Wanted: Persuasion, Baby, not Protest
9th March 2010
I’ve noted before the failure of advocacy groups who appear to offer protest as a means of persuasion when it is probably better understood as mere expressiveness. Consider now this example from, of all issues, health care reform.
An advocacy group wishes to convince us that health insurance companies are Evil and need to be controlled as part of health care reform. Here’s how they make this point.
And here, too.
I understand the cleverness of the metaphor and it does attract broader attention, as with ABC News, for example. I have to wonder, however, at the persuasive impact of the message. To equate the legal actions of people with a familiar icon of criminal identification, the Wanted Poster, seems to be an unreasonable stretch.
Sure, these Posters get Reception in the first Stage of the Cascade. But, do the Posters then generate the kind of Processing and Response that will then lead to desired behavior change (Our Kind of Health Care Reform!)? As I noted before, advocacy demonstrates its lack of skill or interest in persuasion when it only seeks and gets Reception, but then cannot produce helpful Processing and Response.
As always, All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.
And, can’t you find more desperate photos of the Evil Ones? Or Photoshop them like Time magazine did with OJ?