French presidential candidate Segolene Royal — who today announced her 100 point-platform — is shaking up politics-as-usual in France, and using two successful marketing practices to do so : listening to the people, and giving constituents a direct say in governing.

Like companies trying to be be more customer-centric, Royal said her new platform is based on ideas from voters. According to yesterday’s Wall St. Journal, Royal’s ideas com from approximately 6,000 town-hall meetings with voters, smaller coffeehouse sessions called “cafe Segolene,” and the 2.8 million people who have visited her campaign Web site.

As president of Poitou-Charentes, Royal has allowed her constituents to have a say and direct role in governing. Parents and teachers decide via secret ballot how to spend 10 percent of the regional budget for high schools. And she introduced new ‘citizen juries” — where residents are randomly chosen to evaluate laws for their communities. If elected, she says she’d apply these same principles nationally, setting up a citizens’ juries to evaluate the work of the National Assembly, for example.

Royal’s fresh citizen-centric approach has helped her shake up the old-guard French politicians, referred to as “elephants,” to become a front runner for France’s highest office. But will listening and involvement be enough to win?

Possibly, as her social program programs, like more low-income housing and increasing minimum wage, are likely to appeal to so many French citizens. What France really needs, however, is a way to make the country more business friendly, keeping and attracting employers.

While involving customers in businesses is a successful strategy for growth and loyalty, is it also a valuable strategy for electing leaders? Royal promises to give voters what they want, but is what they want in the best interest to France?

Segolene Royal political marketing

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s new “Let’s begin the conversation” style bodes well for her presidential election chances.

Last year as I finished writing my upcoming book, Beyond Buzz, I held Sen. Clinton up as a brilliant leader with a poor, “learned lecture” communications style, a lawyerly tone that tends to be more off-putting than sincerely engaging.

Yet in announcing her run for U.S. President this past weekend, Clinton showed that she has radically changed her communications style, from learned lecture to conversational. This is a very smart and critical strategy for creating an emotional and intellectual bond with voters.

As part of her announcement Clinton released a video where she sat in her cozy living room and talked about how she was “beginning a conversation with you and the country,” and wants to “start a dialogue about your ideas and mine.”  She also said she’d be starting live online video “chats” this week to talk with people about their views and hers. Brilliant move.This new style, combined with a message that together Americans can still achieve the promise of a better life, is hugely refreshing from the current administration’s style of dictating one-way messages about uncertainty and fear, and “we know best.”

We are the we. And Clinton seems ready to invite us into the conversation.

Moving forward she will need to carefully scale this style, and be sure she really listens and recognizes what people have to say. Real conversational communications is two parts listening, one part talking.

Is there a correlation between the intensity of election conversations and the big voter turnout expected at the polls tomorrow?

I think so. It’s no secret that the more engaged people are – whether in a political or business decision – the more likely they are to act.

But although the voter turnout is suppose to be strong, which is great, the interest in engaging in political conversations is waning, which is not so great.

According to pollster Frank Lutz, “In most parts of this country it is very difficult to have a civilized conversation between two people that fundamentally disagree.”

Intellectual food fights are part of the foundation of democracy. Let’s not judge and close our minds to those who disagree with us. Instead, let’s celebrate that people care so much about their communities, their states, and their country that they are passionately involved, have an opinion, and plan to vote on it.

A better place to redirect our irritation is towards those who don’t care enough to have an opinion and don’t make their voices heard by voting.

Election Day and all the sometimes uncomfortable dinner conversations leading up to it are a reason to celebrate. Cheers for democracy. Today is a day to celebrate no matter what the election results.

  Pope Benedict XVI is working hard to mend relations with the Islamic religious community after he offended many Muslims during a Sept.12 speech. How is he doing in the crisis communications front? I’d give him a B-.

The Pope met today with Muslim diplomats in Italy, which is a postive step. Face-to-face meetings where people can have conversations are crucial; dialogue helps people understand one another as people, demonstrate respect, and assess the genuineness of beliefs and comments. Issuing formal statements rarely quells an emotionally-charged issue, which was the Pope’s first action.

While today’s meeting was good, it would have been better for the Pope to go to a predominantly Muslim country and to have had this face-to-face meeting earlier. When grave misunderstandings occur, it’s best to get talking sooner than later, stemming swelling anger before it causes irreparable riffs.

For the Pope to keep up his crisis communciations grade point average I’d encourage him to get out of Italy and have more conversations with moderate and respected Muslim diplomats in the months to come. — on their turf. I also recommend that he not cower and toss aside his beliefs that religiion and violence don’t go together. That would be disingenuous.

Similarly, I’d encourage Muslims to not simply issue statements and protests when upset, but engage in a conversation to help foster understanding. The Pope’s comment that religion and violence shouldn’t go together is on the minds of people around the world. If Islam means peace, many in the world need moderate Muslims to be more proactive in helping the world to understand this.

Pope and Islam crisis communications