Political

I’m going to say it again: repetition matters in politics

Mike Smithson has tweeted a timely reminder about how little attention most people pay to big political news. It’s from polling about the Budget:

It’s a reminder of the old political campaigning adage: repetition matters. Being repetitive without being boring can be a tricky combination (on which see the wise advice from ad man Bill Bernbach). Without repetition you may not be boring, but you also don’t make any impact.

People as diverse as Martin Luther King and William Shakespeare were great believers in repetition – despite their brilliance with words. If your ability to select and order words is, like mine, rather more humdrum than theirs, then all the more need for repetition to get the point over.

There’s an immediate practical point from the polling that Mike tweeted. Note how relatively lowly the rating is for the big Lib Dem policy of this Parliament – income tax allowance increases. Note too how although pensions got more attention, much of the press coverage has been about it being a Tory policy and not, more accurately, a Steve Webb initiative.

If Liberal Democrats want to get credit for such policies, they need to keep on repeating the message.

For more on how to make use of repetition without becoming boring, see 101 Ways to Win An Election.

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