Andrew Tumilty: Poilievre is talking too much to voters he already has
If you keep talking to an audience about what you want to talk about, instead of what they think is important, they will think it’s because you are not interested in them.
By: Andrew Tumilty
Messaging that doesn’t consider the audience is not just ineffective, it can be actively harmful to connecting with your audience.
Imagine you are working at a restaurant and your table lets you know they’re vegetarians. Hearing this news, you launch into a detailed description of the slow roasted prime rib and why it would be an excellent choice for their meal.
You might be right; it might be the best prime rib ever. It doesn’t matter. Your guests are unlikely to order it, and worse, they are probably going to be left with a negative impression of the service because you ignored what was important to them.
This is a communications lesson the Conservative campaign seems to be missing in the early stages of the federal election.
In strategic communications, when we develop plans, speeches, presentations or talking points, we spend a lot of time thinking about our audiences. We identify who they are, what motivates them, and ask how we deliver our key messages so they connect with our audience’s priorities.
When Canadians’ priority are defending the country from Trump’s threats of annexation and economic ruin, focusing your remarks on the previous government puts up a barrier to your messaging reaching them.
Is there an audience of Conservative voters who want to hear it’s the Liberals’ fault that Trump is threatening Canada? Probably, but those are voters who were likely already in the plus column for the Conservative team.
The broader audience the Conservative campaign needs to reach is the one that doesn’t think memes are a substitute for news or who fly flags with prominent political profanity. The goal for their communications should be reaching voters who are currently more concerned about their own jobs than they are about a prime minister who no longer has his job.
The public sees two sides to this election, and one of them is Canada’s. If one campaign’s messaging is still focused on Canada being broken and one is centred on Canada being strong, it is not hard to guess who people will see as the better choice to defend the country.
If people are worried about how trade and tariffs will affect the economy, they don’t want to hear you blame the past prime minister for the economic threats coming from the American president. When communities across the country are calling for all Canadians to stand together, it’s not a good look to question if a prime minister from Edmonton or an actor from Scarborough are Canadian enough. When people are worried about Canada’s national security, saying you won’t get your security clearance because of party politics is not going to land well.
At some point, if you keep talking to an audience about what you want to talk about, instead of what they think is important, they will think it’s because you are not interested in them. They won’t be wrong.
That is when failing to connect to your audience is worse than being unable to effectively deliver your message. Instead of just tuning you out, they will form a negative impression because your communications suggest that their priorities are different from yours.
Political parties spend time and money to shape the ballot question ahead of an election. Campaigns don’t want to have the best answer among the other parties, they want to establish the ballot question so their party has the only answer people want to hear.
Conservatives might have wanted the ballot question for an election to be about the carbon tax or Justin Trudeau’s time as prime minister. A few months ago, there was an excellent chance that is exactly the question and campaign they would have got.
That isn’t the question the voters want answered anymore. If Poilievre can’t shift his messaging to speak to the questions and concerns voters have about Canada’s future, voters might decide it’s because he doesn’t have an answer for them.
Andrew Tumilty is the director of issues management and crisis communications for Enterprise Canada, a national strategic communications firm. He has crafted strategic communications and advice for public and private organizations across Canada and worked on political campaigns, often for Liberals, for all three orders of government.
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It continues to amaze me, all the free advice Poilievre gets from people who don't want him to succeed.
I don't understand this. This is from tweet I posted in *2020* and it still holds today :
"CPC strategists seem to think that the marginal/median Canadian voter is a middle-aged white Albertan man who works in the oil patch and is consumed with an inchoate hatred of Justin Trudeau, and that they need to persuade him to vote Conservative"