We live in the era of narratives
Interview with Luis Cano, trainer and consultant for the public good, political communication expert, Venezuelan, Hungarian, liberal, politically engaged, defender of democracy
Luis Cano is a trainer and consultant for the public good, a political communication expert, Venezuelan, Hungarian, liberal, politically engaged, and dedicated to fighting for democracy.
My contribution to ensuring that populism stops spreading is to use my knowledge and serve as a trainer and consultant to organisations that share a vision to improve democracy, civic engagement and transparency.
Tell me about your story. How has your personal journey, from being born in Venezuela to becoming a Hungarian citizen, informed your perspective on political communication and its role in promoting democracy and civic engagement?
I left Venezuela in 2009 after years of fighting against the Chavez regime. I was part of the student movement and left frustrated that I failed in the fight for democracy along with friends and family.
When I arrived in Hungary to study Constitutional Law and Human Rights I did not want to know anything about politics. Trauma was a ghost still present in my mind. I started seeing similarities between Orbán and Chavez and was still disengaged.
It was only in 2013 when the Orbán government forced out my university (Central European University) that I decided to put on the fight that I couldn’t when I was a child. I was then active with civil society and made all efforts to integrate into my new country where I became a citizen and decided to fight.
In 2017, I was approached by a former colleague to join a new movement, fresh and clean with a view of politics as no other stakeholder in Hungarian politics. I joined Momentum and we became a party. Since then, I decided to start working also with other parties across Europe.
The shadow of populism is all over and I know what it feels like to lose a country. I keep fighting for no European to feel and live the way I lived.
How did you first get interested in political communication, and what inspired you to focus your consulting work on this area?
I got first interested when realising that populists win with simple and understandable answers to simple problems. My goal was never to advise organisations to become populists. My goal was to help organisations to focus on making their messages approachable to people. The world is full of complex problems and I felt that simple answers can be given if we leave egos behind and focus on the message people need to hear.
Political communication is less about the best message, it is more about active listening and understanding which messages the community needs to solve their problems.
How do you stay informed about changes in the political landscape, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe where you have experience working?
There is no way to understand from the headlines and newspapers. In my view, the best way is to invest efforts into engaging with organisations that are focused on working with communities to understand their problems.
Qualitative work on the ground is the best way to stay informed. It is a privilege, of course, that’s why people need to join political parties — to avoid the biases of media and to stay engaged.
How do you help political organisations build and maintain relationships with the media, and what advice do you have for managing relationships with journalists and media outlets?
I think that no door should ever be closed when it comes to communication. Political parties today should not fall into the bias to select one media over the other, independently from the editorial lines of the media outlet. Parties need to prioritise creating a network of journalists and being proactive to reach out and not wait to be asked.
Today is not the era of fairness in media, it is the era of narratives.
Populists are masters of narratives, forcing political parties to react. Parties should focus on creating the narrative and give substance for journalists to stay tuned with the party and make others react instead.
How do you work with political campaigns to identify and target specific demographics, and what data or research do you use to inform these efforts?
Any organisation that runs on instincts and not on data is doomed!
This is a dramatic way for me to illustrate to organisations that they need data to understand their constituents. Parties would often say: we don’t collect data because it’s too much work, and we don’t have the resources. Yet, parties saying that are not ready to govern. Those not able to hear and identify their voters are not ready for the job of representation.
Parties should be working on gathering data by asking people to sign petitions, join newsletters, and support a cause.
Parties need to knock on doors and get people engaged.
Understanding data, allows parties to fragment crowds of supporters and opposers. To be clear: data, data, data.
What are some common mistakes that political organisations make when it comes to communications, and how do you help them avoid these mistakes?
There are two most common mistakes when it comes to political communication:
1. The first is that parties tend to become reactive instead of being proactive.
2. The second one is that parties often do not prioritise topics that are relevant for their voters but instead prioritise topics that are relevant for their own politicians.
How to help parties depend on the context and the political circumstances? Sadly, we need to start accepting that there are no solutions that solve the problem across countries. However, the main answer to avoid mistakes is to foster a culture of reflective and critical thinking in political organisations to help them realise when a message is not reaching the people and when egos are determining the agenda.
How do you measure the impact of a political communication campaign, and what metrics do you use to assess success?
First of all, any campaign needs to set success goals from the beginning. No campaign should have one goal only — the campaign shouldn’t be only about winning an election or collecting a certain amount of signatures.
Any campaign should also be also about side gains, gaining supporters, gaining public recognition, and gaining media attention. Measuring those outcomes is difficult to define because it depends on the initial goals set. Yet, the answer is data, data, data.
One thing I see often happening with political parties is that they do not assess the success or failure of a campaign after it’s done.
After all, the next campaign starts and all resources go there. Yet many parties are examples of the need to do deep research on the impact of a campaign. I would like to emphasise here that qualitative measurement is important — any party needs to measure the morale of its members to know the impact of the campaign’s outcome on their people.
Can you discuss any ethical considerations that political communication professionals should keep in mind when developing and executing campaigns?
I think there is little to discuss. Professionals are so-called professionals because they stand with a moral idea of performing any job knowing that there is no harm behind it. Therefore, anyone developing a campaign knowing that harm is being caused can not be called a political professional.
As professionals, we all feel the frustration to stand by clean campaigns and fail. Yet, standing by truthful and fair campaigns is what makes us professionals and what makes our successful campaigns even more worthy to celebrate!
Thank you, Luis, for sharing your experience and passion for democracy, politics, and communications!
