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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.