Wolters Kluwer is a 175-year-old Dutch company who provide professionals with necessary information in the fields of legal, business, tax, accounting, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and healthcare. They have customers around the world and recently exhibited at the Beijing International Book Fair.
Understanding the value of subtitles
To complement their booth Wolters Kluwer commissioned a brief video which highlights the value of exploration, innovation and creativity for the world of digital information. Featuring a balanced mix of Mandarin and English speakers the video uses subtitles to bridge the language divide for different groups of viewers. This is a simple and straightforward way for companies to communicate across cultures.
Here’s the English-language subtitles and the same video with Chinese-language subtitles. Notice that the video has been framed to allow space for subtitles.
The National Speakers Association of Northern California March Meeting
Saturday’s meeting of the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association was one of the most valuable and informative meetings I have attended in the last five years. There were three of my Cisco communications colleagues in the room, all furiously taking notes. If we collectively implement just 10% of the tips and tricks shared by the two speakers, executive communications at our company might never be the same again.
Sticky Content – How to use Extreme Platform, Interactive, and Visual Techniques to be Massively Memorable, with Brian Walter, CSP
Brian is a “corporate humorist” with a unique blend of communications expertise. Over a 25+ year career, he’s been an advertising director, marketing & sales director, radio & TV commercial producer, copywriter, communications manager, presentation coach, video producer, management trainer, consultant and professional speaker. He’s even a Guinness Book of World Records holder for producing the world’s shortest TV commercial. Brian has earned the elite Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) from the National Speakers Association, and is a member of Meeting Professionals International.
Brian’s business is called Extreme Meetings. He provides customized “infotainment” to make meetings memorable. Brian has presented to audiences ranging from 7 to 7,000. His clients have included Starbucks, Microsoft, Costco, Pepsico, AAA, Payless, Verizon Wireless, several banks that are no longer in existence, the Social Security Administration, a regional office of the IRS…and a dairy company best known for awesome chocolate milk.
Brian shared a humongous list of tips tricks and tested techniques for engaging audiences and taking your speech from ordinary to extraordinary.
E-Ticket Ride Moments
Back in the day, Disneyland famously offered top-priced E-ticket rides.
These were the Matterhorn, the Pirates of the Caribbean – the best in the Park, the ones you told your friends about the next day. They were the exciting rides, the ones where something happened. For your speech to have impact, it must either be perfect (difficult to achieve time in and time out), or it must have built-in production values which guarantee the audience will remember what you said. In other words, it must have a few E-Ticket moments (but not too many to be overwhelming). These are the moments when the presentation goes beyond the facts and figures, the basic information, the data that make up most corporate content. Instead look for interaction; movement; unique visuals; music; costumes; video; sound effects; SFX; risk; props; volume; placement; and spectacle.
Carefully craft those memorable moments that would be included in a movie trailer about your presentation. Ask yourself, would a trailer advertising your speech feature your talking head all the time (nah!), or would it feature the moments when things happen – when you bring the guy on stage; throw something into the audience; show a video or even risk wheeling in a pallet of dollar bills to illustrate a sales goal that has been achieved?
People want content, but they want sizzle too. Brian suggests there’s a false dichotomy between the two. He offers a blend he calls “contizzle”.
How to give your speech impact
Make it:
Gettable: Most presentations are larded with too much information. Give them the data but make sure they also get the point in a memorable way. You want that “Scooby Doo” moment, when the audience tilt their heads and think “Woo-Hoo”.
Emotional: Hook into their feelings. People’s decisions are based on emotion. Understand they are not looking for two more bullet points before they will be convinced about your argument. You need your idea to go “verbally viral”, to be an idea that can be shared. Imagine what they might say to their significant other when they return home from your meeting. They’re not going to mention the fifth bullet point on the fourth slide, are they, Mr. or Ms. Exec-Comms Manager? No, they’ll summarize it in one to two sentences, sentences about what hit them at an emotional level. So why not sweat the detail on that, with as much energy and attention as you do on making sure every speed and feed is included.
Actionable: offer them a realistic next step to take after the talk ends.
Bottom line: Brian offered two ways to make a talk stick. Firstly through engaging in extreme interaction with the audience; secondly by creating mini brands for the content (as he does with the following branded techniques).
Extreme Audience Interaction
In the richest and most expansive part of his presentation, Brian offered a range of ways in which you can ask for volunteers from a live audience to participate in your talk. All avoid the whining, begging, pleading tone, that some presenters are forced to adopt with a reluctant audience, as their credibility leaks from the soles of their shoes into the floor of the podium.
My one regret is that few of these techniques are applicable to the increasingly popular world of virtual meetings. It’s a shame that some companies have lost sight of the value of that aspect of the rich tapestry of human experience that allows for these opportunities for emotional connection between the presenter and the audience; tolerating meetings where every presenter is reduced to the two-dimensional window in the remote viewer’s computer screen. What price flesh and blood and human emotion in a virtual world?
Asking for Volunteers – the Brian Walter Way
The first rule is do not ever, ever, ever embarrass people. Protect their dignity. But this doesn’t mean being boringly politically correct. It’s interesting to your audience the extent you allow your volunteers to seem to be at risk.
So how do you put people in a risky situation in front of their peers, and have their permission to embarrass them in a way that will allow everyone else in the audience to feel that vicarious thrill that comes with watching a colleague twist in the wind, out on a limb, wondering if they will make it or fake it?
Here’s how.
Bribe them. Offer $20 for someone to come up on stage (or $50 for senior management) and you’ve got instant permission to ask them to do or say anything that might make them look the fool, because they want you to show them the money. Believe Brian when he says that this works every time. Can’t afford the money if you want a lot of interaction? Simple. Offer Starbucks gift cards for a “mystery amount” (they won’t know they’re only worth $5 until long after you’ve left the auditorium).
Set them up. Acknowledge that this will be an embarrassing situation on stage and ask for everyone’s permission to play along. Again, this works.
Volunteer ball. Toss a small ball into the audience. Whoever catches it can either be the volunteer, or more likely gets to choose the person to their left or right. Brian spent time explaining how this simple act engages the whole audience on both sides of the aisle emotionally – from those who are immediately relieved the ball is not coming over to their side of the room; to those in the rows immediately before and behind the person who catches it and have that moment of anxiety that it might hit them; to the delight on the face of the guy or gal who gets to point the finger at their colleague who will now go up on stage.
Choose the pointer. Whoever you point to in the audience to volunteer is given a reprieve. They get to choose the person who must step up. This is especially effective when you have chosen somebody who emphatically shakes their head that they will not volunteer. Congratulations! You now tell me who should come up on stage. Watch the emotion on their face change instantly.
Putting more action in interaction
Each one of these interaction techniques was worth the price of admission for the day. Each showcased Brian’s real expertise at creating extreme meetings. While he freely admits he does not own these techniques, and we can borrow them for our own events, it’s a rare presenter who would have the skill to successfully implement them the first time they were tried with an audience. But, hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Be a poser. Ask questions. So, what is this? Who said that? No matter what the response your answer is You are right. For example, rather than playing it the way the boring SME would, show the audience this graphic:
and simply ask So what is that?
Someone in the audience will probably venture that it’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, or perhaps Pavlov’s hierarchy of needs. No matter what, congratulate them, affirm that it is Maslow’s, and move on. You’ve just rewarded somebody in the audience emotionally, making them a partner in the transfer of information in a far more effective way than the typical engineering product manager would. Use the same technique to ask people to guess percentages or numbers. Encourage the audience to shout out numbers and correct them as they over- or under-shoot.
Be a big poser. Don’t be afraid to ask hard or obscure questions. If you want someone to guess where Starbucks got its name from, begin by asking are there any English majors in the room? Someone might guess that the name comes from Moby Dick. If not, you can start giving hints until the audience realizes what you’re asking for.
One-on-ones. Here’s an opportunity to move into the audience to create dramatic energy. Don’t just randomly wander into an audience like some are known to do. Be intentional. Approach someone to ask a question, elicit a response, engage them in a conversation. This breaks the rules most presenters adhere to. Make that one person your new BFF. They become the go-to person for the rest of your presentation. Everyone will be rooting for you as you shine the glow of attention on them in front of the audience.
Shout outs. Have a group shout out responses to questions you pose. Don’t be afraid of a little chaos and more noise in the auditorium that most presenters tolerate. It’s all good emotional connection.
Two truths and a lie. This was the golden nugget of the whole day. Rather than trying to explain the technique take a look at this YouTube video from last summer’s National Speakers Association convention where Brian used it on stage in front of an audience of 2000 to get extreme meeting interaction. It’s an 8 minute video, filmed on a Flip camera, but stay with it, it’s worth every moment:
Fluffy, fluffy, deep. Here’s how to humanize a senior executive with three questions. The trick is to give the executive a long list of potential questions beforehand and have them choose the three they would like to answer (give them the chance to fill in the blank, none will). Two of the three questions will be “fluffy” (warm, fuzzy ones) and one will be “deep”. For example: What is your secret guilty pleasure?What actor would you like to play you in real life? What species is your family pet? These allow the audience to see the warm fuzzy side of the executive. Follow with a single deep question: What does it take for someone to get recognition and promotion in the company today? If you could change one sales goal this quarter, what would that be? Realize that it’s easier to segue into the profound emotion from the warm fuzzy feeling that it is to land on it cold.
Speed Interviewing. Ask people to form groups of three and give them just 45 seconds to come up with the answer to a question or suggestion. It’s a ridiculously short amount of time in which to accomplish the task. Yet it creates instant energy as people rush to get the group to hear what they have to say. It will send the energy of the room through the roof.
Instant Actors. Here’s your chance to bring people on stage from the audience for a cameo appearance. Print out dialogue for them to read in large font ahead of time on cards, highlighting the text for each person. You now have permission to use humor and go way over the top, since people are playing characters from their world, rather than speaking their own beliefs. If you don’t want to use real people, Brian has had success with sock puppets. I’m currently a big fan of creating cartoons that convey content which would otherwise be difficult for the audience to handle.
Point-Counterpoint. A time-tested of speaking truth to power since the glory days of the 1970s:
Get your corporate actors to man up to this and you’ll be surprised how far even the most conservative audience will let you go with your content. Memorable won’t even begin to describe what they’ll be talking about around the water cooler the next morning.
Mini Brands
The key to a memorable talk is, as Brian has demonstrated with the mini branded interaction techniques above, to have snappy titles for all of the key concepts in your talk. This boosts retention and connects with people emotionally. Name your key points with phrases like “verbal ping-pong” instead of “the elevator pitch”. Take the time to develop a logo or icon for each and your talk will be more memorable. Brian has had success with:
Fact or crap. Senior leaders quickly pick up on the keyword and have no problem calling something crap during the rest of the meeting. Okay, so it’s politically incorrect, but a proven and more memorable brand name than “fact or fiction”. No one will be standing up on the podium saying something is fiction, fiction, fiction the way they will use the four letter alternative. This is the power of a memorable brand versus the inanely bland.
Do you pass the smile test? Are people in your team more likely to smile when you are coming into the room or when you are going out of it?
Introduce mini brands like this in your talk and listen as other presenters and the audience latch onto them during the rest of the conference.
To net it out, the goal of a good presentation is not to end up with a bleedingly obvious “Bad Dragon” story. That’s where the executive, engineer or subject matter expert stands up and tells people what the problem is; how their solution will make it better and help slay the Dragon; and how the organization will live happily ever after. The unfortunate reality is, that describes the vast majority of what passes for corporate communications in the Fortune 500 these days.
Build in some of Brian’s “contizzle” tricks; tell a good story with real obstacles to overcome; make sure there’s at least four or five memorable moments, and the audience will remember your message the next day and perhaps even the day after that.
What I Learned From Winning 29 Emmys That Speakers Need to Know, with Bill Stainton
Planning an event isn’t rocket science. It’s harder. You have to be the master of 1,001 details—everything from negotiating the hotel room block to deciding on the typeface for the program. After so much planning and effort, the last thing you need is a speaker who makes your attendees yawn, shrug their shoulders, and think, “Hmmm—I guess it’s going to be another one of those meetings.” A speaker like that can kill your event before it even gets off the ground.
What if, instead, you could get the attendees to think, “This is fantastic! This is hilarious! I’m so glad I’m here!” That’s certainly the reaction from the NSA/NC crowd to Bill’s afternoon presentation. Bill is a true showman who lived up to the name of his company: Ovation Speaking.
Bill paid his show biz dues. He spent fifteen years in front of the cameras of the top-rated local comedy TV show in the country—Seattle’s legendary Almost Live!—so he knows how to entertain an audience.
Unlike Brian, there was not as much for me to capture for the extreme meeting report. It was as much the way he delivered his material as what he delivered. The most memorable part of the afternoon for me was when he showed a video of his onstage riff at a past NSA Convention satirizing the conference theme. Take a look, it’s priceless:
Bill advises that all talks should be treated as a “show” and in that sense you have to think through three separate approaches: the producer who deals with the structure of the presentation; the writer who creates the content; and the performer who delivers it.
How to produce an effective presentation
Producers are responsible for the event details. They are in charge of driving the bus, the audience are the passengers. You have to have, as Brian indicated, a series of E-ticket moments built into the talk to keep the audience’s attention. Bill called them “bathroom blockers” – the times in a movie when you really have to go pee, but the action on the screen is so compelling you can’t leave the theater. You’ve got to think of what you can bring to the game to make your next presentation so compelling that people are blocked from going to the bathroom.
Bill shared the classic magicians advice: start with your second-best trick, end with your best trick, and put the rest of the content in the middle. Jay Leno, who Bill has worked with, always chose his ending joke first. The reason? Audiences always remember the last thing you say.
Which is one very obvious reason why you should never, ever, end with Q&A.
Find ways to build in an element of predictable unpredictability. You want to keep the audience guessing when something strange will happen next, but don’t do it in a predictable way. Avoid predictability to make sure those lean forward moments catch them by surprise.
A keynote speech should open with a five-minute microcosm of what the entire presentation will cover. This gives the audience an idea of how things are going to be set up. Take the time to decide what elements, themes, and flavors you will include in your first five minutes.
Writing the speech
Speechwriters, according to Bill, need to keep these main intentions front and center:
Clarity. Make sure there are no unintended questions left hanging in the air by statements that confuse or bewilder the listener. This includes the use of acronyms and industry terms that the audience might not fully understand. Control the audiences focus during the speech. Avoid the error of going from A to C without going through B.
Use precise words and concise phrases. Jerry Seinfeld, who Bill has worked with, claimed that a good day’s work is taking an eight word phrase down to five words. Go through your speech and making sure that all of your words have energy. For example, Mark Twain liked to illustrate the right choice of words as being the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. As most speechwriters know, there is power in alliteration, rhyming, and cognitive dissonance. NSA member Max Dixon talks about the coaching relationship he has with clients as a ruthless sanctuary, which is a great example of cognitive dissonance.
Sprinkle smartness in your speech. It’s really okay to have some things that might be ahead of the classic 8th Grade reading level of the average member of the American public. You need just enough smartness to grab their interest, but don’t overdo it. Remember the average American audience really does have an 8th Grade reading level.
When writing, follow the advice of James Thurber, “Don’t get it right, just get it written”. Then edit.
Delivering the speech
Once speakers are on the podium they need to be larger than life. Like the band in Spinal Tap you need to be a 10 in real life but an 11 on the stage. Understand:
The art of the pause is knowing how to skip a beat and add an infinitesimal pause before the punchline, but then once you’ve delivered the zinger, silently count to three, or if that makes you uncomfortable take a sip of water from a glass on the lectern, and wait for the audience to react. Often it will be a couple of seconds after you deliver the line that the chuckles start. Likewise, when you have delivered an important point in your content, do the same pause. Think for a moment about how we often pause video recordings. Build the same pauses into your live delivery to allow the audience to realize what you’ve just said and to process how it applies to their situation. Subject matter experts and comedians alike succeed or fail by their mastery of the art of the pause.
Commit to the bit. This is as straightforward as defining, in your own words, what the segment of the presentation means and giving it all your energy. Even for the necessarily rushed material that had to be created under deadline.
Four quick specific techniques. These were masterful suggestions.
Don’t move on the punchline.
Things that happen in the past should be indicated to the audience’s left. Those that happened today center stage, and those that happen tomorrow to the right.
Play to the cheap seats first which means address the back of the room and the balconies at the opening of your talk.
When you start to bomb, slow down. This is the only way to rescue a disaster.
The performer’s secret weapon: Rehearsal. Very few speakers do this right. It’s not just do a quick run through or repetition of your content. Deliberately practice and look for ways to improve. Review the speech for material you need to add or delete, for where you need to add pauses. Tip: Make an audio recording of a speech and send it to people of equivalent background to the audience to see if they get the message.
Bill concluded with the quote of the day:
Improve, to the extent that yesterday’s audience is cheated by today’s performance.
Dennis Bumstead was General Manager of, and is now an adviser to, the Global Cooperation Project. He is an adviser to new initiatives, Four Years Go and the Green Tea Party, and a seed group member of his local Transitions Town initiative in Lake County, California. After teaching, at M.I.T., and at London and Antioch Universities; consulting to Fortune 500 corporations and working for The World Bank, for the past decade he has been recovering, by, amongst other things, working in the non-profit world – since 2006 with the Global Cooperation Project, promoting the ideas in Not-Two Is Peace by Adi Da.
The Global Crisis is Deadly, Dangerous – and it can be Overcome
by Dennis Bumstead, PhD
“The future is either going to be catastrophic disaster, or it is going to be the turnabout moment in human history, in which humankind will step out of its dark ages of “tribalism” into a new mode of human cooperative order.” Adi Da, Not-Two Is Peace, The Ordinary People’s Way of Global Cooperative Order.
While there are many encouraging grass roots efforts to change the monstrous trundling to destruction of the old global order, (take Avaaz, for just one), as yet there is still no widespread, really full consideration of our seriously threatening situation. Nothing seems to address the global totality of the escalating crises we are in.
Even thoughtful economist critics, such as Krugman, Stiglitz, Roubini and Sachs, who indicate that proposed economic solutions are not enough, confine most of their proposals to the economic and political sub-sectors of the total system.
We need change which is economic and political, but also social, and cultural, and psychological and spiritual. Truly transformative change.
The dire situation in the Third World
For those in the Third World, the escalating global crisis comes on top of system-endemic depredations of poverty, malnutrition and environmental degradation. Some two billion people are trying to survive on just two dollars a day. They also suffer the effects of the many wars which are conducted, sponsored or ignored (and always armed) by the so-called “developed” nations. Globally, we are making the absurd decision to let a third of humanity starve, if wars or preventable diseases don’t get them first. This is the great civilization, which we tell each other and our kids in school, has been “evolving” magnificently since the Renaissance!
The establishment global institutions, the corporate / governmental / military and “security” apparatus, the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, and big media obviously do useful and even many well intentioned things. But essentially they sustain the status quo, and its accruing benefits to the “developed” nations, and principally to the 2% who own and run these institutions. There is far more reporting on the “shape” of the recession (flat, double dip, etc.) than on the daily fact that under present rules of the game, the recession is a death sentence for millions of people in the Third World. These are people who would not need to die if the global system were managed for the benefit of all, instead of for the few.
Al Gore has been a sustained and effective communicative voice for environmental change. But that is only part of the problem and environmental challenges are not soluble without radical change in other arenas. Many alternative writers and activists like Hazel Henderson and David Korten likewise address critical sub-sets of the issues. Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest suggested some years ago that there is a mostly invisible movement already tackling many of the issues. That is encouraging. But most of us who have been part of that world for years or even decades know how frustrating and difficult it is to move on to the level of change needed.
A full alternative: The Ordinary People’s Way of Global Cooperative Order
In Not-Two Is Peace Adi Da addresses the issues comprehensively.
The book spells out:
what the problems are
why the existing global system cannot and will not continue
that it will be determined, by our understandings and actions, “in the next handful of years” whether catastrophe or regeneration ensues
a proposal for the formation of a Global Cooperative Forum, functioning on the basis of “prior unity” and managing the globe for the benefit of all instead of the few.
(The book does not spell out a detailed action program. That must come from intelligent, creative and necessarily cooperative response and action.)
Adi Da points out that the world’s political economy simply cannot continue, built as it is on a model of growth for the developed and depletion for the “developing”. The system as is simply unsustainable, as more and more nation-”tribes” try to get in on the so-called “good life”.
These ideas make sense to “early adopters” – those who are already have noticed that attempting to reinstall the status quo is not working and who are already exploring and engaging real alternatives.
The book is fundamentally very clear. But its offers plenty of challenges to us all – because it calls for change we all fear is impossible and it addresses the way-deep conventions of global life that we all carry into the fray.
“Something new must emerge”
Adi Da spoke and wrote about these issues all his life. Beginning with a speech on prejudice and tolerance that he gave in high school in the 1950s, in various books, and summarily in Not-Two Is Peace. He spoke about the seriousness and urgency of the global situation on the last day of his earthly life, November 27, 2008. What he said was recorded and appears as the last chapter in the current edition of Not-Two Is Peace. These are the last paragraphs :
Civilization is in crisis. The human world altogether is in crisis. The notions of security, longevity, freedom from need, and enjoyment of life are showing themselves to be illusions–very tentative, and able to be enjoyed by only a relative few. And the relative few who enjoy such life-conditions do so at the expense of others–and, in fact, on the basis of the suffering and exploitation of others.
Something new must emerge. That something new is not going to emerge from the pattern of nation-states, or even from the gathering of nation-states (in the form of the United Nations). That something new can only emerge from everybody-all-at-once–the power of humankind as a totality.
Humankind as a totality must relinquish the old civilization. It must accept that the old civilization is dead, the old civilization is gone, useless, non-productive. The old civilization can no longer provide security, longevity, freedom from need, and life-enjoyment for people. Less and less can the old civilization do anything useful at all. The old civilization is now profoundly degraded, and will only get worse with time.
A new mode of social contract must emerge–a mode of social contract not founded on egoity. There must now be an egoless mode of social contract–based on cooperation, tolerance, and universal participation and accountability. Such is the nature of the necessary global cooperative order.
In order for such a global cooperative order to come into being, there must be a core institution based on the universal participation and accountability of everybody-all-at-once. I call that core institution the Global Cooperative Forum. The Global Cooperative Forum is the necessary transformative movement on Earth. (pp307-8)
So……
We have some time – a few years – and we need to act, boldly. Immediate global catastrophe (as predicted frequently in the blogosphere) is not likely – in the short term. For just “a handful of years”, we will see continuing economic recession together with “moderate or localized disasters” (oil spills, local wars etc.) not in the least moderate for those directly affected, of course, but not yet the complete local and global catastrophe. For now, since the South American economic crisis of ’97 and on other occasions including the global crisis of ’08, the powers-that-be have demonstrated some significant, if last minute, capacity to prevent total global meltdown and sustain some functionality, in the interests of …. the illusory status quo.
Of course, it’s true that “in the long run, we are all dead” as Mr Keynes famously said, (and as Buddhists and other wise traditions have been saying for 2,500 years or so), but if the Global Cooperative Forum, as proposed in Not-Two Is Peace, is launched within a few years, significant improvements in global functionality can be made including some, like climate management, which will take an extended time for effective reversal of damaged systems.
There are thousands of large and small efforts underway, all working for global change. Efforts like Transition Towns, to give just one example. Many of them are collected together on Hawken’s Wiser Earth site. These efforts can come into effective cooperation through a Global Cooperative Forum. No utopias are to be expected, but there are much better ways than business as usual! If we take such cooperative action the planet can reach a state of equanimity so all of us can begin to live truly human lives.
What better to do with the next couple of years?
Not-Two Is Peace: The Ordinary People’s Way of Global Cooperative Order, by Adi Da can be read on-line at http://www.da-peace.org/
Edited highlights from the 1-hour presentation I gave at the Ragan Corporate Communicators Conference, held May 4-7 at the General Motors HQ, Renaissance Center, Detroit, MI.
The speech outline, slides and resources I refer to are available on the presentation home page.
The Ragan Corporate Communicators Conference in Detroit (May 4-7) was festival of presentations on Social Media, Speechwriting, Corporate and Internal Communications. Over 250 attended the event held at the General Motors Headquarters in the downtown Renaissance Center and hosted by GM.
Attendees generated over 900 tweets under the hashtag #ragangm. Since Twitter only maintains 10-14 days of content live they will soon disappear. Here’s the archive all of them.
I curated a list of the most interesting 108 tweets,adding links where appropriate for easy reference.
Use Camtasia Studio to create audio “screen-casts” of apps – embed in departmental websites as training aids. Create animated preso library.
Internal comms compete w/lots of entertaining options for employee mindshare. Videos & Photos need to be quality & entertain to compete w/Rolling Stone & People Magazine.
Every internal web page should have star rating system and allow comments.
When developing messages for employees, ask the question “What does this have to do with the key audience how does it speak to their concerns?” WIIFM at two levels for employees: 1) What does it have to do w/ me? 2) How does changing my behavior make my life better?
Three steps to changing employee behavior: 1) Handle comms logistics – content, design, 2) capture employee attention and 3) do be relevant. Result = change behavior.
Comms is responsible for simplifying complexity of business – diagram things.
We can no longer have internal comms messages targeted to everyone – the branch office does not see things same way HQ staff do. Gen Y workers diff. from Baby Boomers.
Every communicator (esp. long-timers) eventually stops communicating 4 their audience and starts communicating 4 their boss. Do whatever it takes to avoid this. Bonus be damned!
3rd party media training is often more effective. Execs seem more receptive and less defensive/dismissive about their advice. Hire an outside coach for faster results.
People now have now gone from having ADD to ADOS – Attention Deficit … Ooh Shiney!
Executives need to understand Gen Y. “Connect with the coming tidal wave.” Try reverse mentoring, people!
Irrelevant information is not benign. Limited reader attn means messages must be focused on benefits or risk losing readers.
Write for the range of target audience that has least understanding of your topic. Duh!
89% of journalists say they turn to blogs for story research. Lazy or smart?
78% of people trust recs of other consumers; 14% trust ads. This is why social media is so important. Who do you trust?
62% of employees who tweet, tweet from work.
66% of employers have monitored employees’ internet use; 1/3 of companies have fired someone (mostly for visiting wrong websites).
Make sure to integrate comms channels with each other. Example given: The Petco Scoop blog.
Wildfire has a fun ways – sweepstakes, contests and give-aways – to engage SM audiences.
Ideal number of words in a graf before losing reader attention: 42.
Polleverywhere – Cool live polling technology. Used my phone to txt a vote and watched live results on the screen!
General Motors: Changing the public’s perception 1 customer at a time. Personal correspondence with GM execs. Actively seek unhappy customers.
Re finding/responding to online complaints, “It costs less…than finding a new customer,” Says GM’s Susan Docherty.
SM lessons learned by GM: Don’t be boring, don’t over-promote, cut the hyperbole, respond to people w/real people.
Social media “policy” for employees: if you can’t say it at your daughter’s bday party, shouldn’t say it online.
“Stop treating customers like a one-night stand,” GM CMO Susan Docherty. Great advice for all companies!
“Emerging” media is now traditional media. GM had 8-fold increase in digital media spending since 2001.
In communications, if you start with the consumer, you will do the right thing.
Qumu – great option for internal communications webcasting: Ragan Conference using them.
GM has “social club,” informal, regular meetings of those from all depts w social media responsibilities.
Remember you (your comp. or org) are a publisher and you compete with media outlets.
PR & Marketing need to have a ‘”happy marriage.” Audiences can’t tell the diff between the two. They just see you.
GM lets employees spend worktime in Twitter & Facebook so they can interact w/customers, which is now part of everybody’s job.
Viral is a phenomenon, not a strategy…absolutely true.
Any GM employee can tweet about the company, says @maryhenige. Co keeps them advised of rules, links them to info & asks them to be smart.
In the end – just provide value. Don’t lead w/your messages; community’s needs come first.
On Social Media…don’t be a brand, be human.
70% of successful outcome depends on how well you communicate. The last thing u want is 4 execs to be hiding behind their desks.
“SM is like having a kid – you can’t just leave them when they’re done being cute.”
Writers are ditch diggers. Can’t wait for a muse. Get your ass back in there and DIG!
Any speech longer than 20 minutes is too long. If they want longer. Tell them you’ll speak for 20, QA for the rest.
How to determine speech length? 100 words = 1 minute is good benchmark. Anyone speaking faster than that needs to SLOW DOWN, pause for audience to absorb message.
Speechwriters: Make 3-4 big points. No more. Get them from the principal in ur 1st mtg, or they’ll throw ur 1st draft out.
Get a 2nd monitor for your computer (to monitor Twitter).
Use flickr to spark yr creativity.
Use flip cams for fast ‘scrappy’ videos (caveat: content must be good).
Greatest gift of YouTube culture: low expectation for video quality. BUT compelling content + authenticity is extremely high.
Using humor in Corp comm is not always a fireable offense.
Keeping it real: Bullfighter: – eliminate jargon & b.s. in your documents.
Hire a presentation/speech coach to help ur executives improve. Not overnight, but 3-4 months.
Do a short 2 sentence interview with multiple ppl and mash together for a good video on a single topic. Example: http://bit.ly/aqzoCd
Create a presentation homepage for upcoming events, preview videos, outline, slideshare, ask for comments. Example: http://bit.ly/aWBAow
Flip camera tips: Clean the office behind you; use a desk light to highlight face; watch for b/g noise; bump sound with Windows Movie maker post-production.
Keep your language conversational. Test your writing by reading out loud as if you were talking to someone in an elevator.
Writers: Get rid of passive sentences; capture the essence of your press release in a Tweet.
Stop blocking social media from ur employees. Train them and empower them.
Spice up internal comms: Roving reporters and employee film fests: uncovering talent in ur organization.
“Who died & put IT in charge of employee productivity?” @shelholtz
Amplify employee voices thru low-cost podcasting. Can listen at user convenience, develops trust and community. And cheap to produce.
Journalism graduates today are trained to shoot, edit, and publicize. Get a dedicated staff member to focus on video.
@MarkRaganCEO on why authenticity matters: “We live in the age of bullshit.”
Podcast Production Lessons: Cozy up to your radio. Get comfortable with being seen & heard. Prepare, prepare, prepare.
Podcasters: Think like a marketer. Create full campaign. Don’t 4get your global audience. Measure every podcast.
Podcasters: Your leaders make for great content. Look for your influencers. Let employees be the interviewers sometimes.
Internal Podcasts: You’ve got experts in your community. Help them tell their stories. Find the moment when the mike goes away.
Podcasts complement crisis communications. Can quickly be on the scene or respond to rumors. Easily done over the phone.
Time length for videos is controversial. Brevity important in most cases. 90 secs or less. BUT if it’s good, ppl will watch longer.
Executive communications is like a high wire act…eventually something will go wrong.
Public Speakers: Common mistake – spending more time on slides than on delivery. Dry runs are important.
Public Speakers: Conversational tone in a large audience doesn’t always work. Stage presence is important.
Speechwriters: Beware of tongue twisters. “Red Buick, Blue Buick”.
Speechwriters: Prep your exec in case their time gets cut. Provide a 60-30-15 minute version of the speech as a contingency.
Understand Cultural Sensitivity/Diversity issues: Resource: Culture Crossing – Beware of culturally-specific analogies (e.g. Sports US= “4th down”; UK= “batting on a sticky wicket”).
Think about mic’ing your exec when they present so u can re-purpose their speech/audio for other things (website, podcast, transcript, etc.)
“Opportunities multiply as they are seized”- Sun Tzu. Especially true for the internet.
@aribadler suggested we’ve moved from work-life balance to work-life blend.
Avoid extended online debates with ppl who disagree with a message.
28 Best Praactices for virtual presentations, WebEx sessions: www.whatworks.biz
Best way to brief ur exec? Know them, their style. Personalize ur approach and style.
If your employees love what they do, make them ambassadors.
Pre-flight checklist for exec-comms events available as .doc source: http://bit.ly/bzzoTh
Blogs must be authentic. Don’t ghost write your CEO’s. Ppl expect authenticity. If they can’t write it, look for something else.
If ur CEO is a bad writer but a good speaker: have him dictate it + ur comm staff can transcribe to the blog.
Comm cascade often fails. Focus on interpretation + location! Help staff take the message, interpret, + pass it on accurately.
Branding: Detroit is considered “gritty”. Baby Boomers equate that to dirty. Gen X define it as “authentic”. Detroit’s brand position: Detroit is where cool comes from.
Ask your agency to pitch ideas they don’t think you’ll approve. Creativity will flow.
Whether it’s online or in print. If you don’t know if people are reading it, why are you doing it?
Interviewing tip: Don’t be afraid to go where your answer leads you and not where your question sent you.
Complaints are inevitable in any biz. Look at them as opportunities to showcase problem solving and communication skills.
Comms must compete for your employees’ attention – Paying employees gets them in the door, but that doesn’t engage and motivate them.
Measure communications by business goals/objectives.
Consider Prezzi.com instead of PPT: Animated visuals are dynamic and impressive. As shown in @shelhotz closing keynote.
Here’s a speech I gave at the Speakers Forum – an advanced Toastmasters Club that meets on the 4th Saturday of each month at the Concord Police Station, Concord, California.
In this 5-7 minute presentation I discuss the differences in pronunciation and meaning between English and American uses of the same language.
“We must always remember that the act of speaking professionally is only a part of our individual journeys. It is not a destination.”
- Phillip Van Hooser
The Evolution of a Professional Speaking Career
Since 1988, NSA President Phillip Van Hooser, CSP, CPAE, has spoken, written, coached and consulted on leadership and service professionalism issues with groups and organizations around the globe.
On Saturday January 9, 2009, he presented at the NSA Northern California Chapter meeting. His talk, Uncommon Business Practices That Will Help You Re-Think, Re-Position and Re-Tool Your Way to Speaking Success, reviewed the evolution of his own speaking career and the lessons this holds for other professional speakers.
Van Hooser stated that there are five distinct stages in a typical speaking career:
1. The dream is born
Some fall into a speaking career by chance. But Phil has dreamed of being a professional speaker since he was very young. His grandmother was an early influence who told the eight-year-old he would become a Baptist preacher. That didn’t happen, but he did became enamored with natural orators: the preachers, teachers and politicians of his Kentucky childhood.
2. The journey begins
By age 15 he had started keeping a notebook on public speaking. He recorded what the speakers he heard said, then progressed to noticing how they said what they said — the ways in which they delivered their material.
3. A business materializes
Every speaker must choose a moment to declare themselves a professional. For Van Hooser, that moment was the afternoon of April 7, 1988 when he quit his corporate job. With the “confidence born of ignorance” he started his business with no prospects or speaking material. He did, however, enjoy the support of his wife Susan who has been his business partner for the past 20 years. Now — 2,800 paid presentations later — Phil’s advice to others considering a career as a speaker is not to quit the day job until you have material developed and clients lined up.
4. The work expands
Speakers need to stay current. Changes in technology and the economy mean that what worked at the start of our careers will not continue to work. We need to evolve personally and professionally. The secret, Phil says, is to listen to the audience. As speakers we might think we know what people like, but the audience will let us know what they actually benefit from.
5. Reflection is inevitable
Many older people, looking back at their lives, wish they had taken more risks. They also wish they had taken time out to reflect, slowing down the weeks and months that otherwise pass by in a blur. Many wish they had contributed something to the world that would outlast their own lifespan.
As speakers, we must take the risk of stepping outside our safety zone and learn from our mistakes. We must invest ourselves in the people in our audience, and reflect on the unique opportunity we have to make a difference to thousands of people. Finally, when we speak with passion and conviction, we’ll see the light bulb go off in people’s eyes and know that we have connected with them. We never know when something we say in a presentation will change someone’s life. It’s this possibility, Van Hooser says, that makes the hard work of being a professional speaker worthwhile.
Grandmother Van Hooser clearly saw something in young Phillip that has now benefited tens of thousands of people.
Podcast Interview
To hear what Phil told me about his role as President of the National Speakers Association, how American speakers are perceived internationally and why professional speaking is the hardest job he’s ever had, click on the podcast icon below.
Eight Easy Steps to Make Your Training Programs Irrelevant
By B. Kim Barnes and John Castaldi
(Note: I used to work with John at Sun Microsystems. This ironic commentary on what not to do as a trainer contains lessons for training coordinators, workshop leaders and public speakers. Enjoy! Ian.)
We applied our combined 50 years of experience to this challenge—how to insure that your instructor-led training programs die an early death. By following these eight steps we can guarantee that you will never have to deal with an over-booked classroom again.
1. Call any required pre-class study “pre-work.”
First and foremost, if you call any pre-class assignment “pre-work” you will discount its importance. This will convey that the “pre-work” is not part of the “real work” that happens in the workshop. Besides, who enjoys studying in their free time, anyway?
Bonus: During the actual class, be sure to ignore the pre-work and avoid all references to the “pre-work” assignment.
2. Ignore lessons from media or game producers.
Television newscasts utilize many techniques to keep their audiences from switching channels. Video and computer game producers have mastered ways to keep their users engaged. In these media, viewers observe a change of pace, variation in tone, and a range of activities and movement. We are not in the entertainment business, so these techniques do not apply to the classroom. By staying frozen in both position and voice, you can be sure that more important work, such as answering emails and sending text messages, will occur during class. These days we need not worry about keeping our audience engaged. They probably will be engaged—just not with us.
3. Make sure slides emphasize quantity, not quality.
Since you are no longer printing expensive transparencies, you might as well get your money’s worth from that PowerPoint license. So focus on creating the greatest possible number of slides. And through animation, make sure that most of the slides do tricks. If you have enough items zooming in from outside the frame or appearing in Rockettes-like sequence, participants are sure to expect the facilitator to morph or dance. If a table has a vertical orientation in the slide, show it with a horizontal orientation in the participants’ material or vice versa.
Bonus: Don’t forget to read the slides aloud word for word; the participants are probably reading something else anyway.
4. Remember that the devil is in the details.
Make sure your lectures are full of technical details. Avoid telling stories; stories are just for kids, as we all know. To impress your audience, use esoteric terms and technical jargon throughout your delivery. Do not provide any definitions or explanations. Do your best to maintain the gap in knowledge between you and them.
Here are some additional ways to keep that gap open:
Change the terminology throughout the course, calling the same topic by different names. This keeps your audience on their toes (assuming that they have not fallen asleep).
Use plenty of different models for the same thing—you can’t have too many models of good communication.
Make sure the terms do not match those used elsewhere in the organization. For example, when your company has “trust” as a value, call it “integrity” in the class.
Include local slang and difficult words to challenge non-native speakers. And remember to speak fast; it’s good practice for them.
Especially when addressing a multicultural audience, rely heavily upon American sports and military metaphors. For example try “step up to the plate,” “punt,” “do an end run,” “blitz the opposition,” or “make your battle plan.”
Bonus: Reduce your slide fonts to 18 points or less, so you can fill every square millimeter with text. It’s just another way to get value for that PowerPoint license.
5. Celebrate training for training’s sake.
Don’t bother explaining why the topic is important to the company’s business results. Keep the conversations general and theoretical; avoid any discussion of their business challenges. Never ask participants to relate the skills or concepts to anything in their work life. Avoid any discussions where someone might disagree with you. Vigorous debate will reflect on your expertise.
Bonus: If any business or job issues are raised, quickly transfer the topic to a “parking lot” flipchart, and then ignore it.
6. Keep leaders out of the way.
Never invite your organization’s leaders to help you teach a session. The participants know they are in the “training world” not the “real world.” An organization leader or guest speaker might inject real world discussions. This will only confuse participants. Besides, you don’t need the competition.
Bonus: When conducting a class in another country, be sure to ignore the local leader. Don’t bother them by setting up a meeting, asking questions about local issues, or sending any advance email about the class. They’re busy people. Also, don’t worry about making any cultural adjustments to your program. Global employees are comfortable with American corporate lingo.
7. Lecture for 100 percent of the classroom time.
Avoid opportunities for experiential learning and feedback. Participants will return to work having checked the box but unlikely to try anything new. If they actually try using the skill, they may blame you for the fact that it didn’t work. Really, training gains popularity when it has all of the fun of missing work and none of the responsibility for actually applying new skills.
Bonus: By avoiding any practice in class, they are unlikely to gain competence. This way, they will be sent back to the classroom for more training—and greater job security for you.
8. Bury online learning resources.
And finally, be sure to provide a challenge to any participant who is interested in online follow-up. Make the access to online learning a puzzle. Be sure the learner has to log in at least twice, and needs a minimum of four clicks to access that important article or class material. People value more what they have to work hard to obtain.
If you follow all of these suggestions and still have a job—please let us know, so we can develop a training program for further development of these skills.
Thanks to Antoni for showcasing this excellent presentation on advertising from The Economist of Nov 22, 2008 ‘Managing in the Downturn’. As stunning as the graphics are, the conclusion (slides 56/57) is worth repeating:
There’s never been a better time to steal market share than in a downturn.Advertise consistently and intelligently, speak to the right people, and you can gain an edge over your competitors.
To win, you need to be an Ideas Person: with the right mindset, you can treat the downturn as an opportunity. With the right flexibility, you can change the game.
Win not by surviving the storm, but by changing the game.
“When the Economy is on a downswing, it is great to be a professional speaker. If your business drops 20%, you still have 80%. If you worked for a large corporation, you could go from a paycheck to zero and the unemployment line.”
Brian is a “corporate humorist” with a unique blend of communications expertise. Over a 25+ year career, he’s been an advertising director, marketing & sales director, radio & TV commercial producer, copywriter, communications manager, presentation coach, video producer, management trainer, consultant and professional speaker. He’s even a Guinness Book of World Records holder for producing the world’s shortest TV commercial. Brian has earned the elite Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) from the National Speakers Association, and is a member of Meeting Professionals International.
Planning an event isn’t rocket science. It’s harder. You have to be the master of 1,001 details—everything from negotiating the hotel room block to deciding on the typeface for the program. After so much planning and effort, the last thing you need is a speaker who makes your attendees yawn, shrug their shoulders, and think, “Hmmm—I guess it’s going to be another one of those meetings.” A speaker like that can kill your event before it even gets off the ground.
Since 1988, NSA President 
