Sell The Brownie with Anat Shenker-Osorio | Hello Merge Tag Ep. 35

“Sell the brownie, not the recipe… So instead of taking your public policy out in public and thinking that that is a message, which it is not, you talk about the outcome of your policy.”

Anat Shenker-Osorio is a political strategist, messaging consultant, and communications researcher renowned for helping progressive campaigns win by using more effective language.

She is the founder of ASO Communications, a firm that specializes in crafting compelling narratives for progressive causes. Anat is also an author, podcast host, and one of the most respected messaging experts on the left.

Recently, she released a concise yet impactful glossary titled Fascism and the English Language—a guide on how we should (and shouldn’t) discuss the authoritarian threats facing our country.

I invited her on the podcast to delve into that piece and to help all of us become better, more strategic, and more disciplined communicators.

Throughout our conversation, we explored the what, how, and why of Free America.

We discussed values, villains, and vision. We examined the importance of focusing on shared values and avoiding “zombie writing.”

Anat renamed the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” the “MAGA Murder Budget.”

We emphasized the strategy of highlighting outcomes (the brownie!) rather than processes (the recipe).

Additionally, we reviewed messaging from elected officials, identifying posts that missed the mark and discussing how they could be rewritten to be more effective.

Find all episodes at HelloMergeTag.com or wherever you stream podcasts.

Links

Website | Bluesky | Substack | Words To Win By Podcast

Fascism and the English Language—a guide for how we should (and shouldn’t) talk about the authoritarian threats facing our country

 

Big thanks to our sponsor Civic Shout. Learn more about the great work they’re doing to help Democratic campaigns and progressive nonprofits build their lists ethically at civicshout.com/partners.

 

Episode Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and has not been copy-edited. While it can serve as a helpful guide to our conversation, it may contain errors or omissions. For the most accurate representation, we recommend listening to (or watching) the full episode.

Josh Klemons: Anat Shenker-Osorio is a political strategist, messaging consultant, and communications researcher known for helping progressive campaigns win by using better language. She founded ASO Communications, a firm that specializes in crafting effective narratives for progressive causes. She’s also an author, a podcast host, and one of the most respected messaging experts on the left. She recently released a short but important white paper, Fascism and the English language, a guide for how we should and shouldn’t talk about the authoritarian threats facing our country. I invited her on the pod to discuss that piece, which will be linked in the show notes, and to help us all become better, more strategic, and more disciplined communicators. So, Anat, thank you so much for joining me today to talk. I was hoping we could start with the white paper, Fascism in the English language. I’m specifically curious what prompted you to write it.

Josh Klemons: Was it born out of frustration with the language you were seeing in the world or is it just like how you approached communication strategy? I sort of thought of it as like was this a strategic intervention for the rest of us? Uh or like essentially were you being asked to write this or were you just frustrated with how we are struggling to meet this moment as a party?
Anat Shenker: Yeah, thanks for asking. Um, and thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, for sure.
Anat Shenker: Um, uh, I live in a place of frustration, so I don’t know that I was newly frustrated. Uh that’s seems to be my permanent address. Um but what we tend to do and we are very very um determined to make everything open source. And so when we do messaging research uh unless there is some very very very specific very rare circumstance, we make it widely available. And so generally that takes the form of we did a bunch of research and this is how to fight back against you know book bans.

Anat Shenker: So this is messaging on education or this is how to talk about the minimum wage or this is how to talk about unions or this is how to talk about the Roberts court aka the Supreme Court. But what I was finding was that over and over again when you take this this is the message on X and and spoiler alert if you read our messages you will notice they’re pretty much all the same message which is not accidental. It is actually a thousand% intentional because repetition is one of the most persuasive tools that we have in our arsenal. So, I will tell people all the time, you need to say fewer things and say them more often, which I know from a comm’s person perspective is like boring and annoying, but actually you need to do less work. So, you’re welcome. Now, why did that bring me to fascism in the English language? It brought me there because it’s not actually a messaging guide in the way that the rest of our things are messaging guides. It doesn’t say, you know, this is the issue.

Anat Shenker: This is the overarching narrative. These are sample extra talking points. It just basically makes an explanation for why it is absolutely critical that we call out precisely what is occurring and then it’s just a table of do say don’t say with an explanation. I think of it as a glossery because my hope is that it is a vocabulary with which people will write their messages so that we can have the proper repetition required as opposed to today this happened. I need a message for this, today this happened, I need a message for that. Because when we go constructing new messages for every 30 seconds of horrors that occur then we can’t break a signal through the noise because we keep saying different things. So that was the impetus behind doing it in this way as a glossery as opposed to like this is the message about issue X. Now why why is because right now obviously people are flumx for how to respond to the unending deluge of harms and horrors that are unleashed upon us from every possible quarter.

Anat Shenker: Whether it be the abducting of people off of our streets, whether it be to use another phrase that I think is extraordinarily important, the MAGA murder budget that awaits us that we have to block, whether it be, you know, the thing on the shadow docket that just happened with the Willox case, which, you know, is the bomb that didn’t even make it onto people’s radar. People are like cats with a laser pointer and they can’t figure out understandably what to say. And so from my vantage point, what’s happened is there’s a group of people, extraordinarily heroic, important, vital people who come from the legal community and they are understandably being lawyers very very into messaging about the const the impending constitutional crisis and the erosion of checks and balances and the harms to legal standards and the violations of the rule of law. So that’s like a discourse.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Anat Shenker: Then there’s another group of people who have taken it into their heads that their job is to fight inflation rather than fascism, which is curious given that actually what’s occurring is the latter.

Anat Shenker: It happens to also encompass the former. Um, but if you can’t actually name what you’re fighting, I’m not really sure how you’re going to be successful and vanquish it. and they very much are attached to this like let’s just talk about economic issues. Let’s not use exaggerated discourse. Let’s not be hyperbolic. Rooted in a theory of change in which I don’t know I guess we just don’t actually say what’s going on and somehow that’s how we fight what’s going on. I don’t quite understand. And so the purpose of this uh fascism and the English language intervention is to say look it’s extraordinarily important that we stop gaslighting people. And in fact what we see in our focus groups that we do continuously all the time is that for conflicted Americans they are very much in a self-questing process that sounds like this. It seems like things are really bad, but I don’t know, maybe that’s just me because the ways that people are reacting, it doesn’t seem like they think things are really bad. So, I don’t know, are they or aren’t they?

Anat Shenker: And if we are actually going to confront this authoritarian threat, what our own US history and what successful movements to counter authoritarianism teach us over and again is that you actually have to create the will to resist. You have to create an ongoing sustained civil resistance and that’s really the only way out of this. And so that is why we can’t make believe that we are facing an impending constitutional crisis. We done already been in a constitutional crisis. And last thing I’ll say, no normal human being gets out of bed in the morning being like, you know, I just can’t wait to march or to engage in civil disobedience or to hang a sign from a banner or to do a dian or to break in to Wall Street and hang a banner that says sell burrows welcome as the ACTUP activist or to engage in a very very difficult bus boycott as we saw in the civil rights movement. just to take some examples because I’m just excited about the rule of law. I just can’t wait to go march because of the rule of law.

Anat Shenker: The only people to whom that message appeals is cops maybe. But what gets regular people to do you hear the people sing singing the song of angry men is not it is a music of a people who read the federalist papers carefully and also other documentation about the constitution. It is a song of people who understand that this regime of the bullies for the billionaires is coming for you. And that’s why we have to speak in clear and accurate terms.
Josh Klemons: Is this a grassroots problem, a grass tops problem, or is it like a chicken in the egg where we can’t fix one without first finding a way to speak better to the other?
Anat Shenker: All of the above.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Anat Shenker: Um, it’s definitely a Democratic elite problem and I want to be fair and accurate. This is the spot where hashnotall applies. Not all Democrats. Yes, I will say it again. Not all Democrats come for me. But here that I am saying to you, not all Democrats. However, as far as kind of the preponderance in leadership, there has been and and you know, they’ve been very transparent about this.

Anat Shenker: they have explicitly said, “We’ve looked around and decided what we are going to do is attempt to have them hang themselves and have the economic
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Anat Shenker: pain unleashed by what I would call very much a fascist power grab and a regime of the bullies for the billionaires, which is messaging I use deliberately.” They’re hoping that that pain in and of itself is enough to compel people out in the midterms and you know that’s how we’re going to take care of this. And my rejoinder to that is that we’re not going to vote our way to democracy and we are not going to sue our way to democracy. If it was going to be possible to vote our way to democracy, then winning in 18, winning in 2020, van, you know, staving off the worst of the red wave in 2022 would have actually halted this fascist encroachment. And as you know and I know, it absolutely didn’t. We
Josh Klemons: right?
Anat Shenker: cannot vote our way. Voting is essential. Voting is required. Suing is essential.

Anat Shenker: Suing is required. I am not arguing against doing those things. What I am saying is that those things are necessary but not sufficient. And if we are actually going to address this problem which runs very very very deep then we actually have to marshall the public will to imagine a very very different social contract and way of living in America.
Josh Klemons: Um, I’ve heard you speak about the concept of saturation, which is a concept. I love that that word for the concept, the idea that a message isn’t powerful until people are repeating it to each other. So, again, it can’t be like the Democratic elites, quote unquote, are saying something. It has to be that we have a message that’s powerful enough that people are like repeating it to each other. Do you think Democrats do we even understand that that’s what we’re working towards or are we still so scattered like we seem to be like how should So I personally I look to you like I look to the resources you put out regularly.

Josh Klemons: I also look to people like Dan Feifer who I think does a phenomenal job with message box um of putting out how he thinks we as a party should be making an argument on a specific issue of the day. But like how should we as a party approach looking to find those voices? We cannot reach saturation if we’re all cut speaking from our own script. And so often we’re not even speaking from a script. We’re just throwing out talking points. Uh like vague talking points that you know we’re imagining. So like I I guess I’m my question to you is like how do we fix the problem? Um is it that we all need to be on your mailing list or is there like a better solution here or a bigger is that one piece of it? Like that’s my question. How do we reach saturation if you had like endless resources and you could snap your fingers? Like what is the path forward to reach that um that tipping point of like making our argument salient?

Anat Shenker: Yeah. So, I think the absolute first thing to recognize, and this is the least controversial thing I ever say, the thing I’m about to say, I feel like no one can like the centrist to like lefty lefty left Berkeley. I’m so far to the left. I’m in the water. Like agrees with what I’m about to say because it’s basically a statement of fact. A message that nobody hears cannot persuade them.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Anat Shenker: Period.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Anat Shenker: If no one heard what you said, it didn’t do its job. I just
Josh Klemons: Right.
Anat Shenker: don’t feel like that’s a very controversial thing to say. And so the reason that I make that assertion is because the people in the Democratic elite and in the grassroots, I mean, this is another place where they and I and all of us share an analysis that we have a distribution problem. Like how many things have been written about it, you know, I’m sure you saw that Media Matter study with the bubbles and like

Josh Klemons: Oh yeah.
Anat Shenker: how many people get how many views or listens or whatever. Like I don’t need to detail it. Everyone listening to this knows, right? They have an echo chamber. They have Fox News. They have Elon Musk’s. Like, I don’t I don’t need to tell you, right?
Josh Klemons: Yep.
Anat Shenker: This is why we have this endless discourse about the Joe Rogan of the left, blah blah blah blah blah. We all know we have a distribution problem. Everybody agrees. And so the same people who agree that we have a distribution problem continue to do message testing and produce messaging that by design is milk toast. Because what they test for almost always is aggregate approval either of the message or of the policy or the candidate that you’re trying to get people to want or vote for as as a result of hearing the message. And if you’re testing for aggregate approval of everyone in the sample, including the people who cannot, shall not, will not, will never vote for you.

Anat Shenker: That means the only thing that you can find to say is sort of benign milk toast
Josh Klemons: right?
Anat Shenker: that I agree with, you agree with, like sort of the conflicted voter agrees with. But the problem is that the base, i.e. the choir isn’t going to get out of bed and sing it.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Anat Shenker: So, in an abstract way, if someone were to ask in a survey, and remember a survey or an RCT, a randomized control trial, by definition is a captive audience. You have human beings hopefully although you also have bots and you have all sorts of other problems with sampling which we talk about but to the extent we’re talking about human beings hopefully that actually reside in the United States and are not like you know test takers in another
Josh Klemons: Sir,
Anat Shenker: country because that happens too
Josh Klemons: I’m sure
Anat Shenker: real you know voter eligible people in this country they’re forced to pay attention you’ve got them for 30 seconds and then they’re consciously aware that you are soliciting their opinion because they are in an RCT or they’re in a survey, they know I’m supposed to read this thing or listen to this thing and I’m going to answer a question.

Anat Shenker: That has nothing to do with the way that messages are distributed in real life. Absolutely nothing.
Josh Klemons: right?
Anat Shenker: In real life, the job number one of the message is to make people stop scrolling in the first place. Don’t for don’t worry, I didn’t forget your question.
Josh Klemons: That’s okay.
Anat Shenker: So, first there would have to be a broad recognition among the people who produce message talking points and do testing that if you fail at getting people’s attention in the first place, I really don’t care how much you’re telling me that in a randomized control trial it moved respondents by 2.3%. That’s make believe because you can’t make people listen to your thing in the real world.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Anat Shenker: So the way that you get saturation, especially when you don’t yet have a media echo chamber and a Fox News and a X and a whatever of your own, is that you have to have a message that your base doesn’t just agree with because your base agrees with everything that you say. That is no achievement.

Anat Shenker: That’s like someone knocked on the door and you opened it. Congratulations. Your base agrees with every version of the message. That’s how the base is defined. But that the base would actually want to repeat. I think the best illustration of this from the left that we have lived through or at least most of us was marriage equality. Once upon a time, there used to be an attempt to argue for what was then called gay marriage
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Anat Shenker: through practical benefits. So we were supposed to say things like hospital visitation rights and married filing jointly. And that was because in standard democratic message testing, you want to find the message that is not repelling people that is sort of like at least amanable to most people. And what they found back in the day before the loss of Prop 8 in 2008 in California was, okay, when we talk about family, when we talk about love, the opposition gets very out because it actually causes them to imagine two men together or two women together and they just like, you know, their reptilian brain fires off.

Anat Shenker: So, we’re going to do these like adults in the room, married, filing jointly, hospital, visitation rights, because that just sounds kind of sanguin and you’re not like picturing two dudes in a bedroom, right? The problem with that message and that testing approach is that there is no human being alive who has ever stood in line at the grocery store and been like, you know, I was just thinking the other day about my joint filer and whether my joint filer would have hospital like you know Hallmark doesn’t have an aisle dedicated to like your tax status. Instead, what a normal human being might say at the grocery store is, you know what, love is love. Love makes a family. And so after that big loss in California, there was a complete rethink by a lot of super smart people to shift the framing to marriage equality and away from the right to marry to the freedom to marry and to love is love. Fast forward ahead many many many steps to a moment when humans still used Facebook. For those of you who are young enough who don’t believe me, I don’t know.

Anat Shenker: Google it. I’m telling you the truth. It was it was a time it existed.
Josh Klemons: It did exist. Yeah,
Anat Shenker: Thank you, Josh. And there was a moment in which an extraordinary number of people all put around their image on Facebook a rainbow flag,
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Anat Shenker: right? Not unlike in 2020 during the resurgence after the murder of George Floyd when Black Lives Matter was ubiquitous and everywhere. When people all put that rainbow flag or the rainbow image around their picture on Facebook, what that did was create what we call social proof.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Anat Shenker: Social proof is simply people do the thing they think people like them do. And so when you’re skimming through Facebook, presuming you used it at the time, you’re like, “Oh, I guess this is what people think. I guess this is the dominant social belief that I don’t even have to sort of rationally think through. It’s just the way that when you’re wandering around and you see 50 people in line at this place and nobody eating at that place, you’re like, I don’t know, the food’s probably better over there.

Anat Shenker: Humans are social creatures. They follow social cues. And so the way that you get saturation is by figuring out what is a message that the choir is actually going to want to repeat because otherwise you have no hope of the middle, the conflicted, even hearing it in the first place. And yes, you want to make sure that is a message that is comprehensible and understandable. So, it also doesn’t work to have that choir message be, you know, the ravages of heteropatriarchal capitalism because most people didn’t take that class at Berkeley. Like, that doesn’t
Josh Klemons: Right.
Anat Shenker: work either.
Josh Klemons: It has to apply to both, but it has to be something you we what I heard you say is we were taking the passion out of a passionate subject because it tested well, but it it only tested well in the room. It didn’t test real well in the real world. And I guess the question is like you’re saying like we haven’t had something that successful since uh maybe Black Lives Matter to a degree like as far as language like where we were using that language in mass.

Josh Klemons: I’ll also add as an aside the those frames you’re talking about on Facebook were so powerful that Facebook removed the option to use them. So like they don’t even exist anymore like that world doesn’t exist where you can use those frames in that way. You have to be very like there’s very limited use cases whereas it used to be anybody could just create one of those and throw it out there. Um but yeah, so how do you go about how do we as a party go about finding ways to put the passion back into these uh how do we find the middle ground between speaking to the centrists but also exciting the base? Like is is there an answer to that or it’s like that every
Anat Shenker: Yeah,
Josh Klemons: issue
Anat Shenker: absolutely.
Josh Klemons: it takes like the research? Okay.
Anat Shenker: Yeah. So, you said a moment ago a message that tested well. What I’m arguing back to you is that
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Anat Shenker: married filing jointly in hospital visitation, just to stay on this as a concrete example because I think otherwise we’re just like speaking in abstraction.

Anat Shenker: I think it’s hard for people to follow. It didn’t test well. It tested well inside of a false
Josh Klemons: Oh, that’s
Anat Shenker: testing
Josh Klemons: what I meant. That’s it tested
Anat Shenker: construct,
Josh Klemons: well in like in like a fake room of people being asked, “What do you think about this issue?” But when you put it in the real world, it like falls apart because yeah, nobody thinks like that or talks like that,
Anat Shenker: right? But
Josh Klemons: right?
Anat Shenker: there’s a second thing about it,
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: which is if something tests well with your opposition that should be a bad sign.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: And we should not be measuring blanket aggregate approval because approval in a country in which the majority of people being for a public policy has actually no correlation to that becoming law. So we know this, right? The majority of Americans want to raise wages. We do not raise the federal minimum wage. The majority of Americans actually support Medicare for all.

Anat Shenker: We do not have Medicare for all. The majority of Americans support common sense gun safety. When you go issue item by item, you can get into the 80s. The majority of Americans, do you want me to keep going? Support legal protected abortion nationwide. The maj I could keep
Josh Klemons: No,
Anat Shenker: one attack
Josh Klemons: no,
Anat Shenker: like
Josh Klemons: you sold
Anat Shenker: you
Josh Klemons: me.
Anat Shenker: know.
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Anat Shenker: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: for sure.
Anat Shenker: Like so you know listeners fill in your favorite
Josh Klemons: Right.
Anat Shenker: public opinion in US politics and and I’m telling you I’m a person who is paid to measure public opinion. Public opinion is meaningless. Public opinion does not produce public policy. And we need to get that through our heads. And so this obsession with what do the majority of people approve of? Let’s measure approval. Let’s measure approval of our candidate. Let’s measure approval of our policy. Let’s measure approval.

Anat Shenker: Let’s measure increasing disapproval of Donald Trump. That’s not a theory of change. The only things that actually meaningfully alter public policy, there’s two. one and this has been well studied. While there is no correlation between majority support for a policy and its likelihood of passage, if the top if the the wealthiest 1% support a policy, it is extraordinarily likely to pass. So there is correlation there. So So one thing that gets a policy passed is if rich people want it.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Dark
Anat Shenker: Shocker.
Josh Klemons: but true.
Anat Shenker: The
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: the most surprising thing ever said on this
Josh Klemons: Right.
Anat Shenker: podcast.
Josh Klemons: Exactly.
Anat Shenker: Um, and then number two, the one that actually we could do something about, which is public action. The only thing that meaningfully alters public policy is sustained public action. This is why the right has an NRA that has people who swoop in. It’s not because the NRA represents the majoritarian position of most Americans. It absolutely does not.

Anat Shenker: It is
Josh Klemons: Right.
Anat Shenker: an absolute outlier, but they are organized and anytime there is any whiff of an attempt to do anything about the fact that they are, you know, able to distribute military weapons out into our streets and take them into our kids’ schools. There is a group of people for whom this is their obsession and they will fight it uh forgive the pun to the death.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Anat Shenker: Whereas on the other side, there is sort of this like vague mushy. Yes, I want gun safety. Yes, I want that. And of course, there’s heroic people, Mom’s Demand, lots of other groups that are like very, very much wedded to this. But it’s just an asymmetry in public action. And so, it’s my long roundabout way of saying that when we are measuring to try to figure out what it would be most advantageous to say, fine. Measure for approval. Knock yourself out. I don’t care. but also have a theory of change. And that means you have to measure for did it make people stop scrolling by putting it out in the wild and not just doing in channel experiments but also field tests.

Anat Shenker: Did it make people want to repeat it? Did it make people want to repost it? Did it make people want to share it with their friends? You can test for that. Number three, did it engage specifically the base and did it catalyze the conversation that you want out in the world? Did it cause people to have the conversation that we require? So if we look back for example to the first Trump scene when they were attempting to repeal the ACA and we successfully blocked that. I think that we all know that what that took was not a you know perfectly calibrated hundredword RCT message. It took human beings putting their actual lives and health. a lot of them, you know, in wheelchairs, long-term ill, like very very much putting their health on the line to go and be bodies in the room on Capitol Hill and make it absolutely obvious that this was life and death. That’s what it takes to either pass good public policy or block horrific policy.
Josh Klemons: is Donald Trump the like his tr like obviously evil and ridiculous and like a absurd small man but also clearly a genius when it comes to saturation like he says things that his base will run with and part of that is the echo chamber that they have built and put money into but it’s beyond that like he says says things like make America great again does not need an echo chamber to turn that into a a

Josh Klemons: line. I was listening to a non-political podcast because I too try to like stay in the world outside of politics and um there was a guy on there talking about like he was like you know Trump has MA this was during the 24 campaign early when Biden was still in the Biden campaign has spent over a billion dollars in ads what’s their MAGA sign and I was like you know what I I follow this campaign very closely I don’t know what the answer is a billion dollars in ads for a marketing campaign like if this was a consumer product we were able to move forward without like ever really coalesing around like a simple repeatable concept. Um, how do we solve for that like in not how do we look backwards, but how do we solve for that in 2028 or in 2026 or you know just moving forward if we want to like you know crawl out of this hole that we found ourselves in.
Anat Shenker: I mean I can answer that in two ways. I can tell you what I think that message has to be or I can

Josh Klemons: Okay,
Anat Shenker: tell you like how I think that message has to be arrived at.
Josh Klemons: your call. I’m here to learn from you.
Anat Shenker: I mean, I firmly believe that the message that makes most sense right now, besides continuing to say over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, that this is a regime of the bullies for the billionaires run on bribes.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: Bullies, billionaires, bribes. Bullies,
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Anat Shenker: billionaires, bribes. I’m happy to break down any one of those bees. I
Josh Klemons: sure.
Anat Shenker: can talk to death about why bribes and not corruption. I can talk about why bullies and not, you know, whatever other word billionaires is probably obvious to most people. Um, so naming the antagonist for precisely what it is. And then I think the affirmative call is free America. Free America from wages we cannot live on and rent we cannot pay. Free America from going to the doctor and getting ourselves sick worrying about the bill.

Anat Shenker: Free America from this regime of the bullies for the billionaires. Free America from tech brolearchs who want to rule over us and tell us what to do. Free America from the hate and the division that tells us you get to decide how I live, how I look, who I love. free America from all of this toxic poison. And the reason why it is free America, it is a reclamation of a positive patriotism. Not incidentally, and actually it’s funny, you and I were speaking before we started recording about Madison, where you live, where I’m from, um, uh, fellow Wisconsinite, maybe even Madison, uh, named Jake Schlater, uh, was the one who like brought up free America to me, so credit to him. Um, when the Nazis occupied France, there was a call from outside for free France. And I think that it is understandable to make a comparison for people who are actually paying attention between uncomfortably what’s occurring here in the United States and Nazi Germany. But in some ways, one could argue the better analogy is actually Nazi occupied France.

Anat Shenker: And the reason for that is that despite the fact that there was a democratic election and despite the fact that which you know we can get into the details on that is it a democratic election if the dude who attempted a coup is enabled by the Roberts court to run in the first place
Josh Klemons: Right.
Anat Shenker: in another country we would say no in this one I don’t know somehow it passes muster
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Anat Shenker: um but this is a hostile takeover of our government this is a hostile takeover of the actual administrative state, the roads we drive, the air we breathe, the COVID vaccine boosters we are allowed to access or not, the cancer cure research that apparently we don’t need anymore, the universities where you know the people who are working at them ought to decide what they’re able to teach, etc., etc. This is a hostile takeover of the government by a regime. Notice how I use those two words separately and deliberately. So, the
Josh Klemons: Yep.
Anat Shenker: government is the wonderful civil servants who like are trying to actually serve us and get things done that we require in order to live in a functional society.

Anat Shenker: And this regime is this regime. So anyway, free America, it’s a recolleation of patriotism and it is grabbing that extraordinarily important core value of freedom which is precisely what this regime is against in every single dimension.
Josh Klemons: When I start seeing tweets from elected officials with just those two words in it, I can take that as a uh announcement they’re running for president. I think that’s a fair assessment.
Anat Shenker: Um I mean the notion that they would actually listen to me is very kind, very
Josh Klemons: Well,
Anat Shenker: kind.
Josh Klemons: I’m sure more than you realize, I’m sure. Um, so I I want to take this to a micro level because a lot of this is macro. So, obviously you have the resources to rigorously test messaging, what resonates with backfires, you’re talking about random control groups and whatnot, but obviously for most downbell campaigns and small nonprofits, like they just don’t have access to that. And the things you’re talking about are very macro levels. But like, you know, what do you do when you’re dealing

Anat Shenker: Sure.
Josh Klemons: with a very small level um issue that like there isn’t somebody like you putting out message paper? So, I’m just curious like what is your recommendation to somebody who doesn’t have the resources to do real message testing to figure out how to message appropriately for um the issues that are relevant to them and their voters?
Anat Shenker: Um, so the first thing is check our website. We probably have a messaging guide on it.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: We have a messaging guide on most things. It’s open source. We do that on purpose. Look at the ads that we’ve made. Look at the messaging guides that we’ve created. Look at we make the future, our frequent partners,
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: wonderful resource uh that implement the a thing we call the race class and the race class gender narrative at the state level. Check what they’ve got going. They may well not only have a guide, but have it like for your state. Um so, for example, we have an RCN impletor in Wisconsin.

Anat Shenker: It’s called Allin Wisconsin. We have one in Michigan. It’s called We Make Michigan. We have one in Pennsylvania. We have one in Minnesota. Minnesota is like our, you know, the the grandfather of all of this. They’ve been doing it the most deliberately, biggest, longest, and not for nothing. Do we see the results that we do in Minnesota?
Josh Klemons: There we go.
Anat Shenker: Um, you know, we have in Arizona, Nevada, etc. So, like first check, maybe there is more information available than you suspect. Then the next thing that I would say is that having tested messaging again not just for like bland does the person approve of the message because the message is not running for homecoming queen. The message is attempting to complete a task which is to mobilize supporters in order to convert the conflicted. That is the task of the message. It has a job to do. Um there are patterns to what works and doesn’t. And so you can know those patterns.

Anat Shenker: We reduce those patterns to simple things to remember. The first is that messages that tend to work have an order and that order is values, villain, vision.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: So instead of going with the instinct of boy have I got a problem for you or this is the Titanic. Would you like to buy a ticket? Or look at this terrible, you know, all of this traffic that we have. It’s terrible and it’s horrible and shouldn’t we have bike lanes? Like our opening salvo on most issues is boy have I got a problem for you. And the trouble with that is that while it is appealing to activists, meaning people who are not just aligned but engaged, it doesn’t even really work with the base. And by the base, I mean people ideologically aligned but not engaged. Because people got 99 problems and they don’t want yours. So boy have I got a problem for you. generally not the best like hello at a party.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: I mean, just imagine like imagine

Josh Klemons: No,
Anat Shenker: yourself
Josh Klemons: for
Anat Shenker: at
Josh Klemons: sure.
Anat Shenker: a party
Josh Klemons: I totally agree.
Anat Shenker: and being like, “Oh, you know, I’m Josh. Boy, have I got a problem for you.” And people being like, “Don’t talk to that guy.” Um,
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Anat Shenker: and yet that is a lot of our messaging. So, instead, messaging that tends to work across issues opens with a shared value. This is where we create a very big Wii. And I want to be clear, it opens with a shared value, not with a lie or a false assertion. So
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: here is the distinction. A message that opens with a shared value on wages would say no matter what we look like, where we come from, what we do for a living, most of us believe that people who work for a living ought to earn a living. That’s a shared value. That’s what most of us believe. or
Josh Klemons: Mhm.

Anat Shenker: most of us, whether we’re black, white, or brown, native or newcomer, Latino or Asian, want to set our kids off to the very best future. That is a statement of most of us think this thing. Most of us want this thing. Most of us are working toward this thing. A false assertion would be no matter what we look like or where we come from, we all have exactly the same problems and face the same hardships. That’s just not true.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Anat Shenker: And so I’m putting a fine point on this because often times when I introduce this, people are like, “Oh, so a shared value is where I pretend like there is no privilege and like everyone’s in the same boat.” No, that’s just a lie. Which is different than a shared value. So hopefully
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: that distinction makes sense. The next step, not the first step, is to introduce the problem. So we’re not making believe that there’s nothing wrong. We’re just not starting our like come talk to me at a party with high of a problem for you.

Anat Shenker: So we assert a shared value that is related to our issue. If it’s about wages, it’s a shared value around earning enough. If it’s about health care, it’s a shared value around making sure anyone we, you know, if we’re ill or injured, we can get the care we need. You get it? There’s a match between
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Anat Shenker: what you need to talk about and the value you assert.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Anat Shenker: Then we move to the villain. And this is where we issue the tendency, the NGO talk of passive voice. Passive voice talk sounds like this. Wages are falling. Democracy is eroding. Hardships are increasing. When we talk in those ways, and I tell people all the time, I could spend every minute of every day rewriting progressive websites out of the passive voice and be fully employed for the rest of my life.
Josh Klemons: and Hanley
Anat Shenker: when
Josh Klemons: calls it zombie writing. Like a zombie did this. No, a person did this.

Josh Klemons: Let’s talk about the person who did this. And like if you’re saying something that could have been done by a zombie, like you need to change the language and like re refit it. So yeah, I I I love Yes. I think I agree with you. There’s so much passive writing out there that’s trying to pretend to get to the problem. Sorry. Go ahead.
Anat Shenker: Yeah. Yeah. And so when we do not make clear that a problem is personmade, it’s not consistent to believe that it could be person fixed. Like if it if zombies did it, then why are you asking for legislation to fix
Josh Klemons: Right.
Anat Shenker: it? That makes you sound weird. And then the other piece is that we have to understand that the opposition their first breath every morning and their last breath you know like every night every waking minute of their lives is about pedalling a villain story and in their villain story we are the villain right or whomever they have constructed as the other so the people who are taking your job the people who don’t you know believe in our way of life in in Wisconsin.

Anat Shenker: It’s simply referencing Milwaukee, which is just a dog whistle for black people. Like,
Josh Klemons: Definitely.
Anat Shenker: spend 30 seconds in the wow counties of Wisconsin and you will hear a politician be like, well, you know, here real Wisconsinites want XYZ, but in Milwaukee. And the same goes for the use of Detroit in Michigan. like our the whole discourse of the right is this unending dog whistling and scapegoating of a group they need you to point your fingers at because news flash they’re the ones who are actually screwing you over and they’ve got to hide it somehow. So if we do not name villains, their story that immigrants or trans people or women with the timmerity to want to decide what happens to their bodies or you know you fill in the blank uh or inner city crime, that’s the villain. So politics isn’t solitary and we need to recognize that our message doesn’t just land in a vacuum. It also has to kind of be in competition and combat with the rest of what people are hearing.

Anat Shenker: So the second sentence is the villain sentence values villain and then the third sentence is the vision. If you will notice that means the message is positive negative positive meaning twice as much positive for negative. It is twice as much say what you’re for say what you’re for. Say what you’re for as it is tell people what you’re against, tell people what you’re against, tell people what you’re against, which also is a progressive tendency. Um and so that’s one thing to know is that pattern. The next thing to know is that that villain sentence needs to call out what the other side is doing without repeating the claim. So you do not say, you know, most of us, no matter what we look like, where we’ve come from, how long we’ve been here, want our communities to be safe, welcoming places for us all. But today, Trump and Vance are saying that Haitians are eating the dogs and cats. Like that is an example of no you don’t repeat the charge because when you repeat the charge you are repeating the charge.

Anat Shenker: Instead, you make reference to that fact by saying, “But today, MAGA Republicans,” or “But today, Trump,” or “But today, whomever you’re going against in your context, spread lies about newcomers, hoping if we point our finger in the wrong directions, we won’t notice while they pick our pockets with both their hands.” So, you narrate the dog whistle. You do not repeat the charge. You say, “Look, this is why they’re feeding you this b*******. It is the cheapest ass magic trick in the world. It’s look over there so that I can do a slight of hand.” And then you close with a vision, which the next rule, the final rule I’ll give is sell the brownie, not the recipe.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Anat Shenker: So instead of taking your public policy out in public and thinking that that is a message, which it is not, you talk about the outcome of your policy. So instead of like congestion pricing, you say you zip on over whether it’s to work or to your best friend’s house and you get there as soon as you need.

Anat Shenker: That’s the difference between congestion pricing recipe and brownie. Instead of saying paid family leave, you say you’re there the first time your newborn smiles. Paid family leave is a recipe. You get to see your newborn smile is a brownie. So you message what the policy would provide to people in lived experience terms, not the name of the policy.
Josh Klemons: So on that front, you called Biden’s signature bill, the inflation reduction act, a quote huge unforced error because we were all running around talking about inflation, something that everybody was obviously against. Um, Trump is out here calling his signature legislation the quote big beautiful bill. Uh, which is just in just absurdly stupid but also maybe brilliant. I don’t know. Like what do you think? Did Trump did Trump win this fight like on naming his signature bill legislation as the big beautiful bill or is it like just so silly that it’s like eye rolling?
Anat Shenker: Um, if you’re rolling your eyes, you’re responding.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: You’re still having an emotional response.

Anat Shenker: And remember, the purpose of big beautiful bill is not to convince you and not to convince me because there is no Republican, least of all Trump, who has ever had a consultant say to them, and it even tests well with the opposition. He is not trying to convince you. He is not trying to convince me. He is trying to throw red meat to his base so that they will have something that they will repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat that is vague and meaningless like Make America Great Again. I mean, Make America Great Again is a particular kind of like appeal to nostalgia. It’s sort of all the hallmarks
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Anat Shenker: of the authoritarian narrative. But the point of the thing is to have something that your base is going to want to repeat that will convert not you Josh and not me because you and I are unpersuadable. We are unpersuadable. There is no purpose for MAGA to talk to us and so they do not try and that is the difference between Republicans and Democrats.

Josh Klemons: We’re trying
Anat Shenker: They
Josh Klemons: to bring
Anat Shenker: are
Josh Klemons: them in and they’re just ignoring us.
Anat Shenker: right. So what they want is something their base will say that will if not convert the conflicted assuage the conflicted. Basically keep them from taking up arms and going to the Rayburn office building and putting their body on the line or pressuring on the fence lawmakers whether they be you know purple district Democrats or Republicans from being like hell f****** no this is my body and my life on the line. He is attempting to create a conversation and when he says big beautiful bill and this is what is just absolutely infuriating. It’s infuriating. The Democratic response because there is some sort of like democratic obsession with being clever at the expense of effective has been an endless series. I have lost count. Maybe you know better than I do of like clapback BBB names, right? So like the big bodacious bomb I think is one
Josh Klemons: All right.
Anat Shenker: I saw or the like billionaire bailout br you I don’t even know.

Anat Shenker: I’m making these things up, but I’m trying to illustrate, thereby actually still being inside of his frame and not doing what is required, which is to put first and foremost on people’s minds that this is life and death. This is going to be life and death for people that you love. This is not abstract. This is not financial markets. This is not like, you know, GDP. This is your grandma and whether or not she goes to a doctor. This is your kid and whether or not they eat. This is your neighborhood and whether people can go get themselves a silencer because we’re not even allowed to legislate those. And this is when a judge says to this regime, “Hell no, you just broke the law.” they’re actually allowed to put the regime in contempt and file an injunction because by the way that slipped into this too. And that is why I have been relentless in saying that we have to call this the MAGA murder budget. Because when we call this the MAGA murder budget, it is not that everyone’s like, “Oh, that’s right, Anna. That’s

Anat Shenker: what it is.” Lots of people are like that. They’re like, “Yeah, it is a murder budget. That’s what the base says. That’s what the activists, they’re like, “Yes, that’s what this is. I want to repeat that.” But what it does, I know because I’ve watched it happen in focus groups, is it catalyzes a conversation that sounds like this. I don’t know. Is that fair? Is it a murder budget or isn’t it a murder budget? I mean, how many people is it going to kill? Is it going to kill a lot of people? Which people is it going to kill? Do we think it’s a lot of people? Does that feel apt? Does that feel like an exaggeration? Isn’t it really more like manslaughter? I mean murder means it’s intentional. Do you think it’s intentional? So even for the people who do not agree, it catalyzes the conversation we require.
Josh Klemons: I’m still processing. No, I love it.

Josh Klemons: Um, so MAGA murder bill is what you’re recommending folks call it and framing it in like it’s it’s the opposite of freedom, right? Like it’s taking away those freedoms that we’re all fighting for. So there’s like an obvious framing there which we’re obviously I is not the messaging I am seeing. And so I I we only have a little bit of time left and I I want to ask you um and maybe this is outside of like the scope of how you think about this, but do you have an opinion on where Democrats should be spending their time and energy online right now? Obviously, it’s such a truncated media environment. It’s getting harder and harder to break through. Twitter is a cesspool, but there’s still people there. I, you know, there’s like so many different places. Do you have a spot that you think is the spot or go where the voters are and you know, go where you’re the most comfortable?
Anat Shenker: Um, I I think that it is a makebelieve world that what voters think about Democrats is made out of what Democrats say.

Anat Shenker: It isn’t. what voters think about Democrats is made out of what people say about them, both their opponents
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Anat Shenker: and their supporters and the people annoyed with them. So, in so far as Democrats are doing something deliberate, I don’t actually think it’s about picking a place online, and maybe this is because it’s outside of my expertise and more in yours, but if you want to blow up on social media, it’s not I mean, unless you’re like a noteworthy person like an AOC who has like built a following
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Anat Shenker: and there’s a reason why she has built a following and Jasmine Crockett and so on and it’s not at all coincidental. that those are the Democrats that actually like do well on social media because they actually are saying something. They are actually breaking a signal through the noise. They are actually giving us something Leon WAC to talk about. More broadly, if you want to be on the news or on social media, I’m using news broadly. If you want to be noticed, then do something noticeable.

Anat Shenker: When Chris Van Holland, what like who in America had heard of Senator Chris Van Holland? I don’t think you know like the average American doesn’t know the name of their own senators. They absolutely do not know the name of like random senators. They just don’t. I hate to burst your bubble. Maybe they know Bernie Sanders. So Chris Van Holland suddenly people are like talking about Chris Van Holland. Why? Not because he like did the magical perfect blue sky post or Facebook post or Insta or whatever. It’s because he actually did something.
Josh Klemons: right?
Anat Shenker: And so for me it’s not really about where you are posting. It is about what you are doing to show not tell that you stand with and for working people across races and places because that is what is going to blow up on social media. You have to
Josh Klemons: I
Anat Shenker: do things
Josh Klemons: Yeah. No, I love it. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot and talking about that a lot.

Josh Klemons: The idea that especially now where like the the media landscape is so fractured, like the the things that get picked up the most are the things that are happening offline and being brought online, which was always sort of true, but has become much more true. There used to be a time where you really could go viral from a tweet. Those days are just gone. at this point if you’re going viral it’s because you did something in the real world as he said. So I think that’s helpful. I have one more question for you and then I want to show you uh some I want to look at some actual messaging. Um are there any AI tools you like or see promise in for helping uh progressives write more care powerfully? And I wrote a kind of sub question. Do we need a race class narrative chatbot? Uh and are you working on one?
Anat Shenker: Yeah, there’s a joke some people have told me that we needed a notbot and a notbot would

Josh Klemons: Got
Anat Shenker: just like take whatever you said like turn a recipe into a brownie and turn a passive sentence into an active sentence and like um I feel so out of my depth with AI. I will
Josh Klemons: it.
Anat Shenker: tell you that we use it on our team a little bit to do language analysis to do sort of to understand like metaphorical constructs and how people are making sense of different concepts. So we use it for research purposes u because otherwise we are doing these extraordinarily timeintensive um collocation searches or we are doing like I mean it can do stuff like that for you. It can show you which words co-occur together most often and therefore like if you understand how these things work. Kind of what does the word corruption actually mean in standard usage and how does that compare with a word like bribery? Why would potentially bribery be a higher impact word to convey what you require? Whereas corruption is like a more common word. So we use it for underlying research and it’s valuable to us for that

Josh Klemons: But there’s not like Yeah. There’s not something where you’re like, “Oh, I’m excited about this.” It’s like, “Use chatbt in a way that
Anat Shenker: But
Josh Klemons: you can.”
Anat Shenker: I’m a light
Josh Klemons: That’s fine.
Anat Shenker: about
Josh Klemons: But
Anat Shenker: this and
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: also
Josh Klemons: Fair.
Anat Shenker: pretty frightened of it. So
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: I’m not
Josh Klemons: Fair,
Anat Shenker: the person to ask.
Josh Klemons: fair, fair. Uh, so obviously you’re a messaging expert and we’re a party that’s very clearly struggling with messaging. So I wanted to show you some examples of democratic messaging and ask for your take. Good, bad, otherwise. How would you rework this if you were a consultant in the room? Uh, I just got a couple of these for you. Um, let me just share this. So, let’s start with this one. And, um, fun fact or um, there’s a good plug. This podcast is now on YouTube. So, folks want to see these, they can hop over to YouTube

Josh Klemons: But I would just ask you not to uh, summarize what you’re seeing and tell us was this a phenomenal take, a terrible take, somewhere in between, and would you have changed it? And how so?
Anat Shenker: Uh this is Chuck Schumer uh tweeting, quote, “You’re watching the Super Bowl next week. Wait till Trump’s tariff. Raise your guacamole.” Uh Trump’s tariffs raise your guacamole and beer prices.
Josh Klemons: Is that the recipe or the brownie?
Anat Shenker: Um, I don’t even know what that is. I mean, that is uh uh an older gentleman trying very hard. And when you’re trying is showing, I think that’s very very
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Anat Shenker: rough. Um, I think I mean this isn’t fair because I’m mixing what happened just now with back then. So, but let’s think about Taco Gate for a second. By taco gate, I mean Trump always chickens out. And hopefully
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Anat Shenker: folks know what I’m referring to.
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Anat Shenker: So Trump going ballistic around taco

Anat Shenker: Um what I would have done and again this is ah historical this is asyn asynchronous I grant you. But in in
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Anat Shenker: the world in which this is today and it’s the Super Bowl, whatever, I would say, “Hey, while you’re watching the Super Bowl, maybe you want a taco t, you know, acronym taco. Let’s hope Trump always chickens out. Otherwise, you won’t be able to afford it.” Like, I would use it as a go. Why? Because that is much more likely to actually get attention. Like, s***, Schumer. Schumer’s like trying to take the piss. Because if you want to get noticed, you have to do something surprising and interesting and because most likely that would actually provoke an avalanche of response from, you know, the MAGA minions and that is what would then get played over and over again. There’s just nothing about this. If you want to touch a nerve, you’re going to have to touch a nerve. And I would argue this doesn’t.

Josh Klemons: Okay. Uh here’s one um from Rep
Anat Shenker: Uh Republicans have just proposed defunding Planned Parenthood nationwide. In doing so, they are telling women and people across the country that our healthcare doesn’t matter and that we are undeserving of care. It’s time to stop this bill in its tracks. So, I think if you compare the rep AOC account with the AOC account, because she has two,
Josh Klemons: Oh
Anat Shenker: it’s
Josh Klemons: yeah.
Anat Shenker: very interesting that they I would argue have quite different voices. This is the I’m a I’m an elected official, legislator, grown-up voice. um you know she has a very big following so this probably got some reach among her followers because like you know she tweets hello it’s Thursday and that gets reach.
Josh Klemons: Right. Sure.
Anat Shenker: Um I would say that this is a whole heck of a lot of recipe. Uh the way that I would rewrite this is uh Republicans are once again coming for our freedoms by taking shots at Planned Parenthood where millions of us get our care.

Anat Shenker: They’re trying to tell us that they can control and decide our futures for us and we say not on our f****** watch. That’s how I would rewrite this.
Josh Klemons: And that might be how she wrote it on the AOC account, not the
Anat Shenker: Might
Josh Klemons: AOC
Anat Shenker: be
Josh Klemons: account. Yeah. No, I love it. How about this one? This is a text.
Anat Shenker: Uh, answer or you’ll be marked as a Trump supporter. Do you support Trump’s birthday military parade? Oh my god. This
Josh Klemons: I
Anat Shenker: is from
Josh Klemons: mean, obviously I’m being facitious, like this is from a spam pack, but like so much Democratic messaging feels like this right now. And I guess I I put this again, like obviously this is trash, but like I put it in here because how do we as a party deal with the fact that so much of our messaging is coming from spam packs and making it to where like how do you differentiate between the good and the bad when the bad is constantly in my phone uh you know, pinging me all hours of the night?

Anat Shenker: I mean that feels like a bigger
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Anat Shenker: I
Josh Klemons: fair
Anat Shenker: I’ll
Josh Klemons: enough.
Anat Shenker: do my best at that question. I you know what I would say about that uh which you’ve already identified as like really really stupid and horrifying is basically the way I would summarize that is uh the beatings will continue until morale increases
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Anat Shenker: like that.
Josh Klemons: exactly.
Anat Shenker: Yeah. And like I don’t know who the hell came up with that. So there is a much much much bigger problem that all of this I mean I often will tell people the problem is made out of the problem. And I know that sounds like a meaningless tautology but what I mean by that is money and politics. Like it is actually true that despite #notall Democrats, too many Democrats are fueled and funded by the exact same interests that have brought us into this problem in the first place. And it is in fact the case that there is not a party. There are individuals within the Democratic party, but there is not a party on a holistic basis that actually represents the interests of working people in this country.

Anat Shenker: There is not. And so this, you know, evil, nasty, bad, pack, spam email thing is just simply a product of the bigger problem, which is that politics, US politics is a pay-to-play proposition. And there is extraordinary amounts of money to be made by doing evil terrible things at
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Anat Shenker: every level from you know selling people’s text people’s phone numbers pardon me to like you know doing a deal with Apac like it’s all up and down the chain and I think you know there’s no way to answer that without like it’s money and politics that’s
Josh Klemons: I mean,
Anat Shenker: till
Josh Klemons: that’s
Anat Shenker: we
Josh Klemons: an answer though for sure.
Anat Shenker: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Uh, okay. Um, how can folks keep in touch with you moving forward? You have a ton of resources, but also like where should they find you on social? Uh, yeah, feel free to let them know where to where to go.
Anat Shenker: Yeah. Um, so I have a Substack that I barely ever use.

Anat Shenker: Um,
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Anat Shenker: but sometimes that’s called Words to Win by, which more importantly is the name of my podcast, Words
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Anat Shenker: to Win by, and it’s on all the podcast thingies. Um, every episode, with some exceptions, is about a campaign we won somewhere in the world and how we won it. So, you know, there’s no dramatic tension. The answer to the end of each episode is that we win. Um, but it is
Josh Klemons: It
Anat Shenker: also
Josh Klemons: It’s
Anat Shenker: a
Josh Klemons: a It’s
Anat Shenker: pretty
Josh Klemons: a good lesson for sure.
Anat Shenker: Yeah, it’s a pretty happy listen.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, for
Anat Shenker: And
Josh Klemons: sure.
Anat Shenker: it goes detail by detail into specific messaging lessons of like why did we talk about it this way? What was the internal argument? Who wanted it messaged differently? How did we win that argument? What was the ad we made? What was the ad they wanted to make? So, like it really takes you there.

Anat Shenker: Um,
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Anat Shenker: or at least I think so. Uh there’s two episodes fully in Spanish which I’m very proud of. Um uh so that’s a big thing is words to win by and if you feel like rating and reviewing it that would be incredible. And then um I’m on blue sky at anatosaurus. Uh I try to adhere to my own messaging advice but uh sometimes I just get so mad that it is like do as I say not as I post and I am just going off on bad things instead of saying what I’m for. I try to balance that out. Um, yeah, and if you do the Substack thing, I do Substack lives with different people pretty regularly. Uh, and that’s kind of where you can catch up. Go to our website as commmunications.com if you want messaging guides, if you want to look at example ads that have tested really well. As I said, we try to make everything open source.
Josh Klemons: and I’ll have links to all that and some of the like the fascism um glossery and whatnot uh about some important issues and hopefully, a lot of people are learning and rethinking how their framing things moving forward to talk about the the Browning out the recipe.
Anat Shenker: And hopefully, I’ll see you in Madison. That’s
Josh Klemons: Yeah, anytime
Anat Shenker: one.
Josh Klemons: I’m here. Thank you so much.
Anat Shenker: Bye.