After news of our latest Green Words Workshop report on the New Zealand referendum made it to the South Pacific I've been asked by Kiwi campaigner Benjamin Knight to add some specific recommendations for ways in which the pro-MMP campaign could reframe their arguments to counter each of the six myths listed by the Campaign for MMP.

In the British referendum on the Alternative Vote, I ended up recommending five key pro-AV messages that should be gotten across by whatever wording:

 • AV is a British answer

• AV is simple

• AV is honest and allows you to vote with your heart

• AV lets you take your power back from the politicians

• AV keeps fascists out

 I don't know the New Zealand context as well for obvious reasons, but I would recommend, having seen some of the "Vote for Change" messages and the short-comings of the current "Campaign for MMP" messages, something like this:

New Zealand’s referendum on voting “reform” this month poses a major threat to anybody who cares about New Zealand’s democracy. Here at the Green Words Workshop we’re concerned that the progressive side is losing ground to a more emotionally and psychologically intelligent right wing. And we’ve seen this happen before. Like in Britain’s disastrously-run and heavily-defeated referendum in May , the question is essentially between a more democratic inclusive voting system (in this case “Mixed Member Proportional”) and the backward 19th century First Past the Post.  There are a number of extremely worrying signs - many of which we watched with horror in the UK referendum - that MMP’s historical lead in the polls could be reversed, with disastrous consequences that would include the decimation of the Green Party in New Zealand, the marginalisation of Maori voices, and a return to minority conservative rule.

Our newest, 30-page report, which you can download below, analyses the messages from both sides, and recommends how the progressive side must change tack - quickly - or be swept away by an expert conservative understanding of values and the human mind.  

 In my last post I identified the metaphors at work in George Lakoff’s two opposing morality systems of “Strict Father” (Conservative Authoritarian) morality and “Nurturant Parent” (Progressive Nurturing) morality, and applied them to Britain’s failed referendum on the Alternative Vote. This post goes further, exemplifying the way Lakoff applies those metaphors to create “categories for moral action”. This post will be of interest to anyone wishing to learn more about Lakoff or for a persuasive explanation of why the Alternative Vote failed.

Let the post-mortems begin. Because we need to know how to do much better next time. The next referendum – on PR – may be as little as 5 years away… And we should be pressing immediately for PR for the upper house, which would be a historic accomplishment.

Let’s get some obvious and crucial points out of the way first:

·         Clegg was of course an albatross around the Yes side’s neck.

It was predicted early on that we would lose the referendum on the Alternative Vote. But how many of us realised we would lose it just so badly? A seven to three split is a pretty damning rejection. How did this happen?

John Sharkey - the ‘Yes to Fairer Votes’ campaign director and a LibDem Lord - was heard to say in a speech at the Yes campaign’s defeat party yesterday that he and his team had run a good campaign. It just “wasn’t our time”, he said. My conclusion is - as you might suspect - that that’s simply not a good enough answer, and that it could have been their time if they had only understood better who they were trying to appeal to. Specifically, if they had better understood the values of the British electorate, and that those values weren’t necessarily their own.

For over half a decade now my Green communications colleagues and I have had the mantra “benefits not features” to steer us away from becoming too policy wonkish in how we communicate our positions. An example from the commercial world would be “this car has seatbelts with pretensioners and energy management” (features). Translation “it’s really safe” (benefit). A political example would be “our party is seeking to bring CO2 emissions down by 75% by the year 2050” (feature). Translation: “we’ll make sure you’re not going to die from catastrophic climate change” (benefit).

The Yes to Fairer Votes campaign however, has fallen into the trap of expressing the features that our electoral system would have under the Alternative Vote.

Over Easter they revealed their poster campaign, into which a lot of work had obviously gone: it is a poster with the words “Cut Safe Seats For MPs”, and the campaign logo. Now, “Cut Safe Seats For MPs” sounds like an invocation, an imperative, perhaps to some even a rallying cry, but actually it’s just another feature of life under AV: “under AV, there will be less safe seats in Parliament” (feature). It does not state any actual benefit to the voter.

How do you make a slogan? It might surprise you the key rule of slogans is the public need to already like your slogan even before they've heard it.

Cognitively-speaking, you need to be activating an area of your audience member's brain that is already associated with good and positive things in their mind, and then associate yourself with that.

Unfortunately, that cannot be said for "Make it 50", the cryptic slogan unveiled today by Yes to Fairer Votes.

The boring technical reason that "Make it 50" is problematic is that it's not necessarily true. And that's assuming you know what it means, which we should probably explain:

“What is AV?” is the essential question that the official Yes to Fairer Votes campaign is not yet answering for me, and, it seems, the British public at large.

I don’t mean an explanation of how AV works. I mean the very simplest association in people’s minds of “What is AV?”.
And I don’t even mean just for the 16% of people who have never heard of it [YouGov, 9-10 Mar] or even the 37% of people who have heard of it but aren’t sure how it works.

The problem is that when people - even who know about AV - are asked the question “What is AV?” they can’t give a clear answer. It’s not simple. It’s not easy. At the moment, for almost everybody in the British public, AV is …[blank]…  And for that reason, the Yes campaign will lose.

If - despite their advertising, their TV slots, their phonebanking volunteers, their street stalls, their canvassers and their red batphone to the national media - the official Yes campaign can’t find the simple, honest straightforward truth about what AV is, it will still all be for nought.
 

This post gives you the thinking behind our new Yes! Postcards site for the AV referendum. It is a longer version of an original post on Liberal Conspiracy.

When the No2AV campaign chose to lie last month about the costs of the coming referendum, Yes campaigners found there was no real arbiter of truth in British politics. Sunny Hundal’s complaint was batted back and forth between Advertising Standards and the Electoral Commission. Yes to Fairer Vote’s campaign to petition the authorities fell on deaf ears. It turns out referenda are somewhat loosely regulated, and the No campaign wasted no time in taking advantage of that.

But if we’ve learned anything from the art of reframing, it’s to take your opponent’s apparent strengths and turn them against him. In this instance I mean not bemoaning the lack of regulation (as we constructively criticised the Yes campaign for doing ) but turning that unavoidable fact into an advantage.

One way is to use the power of the crowd. Since there are so few campaigning rules in the referendum there is nothing to stop people sitting at home on their computers sending campaign postcards to each other, liking them on Facebook, tweeting them and generally pursuing their own online pro-Yes campaigns. Nor should there be. That’s simple freedom of expression. Even more, there is nothing to stop people sitting at home on their computers from setting up their own campaign postcards website, hoping that their messages (not vetted by any official campaign or logged with any regulatory authority) can be taken viral by other Yes supporters. So that’s exactly what two of us have done, and launched Yes! Postcards

I support the Yes to AV campaign for British electoral reform. My colleague here on the Green Words Workshop, Rupert Read, does too (and he’s written a couple of excellent recent pieces supporting AV here and here).

Unfortunately I’m concerned that the No campaign is leaving the Yes camp far behind, in terms of their framing, emotional appeal and general communication. The Yes camp just don't know how to do cognitively-informed communication. The No side clearly do.

Martin Kettle rightly identifies the British people’s annoyance with politics in his Guardian piece last week “Public hostility to politics will deliver a yes to AV”.

He’s right to say “the mood is for change”, but the question is “what kind of change?”. Kettle’s opinion is that public hostility to politics will deliver a yes vote. I’m not so sure it won’t do the opposite. And by the look of the way the two opposing campaigns are conducting their communications, the No side is streets ahead of the Yes camp in capturing the public’s hostility and mistrust towards politics.

This has a potentially tragic outcome for the Yes campaign. They will have the people on their side, but if the people don’t realise that they’re on that side, they will still lose. Have a look at the skill and cunning with which the No campaign is deploying their communications:

Click on the baby for more examples. Some of these ads are too "stock" in their photography, and bordering on cheesy, but their message is clear.