CHAPTER TWO: YOU NEED A PLAN/MICHAEL VICK CASE STUDY

CHAPTER TWO: YOU NEED A PLAN/MICHAEL VICK CASE STUDY

For the most part Vick avoided trouble and overcame his less-than-ideal surroundings to become a great football player. A quarterback, he earned a scholarship to Virginia Tech University, where he earned all-America honors and was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated behind the headline, “Mr. Electric.”

Ultimately, Vick became the first player selected in the 2001 NFL draft, chosen by the Atlanta Falcons, who signed Vick to the largest rookie contract in NFL history – six years and $62 million. In December 2004 the Falcons signed Vick to a 10-year, $140 million extension, the richest contract in NFL history.

In addition, Vick had signed endorsement deals with Nike, Coca-Cola, EA Sports, Air Tran, Powerade, Kraft and Hasbro. In 2006, Sports Illustrated estimated Vick’s annual income from salary and endorsements at $25.4 million – second among pro athletes to NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.

He was a bona fide star, set for life financially and a long way from the Ridley Circle Homes.

Vick, among the greatest running quarterbacks ever to play the game, was exciting to watch and his appeal was evident by the thousands of No.7 Falcons jerseys sold every year. He led the Falcons to the playoffs twice in his six seasons with the team.

While Vick was extremely popular, he was no stranger to controversy. In 2004, two men arrested in Virginia for distributing marijuana were driving a truck registered to Vick. In 2005, Vick settled a lawsuit with a woman who alleged she had contracted genital herpes from Vick. In 2006, while being booed after a home loss to New Orleans, Vick flashed both middle fingers at Falcons fans, resulting in a fine from the NFL.

While Vick had been in trouble on occasion, no one could have predicted what was about to come. On April 25, 2007 state authorities in Virginia executed a search warrant related to a drug investigation involving Vick’s cousin. What they found was evidence of an organized dog-fighting ring at a property owned by Vick in Surry County, a rural outpost in southeastern Virginia. Gambling and drugs played a part in the “Bad Newz Kennels” operation and worst of all, it was clear that dogs had been abused, tortured and even executed for under-performing. The public outcry was deafening and animal rights activists organized against Vick. A parallel federal investigation was launched.

In July 2007, Vick and three other men were indicted on federal felony charges of running an interstate dog fighting operation. Vick was accused of financing the operation; having hands-on participation in the fights and executions; and playing a key role in the gambling operation.

Vick denied involvement in the killing of any dogs – a claim he later recanted upon failing an FBI-administered polygraph test. During the investigation, Vick lied about his involvement to Falcons owner Arthur Blank and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

On August 24, 2007, Vick pled guilty to "Conspiracy to Travel in Interstate Commerce in Aid of Unlawful Activities and to Sponsor a Dog in an Animal Fighting Venture." He admitted to his role in financing and helping run the dog-fighting operation – and most importantly, he admitted to personal involvement in the hanging or drowning of six to eight dogs. Goodell suspended him indefinitely from the NFL without pay.

While out on bail, Vick tested positive for marijuana in a random drug test. On Dec. 10, 2007, U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson sentenced Vick to 23 months at the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan. – a sentence no doubt made stiffer by Vick’s lying to authorities about his involvement and failing the drug test.

During his incarceration at Leavenworth, gruesome details about Vick’s involvement in the dog-fighting ring were disclosed, further angering the public and enraging People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and other animal rights activists. While serving what would become a 20-month sentence, Vick declared bankruptcy.

He was visited several times at Leavenworth by former Tampa Bay and Indianapolis Head Coach Tony Dungy, one of the most respected figures in pro football and a devout Christian known for his prison ministry. Dungy would play a vital role in helping Vick prepare to re-enter public life with an eye on one day playing again in the NFL.

So with a track record that included a failed drug test, a pattern of lies, and worst of all, public acknowledgement that he had tortured and executed dogs, Michael Vick was released from Leavenworth on May 20, 2009 to finish the final two months of his sentence under home confinement. He had served 18 months at Leavenworth as inmate No. 33765-183.

Vick’s reputation was beyond repair. Or was it?

A look at the sequence of events and public statements from the Vick camp shows a course carefully charted for Vick’s return to the NFL:

• 
  On May 19, 2009 – what would turn out to be Vick’s last day at Leavenworth – Humane Society of the U.S. President Wayne Pacelle told CNN that he had twice visited Vick in prison and that Vick would be working with the Humane Society on an anti-dog fighting campaign.
  
• 
  On May 20, after Leavenworth released the news that Vick had been released and was being driven to his home in Virginia, TV trucks, photographers and reporters swarmed the property, hoping for a sound bite. But there was no comment from Vick, just a low-key statement from attorney Larry Woodward explaining that Vick was a furloughed federal inmate, prohibited from speaking to the media. Woodward took no questions from the media before departing. Another member of the legal team, Chris Garrett, was quoted saying that Vick was happy to be reunited with his family. Vick’s agent, Joel Segal, said Vick’s focus was not on football, but on getting reacquainted with his family. Billy Martin, another of Vick's lawyers, explained that Vick wanted to work with the humane society because "they were probably one of the harshest critics (of Vick) pre-indictment. Now it's time for Mike's deeds to speak for themselves." The reporters documented two probation officers visiting the house to outfit Vick with the home confinement tracking device he would wear on his ankle, but that’s about as exciting as the scene would get in Vick’s neighborhood – no waving to the crowd or any sign of Vick’s trademark charisma.
  
• 
  Dungy wrote a first-person essay in the May 25 edition of Sports Illustrated that concluded with the following passage:
  

The timeline continues:

• 
  Unable to trade Vick, on June 13 the Falcons release him, paving the way for the quarterback to sign with another team. Vick, who has not yet been reinstated by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, is still serving the home confinement phase of his prison sentence and unavailable to comment. Segal, the agent, downplays the news, telling the Associated Press, "Everybody always knew that Mike wouldn't be playing with the Falcons. He's really just taking it one day at a time."
  
• 
  On June 20, Vick is released from federal custody. His ankle tether is removed and he begins his three-year probation period. No comments from Vick or his legal team.
  
• 
  July 22: Without fanfare Vicks meets with Commissioner Goodell for more than four hours. The NFL refuses to confirm or deny the meeting, saying there will be no comment until a decision is reached on Vick’s reinstatement. Segal said, "Absolutely no comment."
  
• 
  July 27: Goodell announces Vick’s conditional reinstatement to the NFL. His permanent reinstatement will be determined based on his conduct and his adherence to a written transition plan Vick submitted to the league. Goodell says Dungy’s involvement is a key element in the transition plan. Vick does no interviews, but issues a statement, his first public comments since going to prison in 2007: "I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to Commissioner Goodell for allowing me to be readmitted to the National Football League. I fully understand that playing football in the NFL is a privilege, not a right, and I am truly thankful for the opportunity I have been given.”
  
• 
  August 14: Press Conference at the Philadelphia Eagles practice facility to announce the team had signed Vick to a two-year contract. Sitting beside Vick was Dungy. Vick took responsibility for his actions, opening his statement with:
  

Vick kept a tone of humility and gratitude while answering several questions.

• 
  August 16: Vick’s first post-prison interview – a primetime exclusive with James Brown on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Pacelle and Dungy were also interviewed for the piece. Here are four highlights from the interview:
  
• 
  When Brown confronted Vick with a graphic recitation of the acts associated with the Bad Newz Kennels dog fighting operation, then asked him, “For those who may say it showed a lack of moral character because you didn’t stop it, you agree or disagree?” Vick didn’t hesitate, equivocate, hem or haw. “I agree,” was his simple reply.
  
• 
  When Brown asked Vick, “Who do you blame for all of this?” Vick once again resisted the urge to deflect the question or share the blame with others. “I blame me.”
  
• 
  When Brown asked Vick about blowing his $130 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons, the richest in the NFL, Vick said, “I deserve to lose the $130 million.”
  
• 
  And when Brown asked Vick how he feels about his actions today, one would expect Vick to take a page from the crisis management playbook and say something along the lines of, “What’s most important now is that I move forward and work to make amends for what I did by being active in the community.” Instead, he said he felt “disgust. Pure disgust.”

  Throughout the interview, Vick painted a picture of anguish, especially when he talked about the moment his cell door at Leavenworth was slammed shut for 18 months. “I knew the magnitude of the decisions that I made and the poor judgment … and what I allowed to happen to the animals,” he said.

  Vick was never in explanation mode. He never tried to distance himself from the violence and cruelty by claiming he was just the financier. “I could have put a stop to it,” he said. “I could have shut the whole operation down.”
  

• 
  August 30: Combined sales of Vick’s home and away jerseys make his Eagles’ No. 7 the NFL’s hottest seller for the week – and that’s with popular sports retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods choosing not to stock Vick’s jersey in their 409 stores.
  
• 
  Oct. 7: Vick announces that he will film an 8-part documentary called “The Michael Vick Project” on BET, saying, "I just want people to really get to know me as an individual. I want to do is change the perception of me. I am a human being. I've made some mistakes in the past, and I wish it had never happened. But it's not about how you fall, but about how you pick yourself up.”
  

In 2010 he led the Eagles to the playoffs and was named NFC Comeback Player of the Year and starting quarterback for the NFC in the Pro Bowl. He returned to the cover of Sports Illustrated for the Nov. 29, 2010 issue and a story entitled, “Is It O.K. to Cheer?”

In January 2011 he signed his first post-prison endorsement deal – a two-year agreement to represent Unequal Technologies, a sports equipment outfit. His jersey sales once again soared.

The Eagles rewarded his outstanding play and good behavior with a reported 6-year, $100 million contract. He has fulfilled his commitments to speak out against dog-fighting and racked up some good publicity in March 2011 by allowing Sports Illustrated to tag along on a visit to carry a “message of hope and responsibility” to prisoners at a correctional facility in Florida.

In 2011 Vick had a subpar year as the Eagles failed to live up to expectations and missed the playoffs, but by that time, Leavenworth may as well been just a town in Kansas.

Vick clearly followed a strategic communications game plan to help him reach his goal of returning to the NFL. For a glimpse into what happens in the absence of a sound communications plan, consider the case of Caroline Kennedy and her pursuit of the U.S. Senate seat that came open when Hillary Clinton was appointed Secretary of State in January 2009. Of course, her uncle, Robert F. Kennedy also previously held this seat.

Kennedy launched what the New York Times called, “an unusually aggressive campaign to take Clinton's place.” The Times wrote that Kennedy “hired a team of veteran political advisors, paid a high-profile visit to upstate New York -- modeled on the "listening tour" Clinton conducted in her first run for office -- and collected support from powerful backers.”

The Washington Post described her as the “perceived frontrunner” for Clinton’s seat and with her uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy, in failing health, her entrance (finally!) into politics was the best hope for carrying on the prominent role her family had played in American politics since the 1930s.

She may have been the frontrunner with a team of political advisors and a listening tour on her schedule, but she lacked a strong communications game plan – and it showed.

According to the Post, at first, Kennedy avoided the press, then she gave a “series of halting interviews with vague answers.” There was speculation, left mostly unaddressed, that she was reluctant to disclose necessary financial information or that there were other personal issues holding her back.

The N.Y. Daily News was less kind: “…So far, her two public efforts to lobby for the seat

have been a disaster. She was criticized after a one-day upstate swing for avoiding the

press and everyday people. Then, after agreeing to a round of media interviews, she

was described as evasive, uninformed on the issues and surprisingly inarticulate, punctuating nearly every sentence with a barrage of ‘you knows’ and ‘ums.’”

In polls, New Yorkers began to favor popular attorney general Andrew Cuomo, son of former governor Mario Cuomo.

On January 21, 2009, the Associated Press first reported that Kennedy was dropping out of consideration – a claim her camp vigorously denied. The AP wrote a correction.

Media reports of Kennedy’s withdrawal continued. According to the Post, “Kennedy family confidants angrily dismissed the reports as smears aimed at undermining her chances.”

When some reports linked her impending withdrawal to concerns about her uncle’s health, Maura Moynihan, Kennedy’s former roommate at Harvard and the daughter of late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, said, “Caroline is a very strong and gifted woman, and I'm sure her uncle Ted would want nothing more than to see her in his brother's seat in the United States Senate."

The chaos continued until shortly after midnight on Jan. 22, 2009 when a spokesperson issued a short statement from Kennedy: “I informed Gov. Paterson today that for personal reasons I am withdrawing my name for consideration for the United States Senate.”

A spokesperson scrambling to issue a statement after midnight is a pretty good indicator that the communications plan was lacking. Clearly Kennedy was inadequately prepared for what was to come. Her message was garbled and inconsistent, we heard no stories or vision from her and her surrogates were clearly not in the loop.

A few days later Paterson appointed second-term moderate Upstate congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand to Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat – a move that just a few weeks before would have been viewed as an upset of epic political proportions. Gillibrand didn’t have Kennedy’s name – or Cuomo’s for that matter, but she had a plan: To rely on her popularity in her district, her standing as a legislator, and to limit public comments (“I’m honored to just be considered,”) while focusing on her private discussions with her audience of one: Gov. Paterson.

As it turns out she had the winning plan – the same one Michael Vick would call when making NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell – the man who controlled his destiny – the initial focus of his communications strategy.

• 
  Vick’s goal was to get reinstated to the NFL and he was disciplined in his approach to achieve that. He was completely prepared for his introductory press conference and his coming-out “60 Minutes” interview. Have a plan and prepare as if your career depends on it, because it does.
  
• 
  He followed what Leslie Gaines-Ross of Weber Shandwick calls the “elements of the perfect apology.” More on this in Chapter xx, but Vick took responsibility, expressed regret, told us sincerely that nothing like this would ever happen again, and backed it up through his actions with the Humane Society. Have a simple message and deliver it well.
  
• 
  He was a storyteller. Wisely, the stories Vick told were mostly from his 17 months in Leavenworth. Rehashing the days of Bad Newz Kennels would have been unproductive and would have reinforced all the negatives. Instead, during the “60 Minutes” interview Vick leaves us with another image. A broken man laying awake in his cell at Leavenworth realizing how much he has let down his family, you feel his pain and the price he has paid for his crimes. People best remember words supported by compelling images – paint a picture for your audience that connects with them on a visceral level.
  

• 
  His team lined up third-party validators in Wayne Pacelle and Tony Dungy to serve as surrogates. In Pacelle’s case, being embraced by the Humane Society made the PETA protesters appear extreme. Looking for independent, credible voices to echo or even carry your message is always wise.
  
• 
  Vick knew he had an audience of one: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. He made no public comments before meeting with Goodell – minimizing the risk of further complications and showing respect to the process. Always consider who your most important audience is when developing your message and plan.
  
• 
  Vick carried a tone of humility upon his return. No public comments. Humility and gratitude remain the best ways to connect with an audience. During a crisis, you don’t stand much of a chance without those qualities.
  
• 
  Upon being reinstated, Vick maintained the air of humility and gratitude. After making your apology, your actions become most important.
  
• 
  Vick’s first press conference was in a football setting – where he is most comfortable. Also served as a reminder that he is back in football mode and leaving the past behind. A coat-and-tie press conference in a formal setting would have reminded people of the crimes of the past. Always think about the image you will leave behind and how that image reinforces or undermines your words.
  
• 
  The “60 Minutes” interview was with a sports broadcaster and someone Vick would be comfortable with. Brown asked tough questions, but clearly he was able to put Vick at ease and drew out interesting insights. Always do what you can to play to your strengths as a communicator and give yourself the best chance to succeed.
  
• 
  His return to the playing field was successful. Nothing makes a controversy go away like success and results.
  

“If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”

In the 1970s, PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Don Kendall preached a mission statement that was simple, direct and powerful: Beat Coke.

If the three most important factors in real estate are location, location, location…in message development it’s simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. And it doesn’t get much simpler than, “Beat Coke.”

There is great meaning packed into those two words. There’s aspiration and inspiration, clarity of purpose and a sense of “us against them” team unity. Not bad for two words and eight letters.

By contrast, the mission statement for the University of Notre Dame consumes 523 words. Over dinner one night in Washington, I asked Notre Dame President, Rev. John I. Jenkins why the statement had to be so long. He confirmed what I already suspected: It had been written by committee.

In 2004, the American Film Institute published a list of the all-time top 100 movie quotations in American cinema. The top 25 quotes contain an average of 8.2 words.

Take out the 20-plus word mini-speeches on the list from On the Waterfront (Marlon Brando’s “I coulda been a contender” scene) and Silence of the Lambs (Anthony Hopkins’ “fava beans and a nice Chianti” scene) and the average falls to 6.9 words per line. Nine of the top 25 quotations on the list are of five words or less.

Instead of the unforgettable line, “Go ahead, make my day,” imagine Clint Eastwood – as Det. Harry Callahan in Sudden Impact – in explanation mode as he addresses the would-be robber, holding a waitress at gun-point: “Release the hostage now. Let her go or I’m going to shoot you, because you are breaking the law and I’m a terrific marksman with nerves of steel. What you are doing is wrong, but it’s not too late to save yourself. Let her go, and I’ll put in a good word for you with the district attorney.”

“Go ahead, make my day” worked on multiple levels. It made a visceral connection with the audience because it was bold, clever and most of all: simple. And it also enabled Det. Callahan to win the message battle as the bad guy dropped the gun and released the waitress after hearing those five words.

Harvard professor George Miller’s seminal work on how we remember bits of information, first published in Psychological Review in 1956, was called, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information.” Dr. Miller’s experiments revealed that generally we can hold five to nine pieces of information in our short-term memory banks.

So it makes perfect sense that the most memorable movie lines contain 7-8 words on average – sound bites, really – and that Bell would have assigned seven-digit telephone numbers back in the late fifties. Dr. Miller also points out all the “magical” number sevens throughout history: The seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven sisters in the Pleiades, the seven primary colors, the seven notes of the musical scale, and the seven days of the week.

Coincidence? Maybe, but when developing messaging for a campaign, product rollout or crisis response, don’t take chances and always remember, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”

That old political adage hit hard in the fall of 2007 during my time as President Bush’s White House communications director.

The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was due to be reauthorized by Sept. 30, 2007. SCHIP is a program administered by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services that provides matching funds to states to provide health insurance to uninsured families with children. The states have flexibility regarding eligibility requirements, but the original intent of the law was to cover children in uninsured families whose income was modest but exceeded the eligibility requirements for Medicaid.

Beginning on Feb. 5, 2007, when Office of Management & Budget (OMB) Director Rob Portman detailed President Bush’s 2008 five-year budget plan in a press briefing, the President’s strong support for SCHIP reauthorization – and proposed 20 percent increase in funding for the program – was clear, at least to us in the West Wing. OMB released a short fact sheet making a few key points:

The President’s 2008 Budget proposes to reauthorize SCHIP as well as add funding in order to maintain and strengthen the commitment to providing health insurance to low-income, uninsured children.

The President’s proposal:

• 
  Increased SCHIP funding by 20 percent – $4.8 billion over five years (for a total of $30 billion in SCHIP allotments – in addition to the $60 billion in federal Medicaid funds spent on health coverage for children and adults).
  

• 
  Re-focused the program on its original aim: To provide health care to children at or below 200% of poverty ($41,300 for a family of four).
  
• 
  Provided Federal reimbursement for both parents and children under SCHIP, so states could continue to cover parents and pregnant women up to existing eligibility levels.
  
• 
  Efficiently targeted funding to states that most needed it, while effectively managing a total of $3-4 billion in unspent state balances.
  

President Bush was calling for a $5 billion increase - which would be used, by the way, to cover the 500,000 children that were currently eligible but not enrolled. Democrats wanted to expand the program by $50 billion and add coverage for some adults. Their plan would have put 48 percent of American children on government health insurance.

In remarks at a small business roundtable in Landover, Md. on July 18, 2007, President Bush said that he would veto any bill that used SCHIP to launch a major expansion of government-run health care.

"It was a program initially designed to help poor families afford health care for their children. I support that concept. As a matter of fact, the budget I submitted funds health care for poor children.

“Members of Congress have decided…to expand the program to include, in some cases, families earning up to $80,000 a year — which would cause people to drop their private insurance in order to be involved with a government insurance plan," Bush said. "If Congress continues to insist upon expanding health care through the SCHIP program — which, by the way, would entail a huge tax increase for the American people — I'll veto the bill," he said.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the Democrats’ lead negotiator on the SCHIP bill, responded that day with a statement saying in part:

“The vast majority of Americans believe our children deserve to have health insurance. If ever there was a government program that was justifiable, it's providing health care to children who can't afford it. We should be doing more, not less, to take care of our most vulnerable population, our children. It's the right, moral thing to do.

“Bottom line, if the President follows through with his threat, then he's going to need to explain to the millions of children enrolled in CHIP why he believes they don't deserve access to pediatricians, immunizations, preventative screenings or basic medical care when they're sick."

So the message battle broke down this way:

• 
  Democrats were for health insurance for poor, sick children.
  
• 
  President Bush was for health insurance for children from poor families, but was against the Democrats’ plan to use SCHIP to expand taxpayer-funded health care to include adults and families who could afford – or already had – private coverage. If Congress passed a bill that departed from the original intent of the law, he would veto it.
  

Further complicating matters, some Republicans supported a bigger expansion than President Bush was proposing for two primary reasons: The economy was booming, adding an average of 125,459 jobs per month through June 2007, so fiscal restraint, while beginning to bubble up, was not the red-hot issue it would soon become. And secondly, some Republicans – who saw 30 of their House and six of their Senate colleagues voted out of office in the 2006 midterms – were unwilling to take a stand that could be twisted into being anti-poor children.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, for example, and other of his fellow Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee agreed to a 61 cents per pack hike on the cigarette tax to pay for a compromise $35 billion increase in SCHIP funding – except the jump in the cigarette tax didn’t really pay for the entire SCHIP increase and they went along with a budget gimmick to hide another $30 billion in spending. It was clear we couldn’t count on a deep bench of Capitol Hill surrogates to help carry the President’s message.

As the Sept. 30, 2007 reauthorization deadline loomed, the fight was on.

On Sept. 21 the White House issued a news release reaffirming the President’s strong support for reauthorization and calling for a 20 percent increase in funding. The release also included his veto threat and, as an alternative, asked Congress to pass a clean extension to give time for a bipartisan compromise to be worked out.

The same day the news release went out, the White House Communications Office issued the first in a steady stream of fact sheets and other documents designed to defend the president’s position and clarify our message. “Five Key Myths About President Bush's Support for SCHIP Reauthorization” presented a fact-based debunking of five misconceptions about the president’s proposal. It came in at 936 words – too long for a bumper sticker.

The next day Bush devoted his weekly Saturday radio address to the SCHIP debate. On Sept. 25 the House passed its version of the SCHIP reauthorization bill and two days later the Senate followed suit. Knowing the President’s veto was coming, we tried every move in the PR playbook to reaffirm the president’s support for the right kind of SCHIP bill while also making the appeal for Democrats to stop playing politics with it. After all, then- Congressman Rahm Emanuel publicly admitted a Bush veto of the bill would be a “political victory” for Democrats. We issued fact sheets, did online chats at whitehouse.gov, arranged television and radio interviews, organized media conference calls and press availabilities with the President and his team. Press Secretary Dana Perino, who had just taken over for Tony Snow, hit it in her daily press briefings.

Things got interesting on Friday, Sept. 28, 2007. Just as President Bush recorded a weekly radio address – a practice that dated back to President Reagan’s time – stations also carried a Democratic Party response – usually delivered by a member of Congress. But this week the Democratic response would be delivered by Graeme Frost, a 12-year-old from Baltimore who had recovered from a brain stem injury in an auto accident and whose health insurance coverage came through SCHIP.

“If it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today,” the seventh-grader said. “I just hope the President will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me.”

Democrats had succeeded in putting a face on their policy position. Through young Graeme they painted a picture for people – they made it personal. It didn’t help Bush that some conservative news outlets uncovered information about the Frost family’s real estate and business holdings that called their SCHIP eligibility into question. It was unseemly to go after a family that had two kids seriously injured in a car accident and people didn’t respond well to it. Time magazine wrote that Graeme had been “swiftboated.”

The transmittal of the veto to the House on Oct. 3 earned significant media attention because it was only the third time Bush had used his veto power. And of course, it was another day for the White House to explain itself - in part through a “Setting the Record Straight” fact sheet entitled, “Speaker Pelosi Misleads on SCHIP” in which three of her more egregious inaccurate statements were corrected with examples and facts.

And we kept the fact sheets coming. In the Oct. 5 “jobs day” fact sheet, we led with creation of 110,000 new jobs in September – the 49^th consecutive month of job creation – but also worked in a section explaining the veto and reaffirming the President’s call for Democrats to stop playing politics with the issue. Oct. 6 brought another SCHIP-themed radio address and another fact sheet – this one, headlined, “Just the Facts: The $83,000 Question,” was one of my favorites. It detailed how in New York, a family of four with a household income of $83,000 – 400% of the poverty level – would qualify under the bill passed by Congress.

On Oct. 7, Health & Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, always good with the media, took a shot at giving us our bumper sticker when he said, “The president's position on this can be summarized in three words: poor children first.” He had the right idea, and maybe we should have pushed that theme harder.

On the eve of the House vote on the veto, Pelosi once again personalized the policy, issuing a press release detailing the heartbreaking stories of six families who had benefited from SCHIP. “President Bush has often referred to himself as ‘The Decider,’ Pelosi wrote, “but which one of these families would the President forbid health care coverage?”

The correct answer would mostly likely have been “none,” since they all appeared to be in the range of 200% of the poverty line. Pelosi knew that, but she said it anyway. That’s why the least favorite part of my job at the White House was anything that had anything to do with Congress.

The next day the House sustained the President’s veto.

Oct. 23 and 25 brought more fact sheets, the second one following the passage of a second House bill. In the end, Bush vetoed two bad SCHIP bills – both sustained – and the extension of the old policy that had been passed in September lived on. President Bush may have won but it didn’t feel like it. While staunch conservatives applauded President Bush for sticking with his principles and holding the line, we had lost in the court of public opinion. Polls showed 75-80 percent of the American public was in favorite of the vetoed bill. The extension of the law stood until February 2009 when President Obama signed a new SCHIP law – with $40 million in new funding and the expansion Democrats wanted all along.

We knew Democrats hadn’t genuinely pursued a bipartisan compromise. We knew they were using the SCHIP debate to hurt Republicans in the upcoming elections. Minority Leader John Boehner said he believed Democrats sent Bush a bill he would veto, because they knew it would inflict major damage to Republicans. But all that didn’t matter.

They had a bumper sticker and we had a fact sheet.

So keep a 3” x 3” Post-It note on your desk. If your messages won’t fit on there, they’re not crisp enough, bold enough or simple enough to break through the cacophony of today’s information-crazed media landscape.

There are a few other tips for getting quoted amid the clutter:

• 
  Extremes are good. If you’re message can be honestly described in terms of first/last, biggest/smallest, oldest/youngest or most/least expensive, that’s newsy and a good place to start.
  
• 
  Use metaphors and analogies to make your point. [Example TK]
  
• 
  Put numbers in context. “I was with an executive from Procter & Gamble the other day and he gave me a great statistic,” said 3cinteractive founder John Duffy. “He said there are more mobile phones on earth than toothbrushes.” Think how much more effective and memorable that is than if he would have given the actual number of mobile phones in the world – and his P&G reference was a nice third-party credibility name-drop for Duffy’s company.
  
• 
  Be colorful. In a Wall Street Journal article about iCloud-related upgrades to Apple products, writer and Tulane University English professor Thomas Beller scored two memorable quotes. First, to explain his devotion to the company, Beller said, “I don’t go to church. I don't go to synagogue, I buy Apple products.” Then to characterization his frustration, he said, “By forcing all these changes, Apple is driving me into the arms of Google.”