The Power of Frames

An employee of mine, my transcriptionist, was living in New Orleans until August 28, 2005. On that day, she and her boyfriend and their cats drove north to Tennessee to ride out the storm in a pet friendly hotel.

They arrived in Portland, Oregon eight weeks later after picking up their belongings in New Orleans. And whenever someone would find out where they were from, they'd inevitably say, 'Boy, so you're a Katrina victim?' Her response was, 'Not really. I had money and a car to evacuate. I was in a hotel in Tennessee. The victims weren't able to leave. They're the ones that were abandoned.'

On an even more positive note, she says, 'This was a great move for me, a new life, new city, and I'm very happy for the change.'

She has anger and sadness for the city and the loss of friends, but has turned the upheaval into a new beginning.

We can use framing as a tool for positive change and a potent instrument for persuasion. When we think about Holocaust "victims", we see "survivors".

Thousands of social workers use framing each day. Gang members consider killing an opposing gang member honorable, but social workers and parole officers use framing to show how ugly murder is no matter who is the victim.

The world of advertising relies entirely on framing. Appealing to different segments of the population, ad campaigns are tailored to youth markets, middle aged markets, senior markets, religious markets, etc. Advertisers take on the rebel and independent attitudes of youth culture to sell their products using edgy slogans and cool ads.

Politics would be nowhere without framing. Bush, for example, uses the presupposition that, 'It's better to fight them over here than it is to fight them over here.' Well. . . that presupposes that we'd have to fight them at all. In 2004 he convinced more than half the nation that he was right and used 9/11 to support his frame that we're all in imminent danger.

On the other hand, the Democrats have framed the war as something that has been prolonged and has crossed the line of sacrificing too many American lives for a cause that is based on lies and is less than worthy.

Framing can be used to convince people in positive ways. Martin Luther King, Jr. framed segregation as an evil injustice changing the views of many people. Generations later, black and white students don't know the blatant inequality as they've grown up in fully integrated schools.

Frame a hardship into a challenge,. Frame a setback into a time for reflection. Frame a victim into a survivor. Frame an old-fashioned product or service into something cutting edge and indispensable and awesome. Frame everything!

Article Source: http://www.myaddirectory.com

Kenrick Cleveland teaches strategies to earn the business of affluent clients using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion strategies.

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