The Campaign Messaging Workbook

Say one thing, and say it well

Your campaign should focus on three or four issues, no more. Boiled down to a word or two — easing traffic on Route 1, protecting Social Security. Try to run on everything and your message dilutes until voters can’t tell you apart from anyone else on the ballot.

That sounds simple. Doing it, under pressure, in public, is not. This workbook is the process.

Main issues

Start with the phrase. Then expand each one into a real position — points, evidence, citations, and where you have it, a personal story. That’s what you draw on when a reporter, a forum moderator, or a voter at the door asks you to say more than a slogan.

There’s a page for each, so you finish with a written record rather than a good intention.

Secondary issues

The issues that matter but can’t lead. Marking one secondary doesn’t mean it matters less to the people it affects — it means your time and money are finite. Same structure, same pages, lower billing.

Your opponent

Review the messages being positioned against you, and the frames they’re built on. Call out the points they use, cite their sources, flag the claims that don’t hold up, and write what you say back.

You’ll often find you’re both fighting over the same issues from opposite angles. Knowing that in March is why you answer it calmly in September.

Then launch

The last section takes the messaging you’ve just built and points it at the first thirty days of an actual campaign, step by step.