Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The Power of Slow and Spare

Ten years ago in grad school, I had to make an oral presentation to about thirty people. A daunting prospect for me under ordinary circumstances, the endeavor became much more difficult when about fifteen minutes before the presentation, I developed some bizarre reaction to a cough medicine I had taken. I grew shaky and very spacey, but the show had to go on—it was a group thing, and an end-of-the-year-marks-depend-on-this thing.

The minutes I spent up there by the podium were torturous. I laboured to get each of my planned statements out—it felt like I was pushing them though molasses. As a result, I spoke very slowly and emphatically, with lots of pauses (I was summoning up the strength—and attention span—to get to my next line). The elaborate ideas I had meant to articulate got truncated to far shorter, simpler bits.

People clapped when I was done, but I attributed this to a kind reaction to my obvious struggle. I skulked back to my team and got ready to apologize profusely.

There was no need.

According to everyone, I had delivered my most memorable, effective presentation of the year.

Haste Makes Waste

I recalled this odd event when I read Jane Taber’s “Turtle Talk Wins the Race” in the Globe and Mail last weekend (February 23. 2007). Taber delves into the reasons behind Barack Obama’s masterful oratory, calling on several speech experts to help her out. In a nutshell: Obama speaks slowly and makes use of well-timed pauses: “... he chooses his words carefully and deliberately, allowing his audience to savour every syllable, conjunction, vowel and pause.”

Taber’s speech experts advise their clients to slow down and utter no more than 110 to 120 words a minute (as opposed to the 140 to 160 words per minute typically raced through by politicians such as Stephen Harper and Jack Layton). They note that a slow pace lends “gravitas to the message almost regardless to what the message is” and by contrast, that a fast pace “loses people” and almost signals that “you don’t want us to listen closely.”

More Core, Less Bore

Good writing is in many ways like good speaking, and many of the points Taber raises can be applied to writing effective communications. One of the things we try to do with clients when helping them with press releases or communications campaigns is to focus on the core of their message, and strip out the rest.

When you’re excited about something your business is doing—a new initiative or product, for example—it’s tempting to want to include in your press release every one of the 34 reasons it’s so great. And explain each reason in depth. And quote all the people who were involved in the idea. And give background. And context. And related information.

But guess what?

Most people will abandon your press release unless you relinquish your dream of including everything you’d ideally like to say. Our society is time-starved as well as compelled to cram as many sources of information in as possible—we are news grazers, not gourmands.

Once you swallow this, the next part can be fun. It involves isolating your core idea, then coming up the best words in the world to do it justice. Instead of skipping lightly through A to Z, you embrace one letter and make it sing. Chances are, your audience is going to hear—and remember—that simple song much more clearly than the 34 items you originally wanted to cover.

It may feel strange at first—much as my grad school speech felt almost catatonic—but reducing clutter in communications is a golden rule.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Take Your Ideas to the Spa: Made to Stick

Ever had that sinking “duh, no kidding” feeling when you get into a business book you thought looked interesting and find it just endlessly repeats things you already know? We have, lots of times, which is why we’re making a point to single out a title that is really helping us in our work: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath.

As you might guess, the book is about communicating in a way that makes people care about and remember what you’re saying. Appropriately, its jacket cover is neon orange, with an embossed image of silver, crinkled electrical tape smack-dab in the middle of the title.

We aren’t attesting that everything between the covers of Made to Stick is novel and practice-changing; much of it is very commonsensical and second nature among the best journalists and communicators. But the lessons and tips in the book are exceedingly well delivered and entertaining. They resonate and challenge you the next time you’re hit with a stack of boring statistics or seemingly mundane information and charged with making things interesting. They’re made to stick.

The So What Test

For example, when we’re faced with a press release assignment these days, we can’t help but recall the following excerpt on the importance of conveying a piece of information people will give two hoots about. Sounds simple, but often press releases are bogged down in information the issuing organization insists be prioritized. In our experience, these are not always the same thing.

The excerpt relates screenwriter and former journalist Nora Ephron’s experience of the impact her high school journalism teacher had on her decision to pursue that field.

Ephron’s teacher announced the first assignment. [The students] would write the lead of a newspaper story. The teacher reeled off the facts: ‘Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium on new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund ‘Pat’ Brown.’

The budding journalists sat at their typewriters and pecked away at the first lead of their careers. According to Ephron, she and most of the other students produced leads that reordered the facts and condensed them down into a single sentence: ‘Governor Pat Brown, Margaret Mead, and Robert Maynard Hutchins will address the Beverly Hills High School Faculty Thursday in Sacramento ... blah, blah, blah.’

The teacher collected the leads and scanned them rapidly. Then he laid them aside and paused for a moment.

Finally, he said, the lead to the story is ‘There will be no school next Thursday.’

‘It was a breathtaking moment,’ Ephron recalls. ‘In that instant I realized that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point. It wasn’t enough to know the who, what, when, and where; you had to understand what it meant. And why it mattered.’

There are so many stories out there competing for attention. The only way to rise above them is to connect your information with the real concerns and fascinations of your target audience. For a little inspiration, try Made to Stick.