Many corporations believe they have business problems, when what they really face are political contests. Equally important, what was once a conversation between the private sector and government regulatory bodies has become an open forum.

Business and politics make up only two points of the new regulatory triangle. The public is an increasingly vocal third point. While politicians and special interest groups on the talk show circuit have long understood the public's role in regulatory legislation, it's still an adjustment for most American managements.

At Consensus Research Group, we have three simple words for any business ready to communicate their side of a story to the public: speak their language.

Great writers make great politicians. A brilliantly written editorial can move legislative mountains. The logical words of a business executive, on the other hand, can frequently fall--not only shy of the mark--but the mountain as well. It's a rare corporate lawyer or even a top corporate executive that can make their case to the public with the ease of a NEW YORK TIMES columnist, or a political party spokesperson.

Yet it's not an absence of merit, a lack of charm or a shortage of information that is the barrier to corporate communication on public policy issues; it's how business packages its case.

How can this can be when American business excels at selling its products and services with brand advertising that delivers attention-getting headlines, arresting graphics and intricately defined positioning. The answer is simple. Persuading consumers requires a very different skill set than communicating with the public as citizens.

Many business, and even multinational corporations, are still trying to influence pundits, legislators and regulatory agencies the old fashioned way: in the language of Wall Street, supported by technical graphs and industry buzzwords. But times and attention spans have changed, and none of these audiences react to information and logic alone.

The most elaborately documented statistics and visuals are no match for a resonant sound bite. If you can't convey the very real benefits of corporate policy in language the public can easily understand and remember, the debate is over; particularly when you're going up against slogan-level verbiage from special interest groups and political press releases.

Our work with clients shows that when facing proposed regulatory laws and policies, reach out to the public with the words, appeals and tonality you would use in your latest advertising campaign.

Facts alone are not enough. There has to be an emotional component.

How emotional? The gold standard was undoubtedly set by the poet Robert Frost in an interview with the Saturday Evening Post. "What do I mean by a phrase? A clutch of words that gives you a clutch at the heart."

Articulating your corporate missions and communications objectives in ways that achieve that "clutch at the heart", and finding the messages that resonate, takes a special mix of research techniques: exploratory qualitative probing, audience segmentation, key driver analyses, message point evaluation, and tracking metrics.

What separates this research technology from the methods we use in most brand marketing and advertising research is the need for addressing multiple audiences with different agendas: elected officials and appointed bureaucrats, public watchdog groups and political parties; parent teacher associations and teachers unions; the investment community and retired persons associations, trade associations and residents of communities surrounding corporate facilities.

The key drivers that are most effective in reaching and influencing these audiences vary with their agendas, and are often very different from the logical issues that might seem to be more important on the surface. The right to choose a cable provider may emerge as a more emotional driver than monthly fees; private for-profit companies managing schools, public transportation systems, hospitals or prisons may generate emotional concerns that ignore the cost savings to taxpayers.

Translating key drivers into specific message points requires marketing and political communication research experiences that pinpoints the language, the specific words and phrases, that get to the heart of the issue and the hearts of the publics involved.