How do we address our target group?
As people who strive for a fair world, we have a lot of criticism of the injustices in our world and, in contrast to these, we also have ideas and visions of how, for example, rent, climate or health policy should change. We call formulating these thoughts for the public public and press work.
Why do you need core messages?
To answer press inquiries, it helps to formulate core messages – in other words, sentences that get to the heart of your concern. However, it is worth considering in advance who the audience for your message should be and how you can best reach that audience.
How do you find your target group?
We assume three target groups:
There is “our base”, which are the people who may not be active but share our goals and are on our side. On the other hand, there are “our opponents”, who are those who are completely against us and reject and fight everything we believe in and stand for. The largest group is “the persuadables”; these are people who are undecided, who share some progressive beliefs but are also influenced by some reactionary ideas.
To rally people beyond our own base behind our messages, we need to consider how to adapt our messages in terms of language, comprehensibility, jargon, facts and assumptions – but we still want to address our base. A tip here: formulate your message in such a way that a schoolchild can understand it!
Would you like to request a training or workshop from us? Feel free to write to us at
Presse[at]movement-hub.org
We are happy to support you!
Changing the view
Those who can be persuaded can hold reactionary opinions, but they are not consciously ideologically committed to these opinions, as our opponents are. Most people usually have a range of contradictory beliefs, some of which are shaped by the prevailing messages they hear around them, and their opinions change when these messages change.
That is why it is so important to consider how we talk about demands, actions, etc. so that the view of certain issues and thus opinions change. In “press speak”, the way you describe a situation is called framing.
The most important thing is not to repeat your opponent’s messages. This only leads to them being heard over and over again. Instead, think about how you can use words, sentences and core messages to change perceptions.
Test messages
Slogans, demands, brands and images for political campaigns are usually developed by a small team. These people often have shared beliefs, live in the same places and have similar identities and lifestyles. This means that they often think and feel similarly. And a campaign is almost always created under time pressure.
We often don’t have the time we would need to think about exactly who we want to say what to, how the recipients of our messages think and feel, what we want to achieve with this group – and how our message should look and sound as a result.
Because our messages are often based on assumptions, we have no way of knowing whether people would actually agree with them. That’s why we’ve put together a guide to testing messages. Testing helps you find out whether your messages are understood and how they are received by the respective target groups. This can help you determine whether you need to continue working on the messages to make them more understandable, whether they reflect the values of your target group, and whether the people you want to reach are actually being reached.
Further resources on testing can be found here:
Further resources:
How does political communication work? On the website of the collective Wort.wechsel
you can find further guides.
You need press and talk show training? Check out Aktivist*innenagentur.
You need help with your PR work and don’t know where to start, or you want to use the RCN? Write to us!