I was fortunate to volunteer as a speech contest judge for an impromptu speech contest for High School students held Friday and Saturday as part of the State Leadership Conference of the California Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA).
FBLA is the largest and oldest business student organization in the world. It promotes competent, aggressive business leadership and helps students establish career goals and develop character and self-confidence. The goal is to facilitate the transition from school to work. To accomplish these aims, FBLA holds conferences and seminars; sponsors a competitive awards program; produces national publications; and provides scholarships, programs, and other services for its members.
Impromptu speech contest
The 2011 State Leadership Conference took place on April 14-17 at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, CA. I had responded a call for judges for a speech contest which came through at Cisco, where I am currently an executive communications manager.
The speech contest, similar to a Toastmaster Table Topics contest, requires students to speak for three to four minutes on a specific topic, such as No amount of travel on the wrong road will take you to right destination. I helped judge an elimination round on Friday afternoon where 15 students competed for a place in Saturday’s final round, with the top two winners from the State going on to the national conference this summer.
Suit Up for Success
FBLA conference regulations dictated a dress code requiring professional attire to a quite persnickety level of detail (Males: Banded collared shirt may be worn only if sport coat or business suit is worn. Females: Capris or gauchos with coordinating jacket/suit, worn below the knee). It was a unique experience to walk the hallways of the hotel surrounded by so many perky adolescents putting their best foot forward.
I wondered if the irony of choosing this conference theme for an event held in the heart of Silicon Valley – where leaders such as Scott McNealy, Steve Jobs and, more recently, Mark Zuckerberg, dress in anything but suits – occurred to the FBLA? Of course, there is something to be said for knowing how to suit up, and I’m sure there are still industries where dressing in suits is key to success (perhaps if you want to rise to the top in the Funeral Home Industry?). But, seriously, these students were anything but an “empty suit”.
Scary smart scholars
These 16-18 year scholars showed a scarily smart level ability and confidence. They were, as public speakers, almost without exception, at or above the level of many adult Toastmaster members, and equal, in some cases to the most accomplished Vice-Presidents I’ve worked with in corporate America over the past decade. In fact, most adults would be challenged to match their ease and ability to stand in front of a room and communicate clearly and confidently.
Be afraid, be very afraid…
If you are a student who intends to pursue a career in business or a parent of a student and you are not aware of FBLA then I urge you to check them out. If you ever find yourself competing for scholarships or college places with FBLA members then you should not underestimate the abilities of these students. They would easily bury most other candidates.
If you are an employer looking for top-notch talent, look no further.
FBLA Areas of focus
In addition to the speech contest, there were a vast number of tests and presentations taking place on everything from Accounting to Cyber Security; Desktop Application Programming to Digital Video Production; Marketing to Network Design. I sat in on a ten minute presentation by three young men from a Bay Area high school on network design which would qualify any of them for a summer internship at Cisco.
Podcast Interview
To hear first-hand what being a student member of FBLA involves, and the background of the organization, I sat down with Ms. Shelina Noorali, Vice President, Central Section, who is a Junior at Monache High School and Mr. Robert Franklin who is Board Chair and a teaches business education at Los Banos High School.
To hear what they told me, click on the podcast icon below.
I enjoyed presenting this morning to the breakfast meeting of the Tri-Valley Consultants Forum. There was a sold-out audience of 30 East Bay consultants in the room.
I discussed how new multimedia web-based technologies add exciting options to a consultant’s toolkit. From researching professional interests to developing content for clients, tools such as blogs, YouTube, podcasts, and Twitter can make you more effective—if you know how to use them. Consultants can now leverage multimedia to greatly improve the value of their services in the planning, preparation and delivery of their services.
I focused my talk on:
How to choose which tools to engage with and how much time and effort will be involved for an effective return on investment.
How to use advanced technologies to grow your professional reputation and connect with leading professionals in your field.
How to generate referral business, repeat business and third-party testimonials by using web technologies more effectively for better marketing, client engagement, and effective follow up.
Around half the room already had a blog and many more indicated they used blogs, podcasts on iTunes and YouTube as a source for researching clients and their area of specialization.
Born and raised in Australia, Linda Benn brings a breath of fresh air to the USA. She shares her cultural experiences and unique approach to overcoming the issues related to stress in the workplace and improving worker productivity.
The native Australian relocated to the US where she observed people experiencing fear, overwhelm and uncertainty about the economy and their future. She noticed people focusing more on problems rather than solutions.
She shares her cultural experiences and unique approach to overcoming the issues related to stress in the workplace by sharing a mindset of possibility, collaboration and productivity. Australians have a unique perspective of their “No Worries Mate” philosophy which can be applied and learned by American workers.
Linda’s training includes: postural evaluation; alignment correction; yoga training; meditation; nutritional counseling; breathing exercises; communication and reflective listening exercises; coaching; mentoring and offering training seminars. She skillfully customizes programs to the needs both of the workers and the company. Linda works with key individuals within an organization collaborating to generate positive, long-lasting results.
She trains and coaches people how to change their perspective on any stressful situation and reprogram to create a positive outcome.
Using a holistic approach that rewires the mental and physical system of organizations, she retrains individuals using her 5R method that teaches people how to release, realign, restore, rebalance and reenergize. Linda motivates people to the benefits of a healthy mind and an energized body to be more productive in their work. Her expertise as a coach and consultant advises companies how to build a Stress Firewall that results in attracting and retaining employees while increasing productivity & profits.
Pro-Track Profile
I caught up with Linda in January at the start of the Pro-Track year and asked her to share more details about her background. In addition to her new corporate website, which helps employees thrive, she also mentioned her original Heart Light Energy site. To hear what she had to tell me, click on the podcast icon below.
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.
Thanks to the fascinating website Sociological Images for a pointer to this interactive map at The Chronicle of Higher Education website that presents data on the proportion of U.S. adults with a bachelor’s degree over time. In 1940, in the vast majority of counties no more than 10% of the population had graduated from college (the national average was 4.6%):
Now the national average is 27.5%:
By comparing the maps over time, you can easily track a number of changes: the increase in college degrees overall, of course, but also changes in education such as the dramatic gains women have made in earning college degrees in the past few decades — the gender gap in college degrees was over 7 percentage points in 1980 but only about 1.5 points today.
This is a wonderful example of the visual display of quantitative information that would be very effective in a presentation, similar to that used by statistician Hans Rosling.
Mark Stiving, MBA, Ph.D. helps companies implement value based pricing strategies to increase profit.
As a pricing strategist, he ‘spreads the gospel’ of value based pricing. His message inspires manufacturers, marketers and others concerned with pricing to capture greater value through pricing improvements and to focus on creating real, quantifiable value for the benefit of their customers and their bottom line.
As a coach, Mark helps companies create and implement new pricing strategies to capture more of the value they create. He has consulted with Cisco, Procter and Gamble, Grimes Aerospace, Rogers Corporation, and many small businesses and entrepreneurial ventures. He currently works full time developing and implementing new pricing strategies at National Semiconductor.
Mark has published pricing articles in the Journal of Consumer Research, Management Science, and the Journal of Commerce. He freely shares his knowledge and latest thoughts on pricing on his Pragmatic Pricing website and has a forthcoming book titled “Big Picture Pricing.”
As an award winning speaker, Mark’s favorite hobby is public speaking, generously giving back to the Toastmasters community that helped him excel as a professional communicator.
Mark earned a BSEE at The Ohio State University, an MBA at Santa Clara University, and a Ph.D. in Marketing at U.C. Berkeley.
Roberta Guise works with experts, small business owners and professionals who want to be extraordinarily visible and sharpen their marketing edge. She also enables successful women to become thought leaders. A marketing consultant and speaker, she is the founder of San Francisco-based Guise Marketing & PR.
The Seven Deadly Sins of Writing
By Roberta Guise, MBA
There’s an epidemic of bad writing. Whether it’s Web sites, print ads, marketing brochures, promotional fliers, e-mail messages or business writing in general, I frequently find myself baffled as to what the writer meant to say.
Some annoying symptoms of bad writing show up in typographical errors, such as an apostrophe before the “s” in a plural word and in the possessive word “its” (which doesn’t use an apostrophe). Or in the word “you’re” — this being a contraction of “you are” — when the writer means “your,” as in belonging to you.
Then there’s the dropped “s” that renders a word singular when it was meant to be plural, and words that are just plain misspelled. These mistakes can — and more often than not will — leave a bad impression on the reader.
Frequently, though, the writing is so bad that you can’t tell what the writer originally meant. Marketers of services have the biggest challenge communicating their message. It’s either loaded with jargon or strange incomprehensible sentence structures that render the piece meaningless.
Or, in an effort to win your business, the writer tells you all about how great they are, rather than letting you know why you’ll be better off doing business with them.
I know people say that nobody reads these days. Wrong! People do read. How else could they navigate the Web? Your Web site or brochure are full of words that you want people to read, as are event fliers, ads and other marketing promotions. Think about it: if a reader can’t decipher your writing, or if it’s riddled with mistakes, you risk losing business.
To maximize your return on investment from your marketing materials, here are my Seven Deadly Sins of Writing, and recommendations for fixing them.
Use industry jargon. It shows how smart you are. The fix: use language that anyone outside of your industry will understand.
Don’t use the word “you,” because this is about how great “we” are. The fix: Use the word “you.” It engages the reader, and will give them the sense that you’re having a conversation.
Write exclusively about your company, because you’re the most interesting subject you know of.
Use sexist language by always using “he” and “his” as generic terms, because it’s easier and most people don’t care anyway. The fix: Use “he or she,” or the plural “they,” and you’ll stop perpetuating stereotypes.
Forget to use a catchy headline. People are smart, they’ll figure it out, and what’s wrong with baffling them? It creates intrigue and they’ll call for more information. The fix: Draw readers in with a sharp, snappy headline, letting them quickly scan for the most important information and “get” what you’re offering.
Don’t tell the reader what to do after reading. Readers can figure it out, so why tell them? The fix: Tell readers what you want them to do next (such as register for the seminar or call for a free consultation).
Ignore punctuation and typos because no one really reads anything these days, right? The fix: Go to the website for National Punctuation Day, where Jeff Rubin, a former print journalist who has published newsletters for more than 25 years, offers punctuation guidelines that will make your writing sparkle and impress your prospects.
As you write your next business, marketing or promotion piece (and even your tweets), use these Seven Deadly Sins and their fixes as a checklist. And to be sure readers understand your message, ask yourself how they’ll benefit from what you offer. Then, carefully describe those benefits in simple, clear language. This will put you well on your way to convincing them that they should do business with you.
Give a little extra thought to the words you choose. Hint: generally, shorter words are better. When you’re done writing, read your document carefully —even show it to a friend or co-worker — before you upload it to your website, send to the commercial printer, lick the envelope or click the e-mail Send button.
Executive communications professionals increasingly work with video. They range from simple Flip videos which tell winning stories to full-blown studio productions with panel discussions, remote participation via TelePresence and pre-recorded transition or interstitial segments.
The challenge is to not only to research, script, edit and produce the content, but to do so in as creative a way as possible — capturing those lean forward moments when the video engages viewers emotionally and connects with the audience.
I’ve recently started watching high-quality creative video in order to see the outer limits of what’s possible onscreen. It’s fascinating to see what others have done. Corporate video won’t ever look anything like this, but watching these videos unleashes my imagination. What’s more, I find that creative videos approach storytelling from a totally different perspective from that which I’m used to. Because storytelling is such a key skill in transmitting information, the more we learn how to tell stories creatively, the better we’ll become as communicators.
Here’s three creative videos I’ve enjoyed recently.
OK Go – This Too Shall Pass
This video has been seen by 24 million people on YouTube. It’s infused with a Merry Prankster, anarchic geek spirit:
Watch it a second time and you realize the smashed television sets piled against the wall and paint-splattered overalls indicate a number of rehearsals — nothing this good would have been created in one pass. Now, you might not get away with with lining up four VP’s against a wall and shooting paintballs at them; but people won’t forget variations on Rube Goldberg-like routines if you had the courage to work them into the CEO’s next keynote. Talk your product demo guys into a pinball triggering a golf club that knocks a baseball down a ramp and presses the on button that starts the demo (that lives in the house that Jack built.)
Metronomy – She Wants
This is a music video from Metronomy, an electonica /pop band from the UK. But it’s not just any music video. It creates the surrealistic atmosphere of the dream state in hypnotic detail. An homage to Buñuel, the video is the work of French directors Jul & Mat who have a movie called The Science of Sleep, which I’ve not seen, but is apparently filled with dream sequences:
I loved contrast between the dreamer and the dreamed (your executive and her staff?) and the sequence where she rotates through 360 degrees as does the camera (with stage hands dressed in black supporting her). From the moment she leaves her bed, with feathers flying in reverse motion, to the point at which she loses her dance partner at 3:28, the story-line builds. When the party-goers collapse the scenes unravel, the characters she met betray her, and the alter-ego she pushed down pushes back. A graphical a representation of the business cycle as you’ll ever see.
Just the thing to try and pull off for your next All Hands video, as long as Mary in Accounting doesn’t blink when the camera pans across.
London Time Lapse from Brick Lane to Primrose Hill
I was impressed by Anatoleya’s video taken on a Flip Ultra HD (with image stabilization software included). Speeding up the frame rate in the editing phase creates an engaging stop motion effect of a walk through this London street market:
I can’t wait to use this effect for the opening sequence at a corporate conference – shooting the room as it fills with people.
Or how about the cafeteria from 11:45 – 1:15? But everyone already eats their lunch too fast. It might be amusing to make one video in a company cafeteria in Europe, one in Asia, one in the USA and play “spot the cultural differences”.
Or how about a stop motion video in the lobby from 6:00 am – 9:00 am
… or one corner of a sea of cubicles
… or a call center
… or one person at their desk for a couple of hours
… or technicians installing a new rack in a data center
… or the janitors at the end of the day, moving from floor to floor.
I am a big fan of podcasting. Both those I create myself and post to this blog, but more so those I can download and listen to as a source of news and information from around the world.
That still leaves 77 podcasts which I was not aware of. I’ll be checking many of them out.
I also love browsing the iTunes Store podcast listings (where This American Life and others can be subscribed to) and I am a huge fan of the BBC Radio listings – where a full week of broadcasts on radio stations across Britain are archived. I recommend Andrew Marr’s Start the Week for stimulating conversation on current affairs and arts. And Radio Scotland’s Iain Anderson plays my kind of music.
If you are not plugged in to the world of podcasts, then start with the list above and do check out the iTunes Store listings. Search on keywords. For example, a search on “Public Speaking” lists 50 free podcasts on this topic. Likewise for Leadership, Baking and Sailing. There’s really nothing that is not being covered by audio podcasts.
The very first speechwriter to help write a STOU speech was Judson Welliver, hired by President Warrren Harding.
Lehrman explains why the speech is inevitably a laundry list of topics, and the process by which speechwriters approach the task.
Changes in technology have had a profound impact. Early in the 20th Century fewer than 1,000 people actually saw Woodrow Wilson deliver his SOTU. Last year 48 million watched Barack Obama on television or the web.
No matter how Obama’s speech is received this evening, somewhere in Washington DC a team of speechwriters will already have moved on to their next assignment.
I was fortunate to volunteer as a speech contest judge for an impromptu speech contest for High School students held Friday and Saturday as part of the State Leadership Conference of the California Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA).
Born and raised in Australia, 
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.
