Dear Politicians, Let’s Talk Basic Communications

Now that the provincial election is over, I can make note of a couple very basic communication issues I’ve come across in the weeks leading up to said election. Not like any of them would have seen my comments and made changes based on them had I posted earlier, and not like any of them will see this now to make notes for next time around, but whatever. Note that I didn’t follow every move of one or every party — in fact, I hardly followed the tracks of any. I didn’t even watch the party leaders’ debate. These are just a couple really small things that I have been in contact with.

So. Dear politicians, when preparing for future elections, please keep in mind the following tips that will help your communication game.

Number one: volunteer cold-callers. Not everyone is comfortable on the phone, and that’s fine (I’m not a fan of phone-calling either!). But you want to put your best foot forward when reaching out to the people who’ll answer the phone. Please screen your volunteers and choose ones that can carry themselves well. I received a phone call from a young woman who tittered. A lot. The best moment? She listed some of the biggest promises the party was making, ending with something about building jobs in the oil industry… cue nervous titter. Look, I get that she was nervous. I get that she probably hadn’t found her groove yet. I get that I probably wasn’t much help in boosting her confidence. However, you do not want to sound like you’re laughing at something that is a priority for a lot of people in the province, even if it’s the volunteer’s fault and not your own. (Especially when people are already under the impression that you’re doing that behind closed doors anyway. I considered joining in with a derisive laugh of my own.) So relocate poor phone callers to other areas where volunteers can help you out.

Number two: web design. You can afford a halfway decent web designer, one that can tastefully incorporate your party colours into a summary of your political platform. When I checked out said summary on your webpage, my eyes were assailed with an awful design: The headings for each point (and remember, this was a summary, so the points were made short and sweet and therefore close together) rotation of red, green, and grey. I get that it was meant to be a nod to the colours of your logo, but it gave a sense of inconsistency. There are better ways to structure multiple colours. As if the spinning that my mind took at that wasn’t bad enough, the exact shades of the font were even worse. It’s not even that they didn’t exactly match the shades of red and green of the logo (which, by the way, a good web designer could have easily taken care of). It’s that the worst shades possible were used. Never under any circumstances use this red and this green together. In fact, that green should simply not even exist as a font colour option. It’s garish and hard on the eyes. My eyes are tripping out just seeing this small amount in my post, so imagine what your webpage did to me. You want people to read what you have to say. Make it readable by not making our eyes beg to look at something else (like… another party’s platform?). For the sake of our optical and mental health and your own dignity, fire whoever-it-was that set up your platform summary.

Number three: making it personal. No, I don’t mean “making the election a big deal to voters”. I don’t even mean the inevitable dirt-digging and tossing during debates (though, really guys? Isn’t that something that you’re supposed to grow out of on the third-grade playground?). What I mean is basing your party platform on a person. It’s weird when your party slogan is “[Party leader’s name]. Fighting for you.” Why not “[Party’s name]. Fighting for you.”? Does that not make way more sense for candidates to stand in front of banners and under screens with that slogan? If you really want the personal touch, at least make individualized signs for each riding (ie: “[Riding candidate’s name]. Fighting for you.”). Worse than the slogan (and accompanying signs) though was the political platform document. It was all, “[Party leader] did this, [party leader] will do that, [party leader] the other thing”. Why the huge focus on your party leader? I get that you want to boost up your leader, but aren’t you supposed to be talking about your party’s directives? (Also, we’re voting for riding candidates, not party leader, so….) And then there’s the unprofessional take on the opposing party: “[Opposition party leader] this, [opposition party leader] that.” Sure, the opposition has a leader, but there’s more than just that one person in that party with those directives, yeah? You’re gonna hate me for saying this, but be like the opposition. They named parties, not leaders, in their platform document. And that made them sound a far cry more mature and professional.

Number four: repeated robo-calls. Robo-calls are annoying enough but please, if you can program automated responses to my answers, surely you can automatically cross my phone number off your list? I don’t need you to call every other week. Especially if all you’re doing is asking whether or not I support a particular policy. And why on Earth does a political party need to know what time of the day I’m going to vote and how many people I’m going with? As I told the robo-caller, “That’s none of your business.”

Number five: dress for the part. A suit is great attire. It’s professional and makes you look like you take your job seriously. You got that part of it right. But next time, invest in a new one instead of wearing one from your younger days when your physique actually filled out the suit properly. Don’t go to the debate wearing a suit jacket a size too big. It’s not professional anymore. It’s sloppy.

Opportunities

I’m still on the hunt for a full-time job, but I do now have a couple opportunities I’m excited about! First, I’m volunteering for a film project. It’s part of a program that a college two hours away has and I’ll be there for a week. I think I’ll be filming some behind-the-scenes stuff (cool!) and helping crew members with miscellaneous stuff. So I’m hoping that this will give me at least some amount of
experience one way or another, even if it’s just observing how an organized team works to get a project like this done. (Maybe a couple pointers on how not to freak out when directing a short film? Haha. Those of you who helped me with that might remember how scattered I was that day. 🙂 )

So that’s one opportunity.

Another is a part-time contract for the month of August with a small video production company about ten minutes from where my dad works. I’d be co-editing about eight episodes of a mostly-reality, partly-documentary TV show that’ll then air in Canada. I’d be credited as an editor (basically, it means I get a little more “umph” to my resume than a simple “yeah, I was one of three editors for this show”) and, if he likes my work, the man who runs the business might offer me positions on other projects as they come up. There’ll be a ton of learning involved in this project, so I hope I’ll be able to keep up, commit it to memory (and paper… I should probably take a ton of notes!), and put it all to good use!

A third is an unpaid internship that I’d do from home. It basically runs along the lines of reading articles about a given topic in a given country, understanding said articles, and then rewriting them in about 250 of my own words. I’d be writing four of these a week. And they say that, by the end of three months, they’ll give me a reference letter. I’m not planning on this really being part of my career, but who knows, it might be part of a job description someday, especially if I get more of a marketing job than a video production and/or graphic design job.

On a mostly-unrelated note, I’ve made a teensy bit of progress toward two personal video projects. One is a fanfiction trailer I’m building for someone who is both an online friend and my favourite fanfiction author. I haven’t started editing it together or anything – I haven’t even found all the pieces I’ll need! – but I’ve made some progress in the footage-gathering department. (Plus, we also got talking about my doing another such video for her and she somehow managed to unlock a couple ideas for that just by getting me to think and discuss and remember stuff. 🙂 ) As for the other, I’m working with another online friend on another video. I tossed an extremely rough script at her a couple days ago, so now that project has grown from idea to a big step forward toward actualization. It’s nothing fancy, but it’ll be fun. And time-consuming. And awkward since I’ll be director, director of photography, and actor all at once (though I might be able to wrangle my sister to assist with the camera some) – a feat I’ve managed once before. But hey, both projects are still some amount of experience and I’m going to have fun with them!

Anyway. That’s pretty much what’s been going on recently. 🙂