Bernard Gauthier

I recently saw Rush in concert for the third time. As always, the arena was full, the musicianship was phenomenal and the whole experience was well worth the ticket price (which, of course, seems to go up exponentially every time I see them in concert). I was struck at this concert by the power that certain songs had over the crowd. That power put me in mind of one of the great minds in communications that I’ve come across and prompted this posting. It also prompted me to rethink the recent Ontario provincial election campaign and the issue that all but took over the process.

As much as the crowd listened attentively and applauded politely whenever Rush played new material, the minute two or three familiar chords were struck on songs like Limelight, Spirit of the Radio and Tom Sawyer, the crowd instantly jumped out of their seats, started dancing and began singing along. The shift in levels of energy was remarkable. The power of these songs, of course, lies in the fact that people had heard them many times, had stored the lyrics and melody in their minds and associated these with all kinds of experiences: concerts, parties, late night drives and more. Once stored, it took only a few seconds for the concert music to bring it all rushing back for the audience.

This is exactly the pattern that Tony Schwartz, a legendary creator of radio and TV ads, recognized and described in his book “The Responsive Chord.” In the book, Schwartz essentially turns the communications process on its head, arguing that the job of the communicator is to get experiences out of the audience, not simply inject messages into them. When the message captures the essence of the experience stored in the audience’s mind, it strikes a “responsive chord” and brings the stored experience rushing back.

The most famous example of his technique is the Daisy ad — an ad that ran only once but may just have helped Johnson beat Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential election. Schwartz’s research showed voters had deep seated fears about Goldwater using “the bomb” and he constructed the ad to bring those fears rushing back.

The real breakthrough for Schwartz, it seems to me, is his understanding of how little needed to be said to have the desired effect. He was a pioneer of new media communication (long before the Internet) who recognized that a few, carefully chosen words or images were infinitely more powerful than pages or prose and charts (remember that next time you fire up PowerPoint).

Schwartz’s technique is alive and well, though with mixed results. Certain ads, campaigns, websites and events do manage to strike a responsive chord with audiences. Tim Hortons created a wonderful spot called “Proud Fathers” that brought back all kinds of memories of cold arenas and coffee for me. The ad doesn’t work for everyone, of course, but for those who like me watched hundreds of early morning games and practices while nursing a Tim Hortons coffee, it struck a powerful chord.

Others stretch the technique too far and end up with the opposite effect they intended. My favourite is the use of Led Zeppelin music in Cadillac ads. Try as I might, I just can’t connect Led Zeppelin to Cadillac — most Zeppelin fans I grew up with loved driving but driving a Cadillac… I think not. Credibility, it seems, matters even when advertisers are using the responsive chord approach to their craft.

So what does all of this have to do with the recent provincial election and the dominant role played by the issue of funding for faith-based schools in Ontario? I’ll admit, I was curious when I saw John Tory lead the election with this issue. I thought it might be a volatile issue (which, of course, it was) but I never imagined the issue would remain at the top of the media and public agenda for the duration of the campaign (which it did). After all, it was only one small promise by one politician during one week of a long campaign. It was, we would discover, one small issue that struck a responsive chord with voters and brought powerful emotions rushing back. The promise to provide equal funding for faith-based schools (beyond the Catholic schools in the province) touched something deep seated and deeply felt by people on both sides of the debate. Given how important and enduring the issues of education and religion remain to people in this country, we should not have been surprised.

I’ll end by admitting that I am still sorting this issue out in my own head and am far from ready to pronounce upon it. In the meantime, I remain humbly reminded that the real power of any PR or advertising campaign most often stems from the experiences and emotions in the minds of the audience. Our task is to try to understand what is stored and try to resonate with it in some meaningful and credible way, ever mindful that we may miss the mark or ignite something that goes far further than we intended.