Verbal Jujutsu: Engagement through leverage and humor

Written by Joseph J. Serwach

Pure Badger: Watch more at YouTube.com/SaveOurGreatLakes 

Organik works at the intersections of advocacy, strategic communications, social media and marketing, combining deep investigative research as well as our own form of Verbal Jujutsu. 

Verbal Jujutsu is where we determine the other side's greatest branding strengths, then find the weakest point of their brand. 

Then, as in Jujutsu, we leverage the other sides' strength against them to give our side the higher ground.

For example, note some examples in the StopDumpingCoal.org campaign, combining these serious arguments with humor, such as our "Honey Badger Doesn't Care" and "Pure Michigan" parodies to move and influence people emotionally.   

After seizing higher ground, we heavily use a series of engagement tools from social media to media relations to creative events to digital marketing and video to continually engage our target audiences, continually sharpening, refining and strengthening our arguments to re-frame the debates. In the last two weeks, two media outlets have lifted our language to use in their own articles and our videos have gone viral. 

A recent survey of Capitol Hill lobbyists asked the best way to reach congressional staffers: the vast majority of lobbyists said “personal contact,” while 38 percent said email.

When the same question was asked of Capitol Hill staffers, two-thirds said the best way to reach them was email while just 9 percent said personal contact. Politico called it a great “disconnect” between the two sides. But note: both gave a great deal of importance to email, placing it either No. 1 or No. 2 on their list. We take email to a higher level, building advocacy sites and an arsenal of tools to get the right people to them.

More Engagement campaign ideas

Some other examples of how engagement campaigns can move the needle for your organization:
 
Nearly a dozen health advocacy groups and Pfizer are banding together for a GetOld.com campaign, changing conversations related to the perils of aging as well as the challenges faced by the Sandwich Generation.
 
Our friends at Leo Burnett Detroit showed how you can quickly change the conversation in a Troy, Michigan library millage election. The Tea Party focused the conversation on taxes. 
 
Burnett launched a low-cost high-impact engagement campaign on social media and with yard signs calling for a ``Book Burning Party'' (all part of a gag with a point) the day after the election. 
 
Emotions were stirred, the conversation changed quickly. Watch the video.

Organik is a full service Michigan-based marketing and strategic communications firm generating change conversations to move the needle via a host of tools including campaigns, social media, advocacy, digital marketing, video, engagement sites, media relations, marketing events and public relations. Learn more at Organikconsulting.com.