washington business
In Their Words
Frank Luntz is well known to television viewers from his
regular appearances on Fox News and “CBS This Morning”
where he offers political analysis, as well as frequent guest
appearances on talk shows. He rose to fame in the 1990s
for changing the debate over the “estate tax” to a debate
about the “death tax,” and he continues to counsel elected
officials and business leaders on ways they can use words to
achieve success. In September, with the presidential election
campaign in full swing, Luntz addressed AWB members
during the 23rd annual Policy Summit at Suncadia Resort.
Washington Business writer Jason Hagey sat down with
him there to discuss his career and the power of language.
When did you discover the power
of words and language?
I didn’t discover it until 1992 when I was working for
Ross Perot, and completely by accident I learned how
the order of language determines how people respond
to your message. I learned that telling them Fact A and
then Fact B would result in a different reaction than if
I told them Fact B first.
Frank Luntz
“There are hundreds of people who gauge public
opinion but only a few learn how to shape it.
And I’m much more interested in learning how
to shape it than measure it.”
What were you doing for Ross Perot?
I was his director of research at the time, and it was all because
the videotapes were not rewound. There are three different videos for Perot. One was him speaking. Another was testimonials
and a third one was his bio. If you started with his bio and then
went to testimonials and then went to him speaking, no matter
what you told them about Ross Perot, they would still support
him. If, however, you started with him speaking first, he was so
different that if you told people he was crazy, they’d believe it.
If you told people that he was undisciplined, they’d believe it.
You had to give the background, then the testimonial, then him
speaking to make the sale. And I only learned this because the
videos weren’t rewound so I just went in a different order. And
then I started to play with language.
The first one that I did, which was 1994, was the death tax
versus the estate tax. If you call it an estate tax, half of Americans want to repeal it. If you call it a death tax, three-quarters of
Americans want to repeal it. They don’t believe in a tax on death,
but they do accept a tax on estates. Then I took it further in 1995:
I discovered that exploring for energy was a much more positive
way of communicating drilling for oil. I learned in the late 1990s
20 association of washington business
when I tackled education that a voucher was a piece of paper but
an opportunity scholarship was the future. And I learned that
talking about education choice was not as powerful as talking
about school choice. And now over the last couple years, I realized that the government control over health care was not nearly
as frightening as a government take-over of health care. So I’ve
been working on words now for about two decades.
What do you spend most of your time doing, trying
to gauge public opinion or shape it?
There are hundreds of people who gauge public opinion but
only a few learn how to shape it. And I’m much more interested
in learning how to shape it than measure it. I do measure it for
some clients, but most of my corporate clients don’t want me to
measure their situation: They can do that easily. They want me
to help their situation.
Are there very many other people who do what you do?
I’m amazed at how few people focus on language. It’s a very
lucrative business. If you can help a company increase its market
share by just 1 percent, in some cases that’s billions of dollars
to the bottom line. You save a company from making a communications blunder, you have saved them millions of dollars in
reputational damage.