Frost Advisory #517 – You Can’t Make Me Because I’m A…

You can’t make me! Because I’m a Republican/a Democrat/a Texan, a hard working self-made man/someone that can’t be pushed around/a free thinker!

I find the “controversy” over wearing a face mask to be peculiar. Why? Because from my perspective, MY world view, it makes perfect sense to wear one. It’s only a minor inconvenience, if that, it’s a great conversation starter at the grocery store and the gym (about the only places I can go), and it covers up my big nose.

There are people who don’t consider wearing masks from my world view. They see it, I suppose, as an infringement on their civil liberties, a violation of their Cub Scout oath, or a statement that they agree with the OTHER side politically.

“It’s one of the great tragedies of this current moment that scientifically based public-health measures have somehow been captured as cultural or political phenomena. Your chance of spreading the coronavirus to a vulnerable person has nothing to do with what culture you come from or what political party you belong to. Your responsibility is to try to prevent that from happening to vulnerable people around you. But our country’s polarization is so extreme that it even seems to extend into a place like this – where it absolutely doesn’t belong. That is really troubling because it’s putting people at risk who shouldn’t be.”

National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins

It’s become a polarizing issue due in part to the fact that those in charge are communicating the wrong message. If the message about wearing face masks is only about intellectual exercise like wearing your seat belt or observing the 8 items or less checkout lane at the grocery store it won’t connect emotionally.

We can learn something from Uber.

“We wear a mask to protect each other. Tell us who your wear a mask for.”

Uber has made it personal. It’s not a good idea because the government tells you to, it’s a good idea because it impacts someONE you love.

Uber’s messaging appeals to a person’s identity… as a dad, a mom, a neighbor, a co-worker.

“I never look at the masses as my responsibility; I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time – just one, one, one. So you begin. I began – I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn’t pick up that one person, I wouldn’t have picked up forty-two thousand… The same thing goes for you, the same thing in your family, the same thing in your church, your community. Just begin – one, one, one.”

Mother Theresa

Few will connect emotionally with a government edict. Everyone will connect with the idea of caring for one person you love.

This is a valuable lesson for the messaging at our radio stations, as well. Don’t address the masses.

Tell me who you wear a mask for.

*This Frost Advisory is dedicated to my talented friends at KSBJ in Houston, seemingly the epicenter of this idea being viewed as controversial.


John Frost

John has been a successful major market DJ and Program Director for such companies as CBS, Gannett, Cap Cities, Westinghouse, Multimedia, and Sandusky and publishes the Frost Advisory.

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