Communication techniques aren’t cheating, they are the rules of the game seeking to influence human psychology. There is a lingering belief among some communicators and policymakers that using values and emotion in communications is manipulative and immoral — like cheating. They believe that making change means tending to a public information deficit, and that to ‘play fair’ we just need to educate people – give them all the facts. This position is understandable, but misses a crucial fact: facts alone don’t move people. You may have spotted the irony here: this fact does not, therefore, move those communicators. So it might help to explain this with an image. As the educator Lynell Burmark puts it: “unless our words, concepts and ideas are hooked to images, they will go in one ear and out the other.” Let’s try it with a tennis racket: Communication techniques, from framing and emotive storytelling to body language and leveraging values, are not inherently immoral, and they are not cheating. They are simply how to play the game. If you opt out of using these techniques, you are in fact opting out of the game. Like a tennis player standing on the court without a racket, somehow expecting to return a serve. If communicators want to win the game, they need the right equipment, they need a good tennis racket. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a moral dimension, there certainly is – it comes in the intention with which they wield the techniques. Bad actors have been using them with intentions that most would agree are immoral – acting out of narcissism or greed, or convincing people that doing something will be in those people’s best interest, when in fact it will only serve the communicator. The history of advertising and politics is full of such examples. The way communicators then cheat is by lying. Lying is like taking a performance-enhancing drug, because lying can move faster and be more persuasive. Faster because you can make up lies faster than you can prove truths, and because if you can tell people exactly what they want to hear, then it is more likely to be shared. Just like with performance-enhancing drugs, we have to expose and protect people from lying — emphasizing the selfish, immoral intentions of the liar. We’ve known much of this for a long time. Whilst facts play a role in communications, it is much more effective to lead with values and emotion. If you want to win the game of persuasion fairly, pick up the racket and play well.