We left off last week’s article with the conclusion that the results of the midterm elections, specifically the failure of pro-life ballot propositions in many states, reveal that we as a pro-life community have a marketing problem.
Getting a little more specific about what kind of marketing problem, I would say the pro-life brand is not resonating with a large number of American citizens, particularly our younger citizens.
A definition of “brand” within a marketing framework would be helpful here.
I’ve always liked marketing guru Seth Godin’s definition of brand: “A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.”
So the question is which brand, the pro-life brand or the pro-abortion brand, resonates with the expectations, memories, stories and relationships of the majority of our citizens.
If we use the mid-term elections as a guide to help us answer that question, the voting data on pro-life ballot propositions suggests that the pro-abortion brand is winning the market share battle at the ballot box.
I read one story about the failure of the pro-life constitutional amendment in Kentucky that demonstrates just how strong the pro-abortion brand is.
A journalist interviewed a woman in Louisville who had her front yard covered with signs supporting conservative candidates.
Then the journalist asked the woman if she voted “yes” to the ballot proposition to amend the Kentucky state constitution to protect human life from abortion.
She answered something to the effect of, “Oh, I voted no on that. It’s my choice whether or not to have an abortion.”
Ouch.
My take on that as a marketer is that the pro-life community’s decades-long focus on the moral wrongness of abortion as the core of the pro-life brand is not persuasive enough.
I don’t think the pro-life community should abandon our “Right to Life” messaging, but I think our brand needs a booster of some kind.
My recommendation for that booster would be to put much more emphasis on branding a message about empowering women experiencing unexpected pregnancies.
I’ll brand it as a woman’s “Right to Thrive.”
Some in the pro-life community would argue that we already do that, using a phrase that is common among pro-lifers: “Love them both.”
But there’s what we say, and then there’s what we actually do.
And I think there’s evidence that we put much more emphasis on a preborn human’s Right to Life than we do on a woman’s Right to Thrive.
For example, if we collected everything that was written or spoken concerning pro-life over the last 12 months, and put all sentences related to Right to Life in one column, and all sentences related to Right to Thrive in another column, then added up the total number of sentences in each column and compared those numbers, what would we see?
My guess is the breakdown would be something like 90% Right to Life versus 10% Right to Thrive.
Admittedly, it’s just a guess but I think it’s an informed guess.
My contention is that we in the pro-life community need to address that imbalance, and the sooner the better, if we want to win market share away from the pro-abortion brand at the ballot box.
In future articles we’ll continue to explore the potential of the Right to Thrive branding message to do exactly that.
This article was published in Heroic Media‘s weekly newsletter