What in the name of God is MAGA?
Of course it is an acronym for “Make America Great Again” used for hashtag purposes by Donald Trump with his social media posts.
This phrase is that one thing, that tag line if you will, which his whole campaign was built around – it is that one message that he kept pumping out over and over, in every speech and in every social media post.
Functionally when he uses #MAGA or any hashtag it pops out at you as it appears in a different colour and when you click on it you will see a listing of all of the social media posts where that was used. This makes it easy to track all of the posts.
People are bewildered about the success of this brash, uncouth, abrasive and insulting man who is now incredily the “Leader of the Free World“.
How is this possible?
While it is unbelievable I have a simple theory that I think partly explains the Trump pheonomena.
Here goes …
In this fast paced internet age where we are being assaulted 24/7 by messages and news via many media platforms it is very difficult to focus one’s attention properly.
As a result our attention spans are tiny and if you have a message that you want people to grasp then you must have one simple, clear message that is memorable and used consistently over and over.
This can be really effective because most people do not have the time or the inclination to dig deeper, to do their own research and properly inform themselves of all the facts about issues that are important such as who becomes the next President of the United States.
This key message should become your tagline and if possible it should be capable of being used as a hashtag in your social media posts.
For example in the recent BREXIT campaign the ‘leave’ campaigners put out a consistent campaign about “getting our country back“.
This simple message was pumped out over and over resulting in a majority of voters opting for ‘leave‘. What was clear afterwards was that many of these voters admitted that they had no idea about the consequences of their vote as will definitely be the case in the United States.
The ‘stay’ campaign had no clarity about their message so they made it easy for the opposition and with Hillary Clinton it was the same as “Stronger Together” just lacked enough punch and enough reasons for people to connect with it and vite for her.
A key learning for all of us in this ‘short attention span era‘ is that a simple clear message that connects with your audience used consistently will most definitely help you to connect and win.
I’m worried ….
Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications who offer Strategic Communications, Marketing, PR, Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland
