Excerpts from ‘Bridging Divides’ series: Reaching Across the Aisle: Advertising and Messaging in an Age of Polarization
As part of the College of Media’s three-part webinar series this fall, “Bridging Divides: Conversations on Media and Disagreement,” faculty from the Departments of Advertising, Journalism, and Media & Cinema Studies led Q&As to explore how productive discussions occur across lines of disagreement and difference.
Below, read excerpts from “Reaching Across the Aisle: Advertising and Messaging in an Age of Polarization.” Note: Answers have been condensed for length and clarity.
Panelists:
- Jason P. Chambers, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Professor, Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising; author of Advertising Revolutionary: The Life and Work of Tom Burrell
- Michael Strautmanis (BS ’91, advertising; JD ’94, law), Executive Vice President for External Affairs, Obama Foundation
Chambers: We live in a world in which people either love the AFC or the NFC, you either like Coke or Pepsi, Apple or Samsung, Democrat or Republican. We live in a world of these bifurcations and find your tribe and all of that. So how do you deal with those differing belief systems when you're trying to establish a message? How do you present a core value or what might be some of those core values that you try to illustrate for people?
Strautmanis: If there is something that is a part of your identity, that is core to who you are, from which your values stem because of your experiences or because of the people that have taught you things, then I think in some ways it's not [just] okay, it’s necessary to articulate them, to make them known, to make them seen.
But I guess the question is, what's your goal? These things that divide us—and it could be our political parties, it could be our race, it could be our beliefs—could be used to build a connection, even if the connection comes from a different and opposing place.
Our identities don't have to be fixed and that can be an interesting story to tell that can often create common ground as well.
Chambers: I like the way that you put that, that our identities don't necessarily have to be fixed. Does it sometimes feel as though we hold to things as though they must be a moment of learning for me? But if I accept that then I'm somehow being inauthentic to my tribe or I'm somehow being a traitor to the things that I've, at least up until this educational moment, thought that I believed in. So how do you approach those environments where you may be entering a space where you're thinking [you’re] really going to have to work hard to find the points of common ground for folks, because at least in terms of belief system we may be on such wildly different planes?
Strautmanis: I think for me, when I've struggled with that, it's because I'm afraid. And I might be afraid for good reason. I might be afraid because I'm in an environment where I feel like people are making assumptions about me based upon my identity that will hurt my ability to be successful.
I'd say one of my most basic values is learning and education. A fixed mindset that leaves you having a base—if you can think about it visually like a permeable fence that you can stand in—where you've got your people who love you, the people who know you, the people who you can be yourself completely with. The core of who you are. You've got that. And I think that really helps you then let things in and out of that fence and be able to shift and change along the way, based upon the different experiences that you've had.
Literally, I can't imagine this, but if you are mentally in your mind the same person at 50 that you are at 20, I just can't think of anything more sad than that. That you have not been able to live a life [where you] grow and change and evolve. There is no better place to do that than in college. That's what college is for—to come to an environment with a bunch of other people who don't come from where you come from, who don't look like you, who have different experiences than you have, and be in an environment that the whole point of it is to learn.
Chambers: As one who deals with audiences and creating messaging and dealing with folks of different perspectives, belief systems, politics, and other ways of thinking about messaging, do you have guidance or insight for thinking about some of these social media tools and this awesome power that we now have as individuals, as well as organizations, in a broader society?
Strautmanis: We had this experience often, particularly in 2008, where part of the strategy to defeat [Barack Obama] politically, was to make people afraid of him, to connect him to things that were scary, and to play on a lot of very old tropes around Black men, very old tropes around Chicago, and try to find ways to have people leap over the intellectual part and go to something very core, like, ‘I need to be afraid.’
So, what we had to do is try to find a way to stimulate the ‘Is that true?’ instinct in people. If you ask yourself, when you see something, you read something, [and wonder] ‘Is that true?’ it kind of gives you the opportunity to do some of your own research.
I think that kind of messaging and strategy that has people connect to their best selves can really work across lines of difference. Our belief and our experience has been that people don't really like hating everybody and being mad at everyone.
So, we do like to give people an opportunity to say: ‘You are a hopeful, optimistic, capable person who sees the best in others.’ And what we found is most people are like, ‘Yeah, that is me.’
Read excerpts from the other “Bridging Divides” Q&As: