By Donald A. Mounce
There’s Good News on The Economy, Stupid!
When political media strategist James Carville was heading up communications efforts for the first presidential campaign by Bill Clinton, the organization developed a guidepost to judge any of their political messaging efforts.
It’s The Economy, Stupid!
If the political message or information wasn’t about the economy…how bad it was, how good it can be with change, or how Mr. Clinton could not make it better…then whatever message was developed was determined not to be the right one. And such message content and point was dropped from all media discussions, news releases and speeches.
Carville’s research indicated that the economy was what voters wanted to hear about–nothing more and nothing less. Any other message was deemed worthless to the ultimate goal of getting Mr. Clinton elected.
Using that same logic, it became clearly evident at this years WQA Aquatech event in Rosemont, Illinois that professionals in the POU/POE marketplace need to have a similar mantra—There’s Good News on The Economy, Stupid! And we need to spread that good news.
Make no mistake about it; the US economy is not currently in the best of shape (to put it mildly), certainly not a surprise to anyone in any facet of business. And as goes our economy, so goes the global economy, which we all recognize.
Financial problems with banking, housing and major corporations including the auto industry, have really taken our rock-solid economy into a tailspin. While I never lived through the Great Depression, my parents did, though I have yet to see anything that comes close to the stories and realties I heard of that event, despite posturing to the contrary by the mass media pundits who appear to relish the opportunity to tell us that ‘the sky is falling….we’ll have film at 11!’
Many people and many organizations are hurting today due to the economy, and many have had to tighten the belt just a bit, if not a lot. But even in my lifetime, despite over 50 percent of my 401k recently disappearing, I’ve lived through worse.
In the early 70s, I failed an exam in college after the Thanksgiving break because I could not find a gas station to sell me any fuel so I could drive back in time to take the test. It wasn’t that it cost a lot; there was none to buy!
And I remember moving from Illinois to Ohio in the 80s, having trouble selling one house while being happy I could acquire a great deal on another. And with that purchase came a bargain mortgage of a mere 18 percent interest.
Yet, here we stand in another ‘this is the worst economic tragedy ever’ period. That makes it even more important for us to be vanguards of the new mantra–There’s Good News on The Economy, Stupid!
Fox News Channel Anchor Stuart Varney, keynote speaker at WQA Aquatech, provided us all with some great information that we need to spread. Over the past 100 quarters (25 years) of the US economy, we have had only five that were flat or in decline, including the present.
During that time, we have seen a three percent economic growth, larger than any other industrialized nation. And over the past 15 years, we have created 32 million jobs.
We also faced the top end of a six percent unemployment rate, the lowest of any industrialized nation. Which also means that 94 percent are still employed, which is never discussed.
Again, while we know many are hurting, some very close to us, we also know that business and success are still ongoing. So we all need to share the good news going on around us.
In the vein of the popular movie a few years back called Pay It Forward, based on doing favors for others as some have already done to you, I would like to propose that we Tell It Forward. Good news needs to spread.
If a new business comes to your town, tell people about it. If a company hires people in your area, maybe even your company, let other people know. If you have no one else to tell, drop us a line here at WC&P…we may even publish a compilation on our POU-POeNews electronic magazine.
There’s Good News on The Economy, Stupid! And we need to share it with everyone…including ourselves!