On Saturday early evening rubbish burns in Zielona Góra, on Sunday morning the whole campaign of Donald Tusk and the media that supports him is launched. Tusk to Law and Justice uses a term that was inseparable from the garbage scandal of the Civic Platform era: the garbage mafia. This is a complete reversal of the truth, because Lubuskie is ruled by the people of Tusk who were unable to solve the problem. But the truth is not important here, what counts is the speed of sending the message.
Marketing ploy
Shortly after the Second World War, the Polish-American psychologist Salomon Asch (1907-1996) conducted an experiment that showed that people remember the first bit of information about a certain subject best. The control method was trivial, because the same adjectives about a woman were ranked in two different ways – one from the most agreeable, the other from those negative personality traits. Although the description was about the same person and in the same words, the participants in the experiment chose a character whose description began with pleasant terms. The discovery turned out to be a breakthrough in marketing – for example, in the fact that the first product to hit the market immediately gets the brand ‘most important’ among consumers. The primacy effect – because that’s what this mechanism of the human psyche is called – is also a powerful weapon in politics.
He will tell many lies and… quickly
So when fire and air pollution become the topic of conversation, determining the causes and consequences of PO personnel already works – it doesn’t matter if he tells the truth, but it’s important that he gives his version of events – even if it’s false like from a manual for chronic liars – the message will break through and stay in the minds of many recipients.
This may turn out to be a new generation election campaign – just as PiS introduced true American election conventions in 2005, spots with a positive message and imitation of the message of the US Republicans, now violent allegations that may be outdated on the same day – may prove effective in polls. It is not enough to answer with explanations, facts, spectacular election spots with sublime music. Mark Twain knew that “a lie will go round the world before the truth has put on its shoes”. All the more, there is not much time to tie shoelaces.
Source: wPolityce