the people who are signing the checks.
I recall sitting across from a corporate executive who was having difficulty pinning down his dissatisfaction with some elements of his company’s marketing. He knew it wasn’t as effective as it needed to be, but he just wasn’t sure about what was wrong.
When he invited me to respond, I pointed out that the company’s marketing materials did a great job of sharing everything that made the company and its leadership proud. It was full of long descriptions of every element of the products and services they offered, and it repeatedly pointed to the excellence and superiority of those elements. He seemed pleased.
But, I noted, the ultimate audience — the people who would engage this firm’s professionals — didn’t care about any of those things. They had a set of needs and concerns that had nothing to do with the level of detail in those materials. Put simply, they wanted someone who could take a tough, unpleasant, but critical job off their hands. They wanted someone who could make them look as smart as they felt they were. They didn’t care about the engineering needed to pull that off.
When you jam the gas pedal to the floor, you expect that your car will pull you away from a dangerous situation. You don’t really care about the throttle linkage or the engineering behind the fuel injectors, do you?
But instead of being developed with the audience’s needs in mind, the marketing materials broadcast what the company’s executives thought was most important, and what made them different from the competition as they saw it. An effective copywriter would have kept that from happening. As an advocate for the audience, an effective copywriter would have challenged those assumptions and brought the discussion back to what the audience wanted and needed to know.
That doesn’t mean copywriters always win those battles. I remember losing a client after a similar discussion. I sat in a roomful of C-level types and had the temerity to provide honest answers about their company’s website and what it said to current and prospective clients. I wasn’t simply offering my own opinion; I was summarizing the conversations I had with a dozen users of the site. The consensus of those users was that the site did nothing of value except trumpet the company’s belief in its own greatness, and I agreed. I’m sure the company subsequently engaged a writer wise enough to recognize that greatness.
Whether you’re trying to give voters a candid look at what makes two political candidates different, or trying to make sure that someone thinking about buying a product or service has the right information, you have to approach the situation from the viewpoint of the audience. Debate moderators and copywriters cannot be effective in their roles unless they are willing to do just that.
Yes, that approach will invariably put them in hot water among those whose egos and sense of self-worth lead them to lose sight of what really matters. But experience has taught me that it’s well worth the risk. And if it means I’m going to gain the indignation and lose the business of those who disagree, that’s a risk I’m willing to take.