great science presentations
Robert Matthews

Great science presentations: TED Talk case study

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Great science presentations are something of a rarity. As an academic scientist and a media and presentation trainer I am caught between two worlds. I know science has to be credible and sourced and that detail can be necessary but I have also sat through way too many fascinating subjects made dull by a bad presentation. So here are some tips for science presentations to non-specialist audiences.

Great science presentations: a great source of best practice

To help illustrate what works, we’ve found a recent TED Talk that is based on real science but has been ‘moulded’ to fit the TED Talk formula. If you don’t know TED Talks then you are in for a treat. It is an impressive library of 13-15 minute presentations with the tag line ‘Ideas worth spreading’.  For those of us who often have to present to audiences of varying levels of scientific knowledge TED Talks provide a huge resource that illustrates best practice.

Great science presentations: case study

great science presentations

Can you really tell if children are lying?

The talk I have picked to illustrate my tips for science presentations is this one by researcher Kang Lee. It’s called ‘Can you really tell if a kid is lying?’ – which is always going to pull in a bigger audience than a title like “Novel applications of transdermal optical imaging” – which is what many academics would have been tempted to title this talk. Watch it here and then see if you agree with me about what works.

 

  • Lee starts with a personal story. Professional communicators are often reluctant to talk too much about themselves, but a short personal anecdote will engage your audience from the outset.
  • He speaks at a good pace. Many people rush their presentations. This may be to do with nerves but it may also be a fear of being boring. Lee has a strong accent which can be an obstacle to comprehension, but his careful pacing ensures the audience has time to process what he is saying.
  • The slides are very simple – little data and picture led. This is not always possible in scientific talks and you will likely need to share some detailed data but if you mix this with some pictures and anecdotes it makes your talk more engaging. When Lee does use data it is very simply presented with minimum information on the slide. Again most scientific presentations need more, and in particular need ‘sourcing’ but it is good to keep it as simple as possible.
  • Lee has kept his own appearance simple so there is nothing to distract from his presentation.
  • Another professional presenters’ trick is to ensure the data is revealed to follow the narrative, rather than all arriving at once and then being dissected by the speaker.
  • Lee asks his audience questions but not ones that expose or challenge. Asking a question that you know the answer to and the audience has little chance of getting correct is not a good way to build empathy. But asking for a ‘show of hands’ to gauge life experience is a good way to keep the audience interested.
  • A bit of humour helps keep people engaged. Humour is difficult especially when addressing multicultural audiences. Lee uses the well known fairy tale (or Disney Film) Pinocchio and his humour is gentle and unchallenging.

Great science presentations: make it relevant

  • Lee also works hard to make ‘transdermal optical imaging’ relevant to the audience. He says, for example, they might in the future use it when they Skype their parents to check if they are being truthful about their health, or when they want to reveal that a politician is lying. Making science relevant is good but I personally found some of Lee’s examples a bit ‘Big Brother’ and unsettling and would have chosen different ones myself.
  • A trick he didn’t use but could have done, was to tap into a more sci-fi reference. Transdermal optical imaging is very much like the Voight-Kampff Test used in the movie “Bladerunner”. This would have been another way to make the subject accessible to a general audience.

  • Lee in several places makes use of the ‘power of three’. This is a technique whose effectiveness was noted by Aristotle in his work Rhetoric written in the fourth century BC.

Great science presentations: keep it short

  • Finally, Lee doesn’t go on too long. At 13 minutes 30 seconds, his presentation is actually considerably shorter than allowed by the TED talk format, which demands that presentations be no longer than 18 minutes – “long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention”.  While you may well be allotted a longer time-slot, remember that people rarely complain that a presentation was too short – especially if previous speakers have over-run.

At the Media Coach we help people make their presentations and interviews more entertaining and interesting by using these ‘tips’ and many others. But the key take-away is:  just because a subject is technical doesn’t mean it has to be dull.

communication style leadership
Lindsay Williams

Communication style: Tory leadership race

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Communication style will be a crucial factor in the Tory leadership race. The five candidates all threw their hats in the ring this week as the political meltdown following the Brexit vote continued to dominate UK headlines.

MPs will be voting today (5th July) with the results announced at 7 pm.  The next round of voting will take place on Thursday 7th.  In this post, I am going to give a quick analysis of the communication style of each of the candidates.

 

tory leadership 2016

There are five contenders in the Tory leadership race

 Communication style: Theresa May

Theresa May, as I write the front runner, launched her bid with an excellent speech. Why do I think it was good:

  • It was statesman-like and extremely reassuring.
  • It went to extraordinary lengths to be inclusive.
  • It gave clear answers to the hot topic question. No invoking of Article 50 until the negotiating position is clear. No general election until 2020, and no change in the status of EU nationals in the UK.
  • The best line for me ‘I am the daughter of a local vicar and the granddaughter of a regimental sergeant major, public service is what we do’.
  • The speech was clear, structured and well-paced.

What I would change:

  • After the hyperbole of the referendum campaigns, Theresa May’s lack of ‘showiness’ may be seen as a real virtue but if she wins it will not be long before people claim she is ‘boring’. She will not go down as one of the world’s great orators because she chooses not to let her passion show.
  • One of the perception-dangers of being a very senior woman is that you can come across as being schoolmarmish. The launch speech mostly avoided this but in general, May is a bit austere and preachy.
  • May doesn’t tell stories. Inserting anecdotes about ‘Joe who I met last week in Sunderland’ has become a standard part of political speeches but is often done really badly. May chooses to avoid this.

Theresa May’s leadership launch transcript

Communication style: Andrea Leadsom

Andrea Leadsom gave a detailed interview to Andrew Marr before launching her campaign on Monday. She is a confident and authoritative speaker although with less gravitas than Theresa May.

Why her communication style is good:

  • She comes across as honest and straight forward.
  • She has a more positive vision and seems less tired than Theresa May.
  • She has warmth as well as some authority.
  • She is likeable and mostly in control.

What I would change:

  • In the Andrew Marr interview, her naiveté showed. In particular, she was bounced into promising to publish her tax returns even though she had clearly never considered this before the interview. (She later said she would only do this if she gets into the last two in the race.) This may seem like a small thing but you can’t have a Prime Minister that makes up policy in response to a tough question.
  • Although compared to the general population she has authority, she has less than Theresa May and Liam Fox.
  • She is, as a communicator, ‘lighter-weight’ than Theresa May and other female leaders such as Angela Merkel. Her voice is higher and more feminine. This shouldn’t matter but it might.

Andrea Leadsom’s leadership launch transcript

Communication style: Michael Gove

Michael Gove as a former journalist is a good communicator and he does, as do the others, articulate an argument well, particularly when on prepared ground. He also knows that he lacks some of the standard oratory skills. He said himself  ‘whatever charisma is, I don’t have it.”

  • Gove does show passion although his oration skills don’t make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
  • His launch speech was full of vision for a strong and proud Britain.
  • There is a strong sense of ‘grit’, a feeling that he is prepared to fight for what he believes is right.

What I would change:

  • Gove to me has an irritating voice and is also unfortunate looking. Both could be improved with a bit of effort.
  • When reading from his script in the launch speech, the sentences are too long, making it harder for him to make sense of it as he reads it.
  • He comes across as someone who has absolute conviction in his own view rather than someone who will lead a team of people with different views.

Communication style: Stephen Crabb

Stephen Crabb is an outsider in this contest and many think he is mostly marking his card for the future.

What I like:

  • His communication style is less formal than the other candidates, he has a sense of Blair about him although this is somewhat reduced when giving a formal speech.
  • He has a natural warmth and a slight regional (Welsh) accent, always a plus if you want to come across as a man of the people.
  • He uses lots of personal anecdotes.

What I would change:

  • He needs to let his natural warmth show when making or reading a speech. Not so easily done but just takes practice.

Communication style: Liam Fox

Liam Fox is an experienced senior politician. He has gravitas. Like Stephen Crabbe, he is much better (more appealing to normal people) in an interview than in his formal launch speech.

What I like:

  • Fox is blessed with a deep and statesman-like voice, more obvious in conversation or interview than in his launch speech.
  • He has gravitas.
  • His launch speech demonstrated his grasp of the international picture in a way the others did not.

What I would change:

  • I would want to see him inject his natural warmth into his formal speeches.
  • He would find it easier to read his speeches if he made his sentences shorter.
  • Sadly he comes across as another ‘grey man’ of politics. He is neither young, a woman or nerdy and this may count against him.

Liam Fox’s leadership launch transcript

 

EU Referendum; Reflections on the campaign
Lindsay Williams

Brexit referendum: reflections on the campaign

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The Brexit referendum campaign will be studied for decades to come for what it tells us about political campaigning in the social media age. There are so many themes and lessons worth exploring from the Brexit referendum that it is a bit overwhelming. The establishment versus the radicals, the young versus the old, the use of language, the missuses of facts and numbers, the lack of positive vision from either side… I could go on. The one that rises to the top today for me is a phenomenon that has been dubbed the ‘post-truth era’.

Brexit referendum: post-truth era

In many ways I am a spin-doctor. I help people make clear, understandable, convincing arguments. And I believe in a complicated world, when often the experts in corporations and organisations have lost the ability to speak in plain English, mine is a useful role. But one of the absolute tenets is ‘don’t lie’. (Another is, by the way, don’t personally attack your opponents, stick to the argument.)

What I saw in the referendum was one side putting time and money and thought into clear reasoned honest arguments and the other dismissing every reasoned argument with a flourish. Nick Cohen in the Guardian wrote this weekend a scathing piece about the attitude to truth of the two ex-journalists who led the Brexit campaign, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. I have in the past been impressed with Boris Johnson as a communicator but my admiration waned after he was called before the Treasury select committee in March this year and so much of what he had said during the Brexit campaign was revealed as half-truths by the ‘dry as dust’ chairman Andrew Tyrie.

Brexit referendum: the lies

One lie that stands at the centre of the Brexit campaign was that £350m a week was being sent to the EU. It was disproved repeatedly but it was still being used right up to the end.

The bigger lie, the one that will define the next few years in British politics, is the one about immigration. The Brexit campaign has been fuelled by the public’s desire to ‘take back control of our borders’ and this Newsnight interview with MEP Daniel Hannan shows just how unlikely the ‘leave’ voting public are to get what they think they voted for.

 

The Remain side have been accused of lying too, particularly about their warnings of the economic consequences of ‘what could happen’. I did not agree with everything they said but I can’t find one outright lie that I can point to.

However, perhaps the most sinister exchange of the whole campaign came in a Michael Gove interview with Faisal Islam on Sky News. It was put to Gove that “the leaders of the US, India, China, Australia, every single one of our allies, the Bank of England, the IFS, IMF, the CBI, five former NATO secretary generals and the chief executive of the NHS” were all against Britain’s exit. The response was: “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts”.

Encouraged by such talk, we now have a large proportion of the population who feel they are lied to all the time and are therefore disinclined to believe anything the establishment or mainstream politicians tell them.

Add to this the power of social media where any piece of information that strikes a chord will be repeated and recycled. To quote Jim Murphy in the New Statesman last year ‘in these emotion-fuelled insurgencies, peer-to-peer social media is increasingly the broadcaster of choice’.

And this is the nightmare vision of the post-truth era – outlined in a 2004 book by Ralph Keyes: The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life. The summary states: ‘post truthfulness builds a fragile social edifice based on wariness, it erodes the foundation of trust that underlies any healthy civilization.’ Keyes wrote in 2004 ‘We are perilously close to the point’. I think we can safely say in the UK, in 2016, that point arrived.

 

 

humour in pr quidditch goal posts
Lindsay Williams

Humour in PR: hats off to hospital PR team

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Humour in PR is rare and for good reason. It is difficult to get right. But this week, amidst all the EU In or Out campaign headlines in the UK, was a story that brought a smile to all Harry Potter fans. And a very well-judged response from the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children’s PR team.

Pictures of giant hoops, reminiscent of Quidditch goal posts, were all over the news because it came to light that an official-looking plaque set up alongside the art installation was anything but official.

humour in pr quidditch goal posts

The art installation outside Bristol Royal Hospital for Children

Humour in PR: the Quidditch goal posts

Two years ago the plaque was conceived, funded and installed by a former Bristol University student Cormac Seachoy. He found the art installation outside the hospital constantly reminded him of the goal posts in a fictional sport that forms a central theme in the Harry Potter books. He raised the money from crowd funding and with a mate, stuck the plaque up in the middle of the night in November 2014, then posted it on Facebook and tweeted it.

It reads: Dedicated to the children of Bristol, the 1998 Quidditch world cup posts enchanted by Adou Sosseh. Have a magical day.

humour in pr quidditch goal posts

The plaque looks official but was added without any authority or approval

If you are not a Harry Potter fan you might not know that Quidditch is played by wizards and witches on broom sticks. You would have to be a real Potter aficionado to know that Malawi won this fictional sport’s world cup in 1998 beating Senegal. Or that Adou Sosseh was the captain of the losing team.

humour in pr quidditch goal posts

Cormac Seachoy wanted children to believe a wizard had magically installed the ‘goal posts’

The prankster, Cormac Seachoy, was subsequently diagnosed with terminal cancer and died almost exactly a year later. The story of the plaque was out there on twitter and Facebook but went largely unreported. The hospital administration had either not noticed the plaque or assumed it was part of the art. They only realised the whole story when asked about it by the Bristol Post last week.

Humour in PR: Bristol Children’s Hospital response

This is their response: “The appearance of this plaque was a magical and mysterious event that we did not know anything about – but we are sure that our patients and their families will appreciate it. We do plan to keep this but ask that any other magical beings that wish to erect plaques on our site do speak to us first so that the muggles amongst us can say thank you and look after and maintain these gifts”.

(Muggles are non-magical beings in the Harry Potter books).

Of course, had the hospital administration said or done anything else they could have landed themselves in very hot water. Taking the plaque down could have made them very unpopular. Being anything other than appreciative of the prank would have seen them branded spoilsports, dishonouring a good man who died too young. But whoever came up with this response got it just right.

Humour in PR: some pointers

If you are inspired to use humour in your own PR here are some pointers:

  • Be careful, something that is funny to one person can easily offend another.
  • Self-deprecating humour is probably safest.
  • Paying homage to someone or something else often works well. In our example, the use of ‘magical’ and ‘muggles’ in the response does, in its way, pay homage to JK Rowling the author of the Harry Potter books.
  • Referencing something that is well known and understood by your target audience helps to create the idea that you and your business are all part of the same community.
  • Almost too obvious to state, but use colloquial not formal language.

Humour in PR: other examples

Picture credits: Art installation, Bristol Hospital Education services. The Plaque, Cormac Seachoy Facebook page. Cormac Seachoy Facebook.

 

How to survive a TV debate, David Cameron
Lindsay Williams

How to survive a TV debate 1: Cameron the smooth

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Those wanting to study how to survive a TV debate could do a lot worse than dissect the performance of UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, in a high-profile, live-grilling on Sky News. However, the headlines Cameron got after his one-hour marathon by both a political correspondent out to make his name and a live audience, was universally negative. The Week ran ‘Cameron mauled by TV audience’ and most of the coverage focused on a rather rude student who accused the PM of ‘waffling’.

You can watch the whole hour here.

How to survive a TV debate: Cameron did an excellent job

All of which seems unjust if not plain misleading. Not normally a fan of Cameron I have to say I think he did an excellent job. He was superbly well briefed, he did not get caught out by any question, from either the correspondent Faisal Islam or the audience. I am pleased to see that I am not completely alone in my assessment. Rather begrudgingly, the Chief Political Commentator for the Independent newspaper at least, agreed with me as you can read here.

How to survive a TV debate: anticipate the tough questions

For students of the PR lesson, it is important to understand that one of the tricks of the journalist is to find a damning nugget of information and then go on and on about it. If the question hasn’t been anticipated the interviewee is left struggling to confidently and credibly answer. The problem is, of course, that there are a huge number of possible ‘damning nuggets’. Faisal Islam started with the manifesto promise from 6 years ago that net migration would be reduced to tens rather than hundreds of thousands, something that the government has failed to deliver on. He moved on to the recent promise that VAT would not rise and noted that the European Court of Justice had overruled a UK law that made solar panels VAT-free, suggesting that UK government did not have sovereign control over its VAT rules. He also tried to challenge the Prime Minister with the number of times that the EU Council of Ministers had over-ruled the British government. None of these were questions the Prime Minister looked surprised by or did not have a clear response to. He dismissed the last as a ‘totally spurious figure’ before Islam could actually say it.

Once the set-piece political interview was over the PM faced a studio audience. The problem with responding to a public audience is they are, by definition, very diverse and you have even less idea what is coming up. Cameron faced questions about issues as unrelated to the debate as to the funding of mental health and his previous pronouncements on the new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Again he had clear credible arguments to all of these questions.

How to survive a TV debate: use examples

The Prime Minister not only answered questions credibly but repeatedly landed his main message, that leaving the EU would be ‘an act of economic self-harm’; he used lots of examples to back up his points. He talked about why Britain sells no beef or lamb to the US (no trade deal), how the UK’s car industry currently sells all over Europe but outside the EU it would be likely to face a 10% tariff. He also explained that it is easy now for someone from Bolton making fan belts to sell them to all 28 countries, rather than outside the EU trying to meet 27 different sets of rules.

How to survive a TV debate: stay polite

When dealing with the audience he was endlessly polite. The question from the student who accused him of waffling was incoherent and much more waffly than the answer. And despite her rudeness, the Prime Minister did his best to answer her.

I saw no evidence of mauling.

I do happen to agree that the missing bit from the whole Remain campaign has been an articulation of the positive vision for a better functioning EU. But this cannot be a mistake. The campaign must be polling, researching which arguments play well, and must be concluding that the positive vision piece just doesn’t work. Perhaps the EU fails in so many ways it is better to not draw attention to what it could do and could achieve.

The question remains if the Prime Minister did such a good job why did he get negative coverage for the debate and why did it not get ‘cut through’.

The answer, I suggest, is that no one believes anything he says. This is not just Cameron’s problem. It is a problem throughout the world. Since the financial crisis of 2008 cynicism about politicians in power and anything that can be called the establishment has never been higher, at least in the countries commonly called ‘the west’. In the wider Brexit debate there is an endless call for real facts and yet every attempt to deliver serious analysis, projected numbers or explanations are dismissed as unreliable or untrue. It is difficult to see how democracy is going to adapt to this new reality.

How to survive a TV debate, Michael Gove
Lindsay Williams

How to survive a TV debate 2: Gove the fearless

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Students of how to survive a TV debate would learn rather different lessons from watching Michael Gove, a leading spokesperson for the UK’s EU Leave campaign, compared to the first debate in the series with Prime Minister David Cameron.

You can watch the full one hour debate here.

How to survive a TV debate: good humour and grace under fire

This was another polished performance, full of good humour and an ability to handle aggressive questioning with toughness, but also good grace and prepared lines. But where the Prime Minister apparently answered questions, Michael Gove sought to move the debate onto different grounds. This is what you do when you have less facts and less third-party endorsements than the opposition. Gove rarely responded directly to questions whilst waiting for the opportunity to land his message: he went from question to message in a heartbeat.

Here is an example.
How many independent economic authorities share your dream of Britain outside the EU? Can you name a single one?
If you are talking about the economic authorities that have already weighed into the debate, they are people who have been wrong in the past and who didn’t predict the global crash in 2008…I prefer to take the views of business people …

Michael Gove repeatedly landed his messages. Here are the ones I spotted with links to other commentators who saw what I did.

How to survive a TV debate: deploy metaphors

One of the best lines of the debate came from a member of the audience. He argued ‘You are asking us to vote for a divorce and sort out the financial settlement afterwards. That makes no sense to me, you negotiate before (you leave). And with respect Mr Gove, you are like a First World War general, waiving the flag, saying ‘over the top men’. But you have no idea what is going on, on the front line or what the casualty rate will be’. Gove listened to this patiently and then answered respectfully and skillfully moving the conversation on to his message about putting faith in the British people.

Gove had good metaphors of his own. He suggested that the UK, ‘rather than being a difficult lodger in a house we didn’t design could be a friendly neighbour in a home we could call our own’.

As we have noted many times before in our blogs, metaphors are mighty powerful weapons of war.

What was missing from a spin doctors point of view were the numbers and the everyday examples. Where was the fan-belt maker from Bolton and the car exporters from Sunderland?

How to survive a TV debate: rhetorical flourish

There were however, some clever rhetorical flourishes. Gove challenged us all to name the five presidents of Europe. He asserted that none of us could. ‘The European Union’, he said, ‘is not a democracy, no one is elected, no one can name the presidents and none of us can sack them’. He went on: ‘The most powerful symbol of our democracy is the removal van that arrives outside 10 Downing Street every five or ten years’. Examples of prepared, powerful, clever, rhetoric.

Interestingly, while the questions from the audience were just as tough as in the previous programme, overall the audience were much more supportive of Michael Gove than they were of the Prime Minister. While the set piece interview for Gove was more manic, with more interruptions and more heated, the discussion with the audience was much friendlier and more respectful.

professional blog guidelines
Liz Barclay

Professional blog guidelines from a grumpy journalist

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These professional blog guidelines are provoked by a sense of annoyance and frustration.

Blogs have become a major channel of communication for outward facing organisations of all sorts but too many ignore the basic rules of good writing. So I have put together professional blog guidelines for the sort of blogs I read for work: blogs about pension rule changes, customer service, consumer rights and employee engagement.

professional blog guidelines

Here are my professional blogging tips.

Professional blog guidelines: focus is everything

  • As a journalist my colleagues and I were taught to identify the top-line or the angle of a story. In most news-writing this appears clearly as the first paragraph and the headline. That may not be necessary in a blog but the writer must know what the key point of the article is. And they should know this before they start typing!
  • Stick to one message per blog. A professional blog should not try to deal with more than one key point. Don’t shoehorn in six loosely related thoughts.  Make one point clearly and with supporting arguments. Save the other five thoughts for another day.
  • Read it aloud to yourself. This is the professional way to check the punctuation is correct and everything makes sense.

Professional blog guidelines: short sentences, short paragraphs, just short!

  • Keep it short. The guidance on this is a bit mixed as there is some evidence that high quality long blogs are read and shared more than short ones However, I would rarely read a 2,000 word blog and I am much more inclined to read shorter ones. 500 words seems to me a good length unless you have a lot of important data to share.
  • Short sentences are preferable to long ones. Limit the number of sub clauses.
  • Short paragraphs are favoured by readers, particularly those reading on their phones.

Professional blog guidelines: blogs versus documents

Here we start to depart from the basic rules of good writing into some blog specifics.

  • Identify your key words and put them in bold. This is not so much for the reader as for the search engine robots. There is a whole science of how to appeal to the ‘bots’ and it is not the subject of this article. My concern is that once I have found a blog I want to read, I can get through it with out grinding my teeth and wanting to start editing it.
  • Include links. Links to other web resources are the great advantage of blogs over documents. One click reveals supplementary material for the reader who cares but keeps the main body uncluttered for those just scanning.
  • Consider whether you should use the first person – by which I mean should you use the ‘I’ word. g. ‘I was thinking yesterday…’ or ‘I wondered…’  This is certainly more acceptable in a blog than in other types of professional document but I observe that it’s falling by the wayside somewhat, as professional blogging becomes part of the mainstream.

Professional blog guidelines: check, check and check again

  • Remember blogs live forever! Well, maybe not strictly true but they may well still appear in online searches in 10 years time. So check, check and check again before you publish. Of course, unlike 20th century publishing you can go back and correct a mistake after you have published.

Professional blog guidelines: other resources

Here are some good professional blogs:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/academy

huffingtonpost.com

drudgereport.com

Here are some more good sites about blogging

http://allindiewriters.com/about/

copyblogger.com

speech delivery tips mike butcher feature
Oliver Wates

Good speech delivery: get the tone right

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Good speech delivery is not so much about the content of what you say. How often have you watched a televised debate between two people – one offering solid facts and figures but no empathy, the other oozing bonhomie backed up by nothing more than some vague platitudes ­– and found yourself involuntarily favouring the latter? One of the key speech delivery tips has to be to practise getting the right tone.

good speech delivery

Tone can matter as much if not more than the facts, numbers and logic of the argument

Good speech delivery: logic and reason are not enough

Facts are the first building-block of a good Key Message. We train clients to choose them carefully, and edit them down to punchy, easily-understood figures which provide a logical, rational basis for the argument you wish to make.  Sadly, logic and reason are sometimes simply not enough.

As every advertiser will tell you, you have to strike the right note.

Good speech delivery: Donald Trump confounds critics, Boris Johnson charms

How else to explain the success of Donald Trump in the Republican primaries! His cavalier approach to the facts has by turns outraged and irritated the political class across the United States. But his tone has resonated with a sizeable chunk of the American public.

Or take London Mayor Boris Johnson, a far more grounded politician than Donald Trump, but one who uses his personality as much as any logical argument to make his case. In their different ways, Johnson and Trump are both using the image of rebel, rather than any reasoned argument, to win over a public fed up with the political “Establishment”.

In both these cases, the facts matter little. It is the impression the speakers create that makes them effective communicators.  They are in effect selling themselves, rather than a message.  It works because people like them, or at least like the idea that they represent.

Personal charm is not something that can be completely manufactured; some people possess it naturally, others do not. But there are some things you can do to make yourself more engaging on screen or loudspeaker; they will not turn a frog into a prince, but they will help you create a bond with your audience, make them feel that they can relate to you.

Good speech delivery: tips to turn on the charm

Whatever the subject, making yourself likable is a key part of a good interview technique. And that usually means accentuating your human side.

  • Sympathy
    Express condolences and/or sympathy, however little the matter has to do with you. This has the effect of “humanising” you and is usually best done at the beginning. For example: “Let me start by acknowledging how hard it must be for people caught up in this dreadful situation…”
  • The Half-Smile
    This usually works better than a frown or artificial expression of sadness, even with the most serious of topics. It is not about making light of the subject, especially where suffering or loss are concerned; it is about making yourself convincing and accessible. Don’t overdo it, especially if public anger is involved.
  • Agree
    This is a bit of a trick: find common ground.  “Ms. Smith is absolutely right to say that this situation cannot go on and I agree that the government needs to move quickly. But…” and then disagree as much as you like. It has the effect of making you sound reasonable and almost coopts the other speaker onto your side.
  • Polite
    If you are being interviewed don’t argue with the journalist. Remember, he or she is not the audience, but a means to reach the general public. However rude or annoying the interviewers may be, however much they interrupt or distort, stay calm and excruciatingly polite.  Losing your temper makes you sound weak and petulant and damages your credibility.
  • Thanks
    Always finish a speech with a smile and a “Thank You”. The last impression the viewer or listener will take away is of someone who is happy with the way it went and succeeded in making his or her case.
  • Story
    The human example, the anecdote, can be the most effective part of your argument; the facts and soundbites will be forgotten, but the story you told about John and Mary will be remembered. It makes you sound understanding and caring, relating to real people, not just balance sheets and policies. We always stress the importance of this in our training and it does a lot to “humanise” you.
  • Voice
    Some of us are blessed with naturally appealing and friendly voices; others sound like an automated message at a call center. With a bit of effort you can “warm” up your voice, perhaps by making it a bit deeper, or more resonant, soften the tone. Margaret Thatcher is a famous case of a successful politician who did this.
  • Pause
    All great speech makers learn to pause for dramatic effect. We have a whole article on this coming next week but it is an important element in winning with your audience as the example videos below will demonstrate.

Don’t abandon facts, they are a vital part of your armory as there will be plenty of your audience who need them to be convinced. But always remember that in public speaking of any sort you are selling yourself and the audience has to be made to feel, consciously or subconsciously that this is a person they want to listen to.

Good speech delivery: tw0 videos worth studying

Here is an interesting dissection of one of Obama’s most famous speeches.

A man who coaches politicians

Picture credit: CC by Heisenbergmedia

social media risks nah shah
Michelle Brown

Social Media risks exposed again

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We were reminded again last week of Social Media risks of old posts coming back to wreck the present.  This time, a post from two years back has cost Labour MP Naz Shah a prominent role as aid to the Shadow Chancellor and has led to her having the Labour whip withdrawn. It is a story that will make many of us sit up and reassess our exposure to Social Media risks and a reminder to business that all employees that tweet or post in a professional capacity need to be given clear social media guidelines.

social media risks naz shah

Naz Shah has been suspended from the Labour Party because of Facebook posts from two years back

Social Media risks from Facebook sharing

Naz Shah’s crime was that in a Facebook post in 2014 before she became MP for Bradford West, she ‘shared’ a graphic. It showed an image of Israel’s outline superimposed onto a map of the US, under the headline “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict – Relocate Israel into United States”.  Shah added the comment “problem solved”. For the un-initiated sharing is not the same as originating the material yourself, you are just passing on something someone else has posted, in this case with a two-word comment. There was another post that likened the Israeli policies to those of Hitler.

It is for others to comment on the offence itself but the dangers for all or any of us are clear. A moment of misjudgement or high spirits or indiscretion can come back to haunt you months or years later and turn your life upside down. Naz Shah is not alone.

In 2013 at age 17, The Kent youth PCC Paris Brown, lost her £15,000 a year job just a few days after being appointed because of tweets she had posted some time earlier. These were things she had said between the age of 14 and 16 which, it was judged, were considered racist and anti-gay. For the record, Paris Brown denied being racist or homophobic but said she had ‘fallen into the trap of behaving with bravado on social networking sites’.

To be clear we, of course, do not approve of social media being used for racist, anti-Semitic or anti-gay trolling. But we do see that this is an area of risk that is not yet fully understood and a whole minefield for businesses that are increasingly embracing social media for PR.

So what are the learning points:

Social Media risks: management for individuals

  • Personal and business social media accounts need to be separated but they are still linked unless an individual clearly states that the opinions given are their own and not the views of the company.
  • Before applying for a job, particularly one in the public domain, do an audit of your social media. Go back over years worth of posts and delete any that are ill-advised. Be aware that they can still exist if they have been shared or made into an untraceable image.
  • If you have been an early adopter and it would be an impossible process to go back and clean up your social media trail make a note of any you regret and be prepared to answer any questions that are raised.
  • Think twice before posting anything. Ask the question if my bosses read this will I still have a job or even a basic principle “will my mum be proud”?

Social Media risks: management for business

  • Provide clear guidelines to anyone who uses social media about what is personal and what is business and how they are only separate if an individual clearly states that they are not representing the company.
  • Provide clear guidelines about what is acceptable and what is not.
  • Have in place a recovery plan and system that can swing into action if an ill-advised post or tweet is out there. Usually, this involves withdrawing the offensive post and posting an appropriate apology.

People in public life have always been held to account for earlier misjudgements. The difference today is that everyone online is in the spotlight and it’s so much easier to check a social media profile.

Social Media risks

Other examples of people caught out:

  • Justine Sacco the PR officer who lost her job after tweeting an insensitive message about AIDS in Africa.
  • Connor Riley inadvisedly tweeted “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”
  • Scott Bartosiewicz was a social media strategist working with Chrysler. Thinking he was signed into his own account, he accidentally tweeted a negative comment from Chrysler’s account about Detroit drivers.

Picture credit: CC by SA, Alchetron 2016

Message building brexit shows how quotes are crafted image
Lindsay Williams

Message building and the art of the quote

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Message building is an art not a science but one of the key elements is being able to find quotable language. For students of message building and the crafted quote (or ‘sizzle’ as we call it), the Brexit referendum in the UK is proving a wonderful real-time case study.

Message building brexit shows how quotes are crafted

The UK is in the middle of a campaign about whether to stay or leave the EU

Message building is art not science

Coming up with great quotes day after day must be keeping the spin-doctors and speech writers very busy but here are a few of our favourites.

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer
Brexit would cause ‘profound economic shock’.

Chris Grayling, Cabinet Minister
‘The Commission’s locker is full of new ideas and new plans. If we vote to remain, the door of that locker will be opened wide the day after.’

David Cameron, UK Prime Minister
Brexit would be the ‘gamble of the century’.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
‘Let us say knickers to the pessimists and the merchants of gloom’.

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party
Corbyn warned that a Conservative government would take the opportunity of Brexit to slash protection for workers, in a ‘bonfire of rights’.

William Keegan, Guardian writer
Brexit would be ‘a messy divorce and very hard on the children’.

Stephan Crabb, Cabinet Minister
Brexit would amount to an ‘act of self-harm’

Message building with numbers

Gisela Stuart, Co-Chair of Vote Leave
‘Every week we send £350m to Brussels. I’d rather that we control how to spend that money, and if I had that control I would spend it on the NHS.’ Note that here Stuart goes for the numbers rather than the quotable language. The Leave campaign has had a lot of success with the £350m a week figure; even though it has been debunked several times (as here), it continues to be used repeatedly.

Message building: use judgement and caution in crafting the quote

Boris Johnson
Earlier he used the quote that leaving the EU would be ‘like a prisoner escaping jail’. Boris also often uses expletives that others in public life avoid as here in the Express. He is one of the most quotable politicians but it has got him into deep trouble in the past. He once had to apologise to the whole of Liverpool after accusing them of ‘wallowing in grief’ over the death of a local man beheaded by militants in Iraq. Nowadays, he is more disciplined and uses his flowery language to more strategic political effect.

George Osborne
The Chancellor has also dubbed Pro-Brexit advocates as ‘economically illiterate’. Earlier he said leaving the EU would be ‘political arson’. We are watching Osborne closely. He used to be an unimpressive media performer but, presumably as part of his preparation to be a contender for Prime Minister, he has put a lot of effort into improving his communication skills. He is much better at the crafted quote than his boss and ex PR man David Cameron.

IMF
This august body claimed the UK’s exit from EU could cause ‘severe regional and global damage’. Here we see a ‘serious’ international organisation being cautious with its language but as a result most people will have missed their important intervention.

Aaron Banks, Leave campaigner
‘Freedom has never been so cheap’. He was commentating on the Stay campaigns figure that the cost of leaving the EU would amount to 21p per household per day.

Metaphors widely used in message building

Put them all together like this and firstly you can see how spin doctors love metaphor and simile. Second, it looks idiotic and superficial but remember these phrases were just one element in a wider interview or speech. It is the element designed to be quoted by the journalists. These phrases are the sign-posts in the argument. There is plenty of detail out there to substantiate the headlines. While the quotes may annoy the academically minded purists we should not kid ourselves that people would choose, without them, to wade through the IMF or Treasury reports on impact of staying or going.

Learn to craft a good quote and as a PR or speech writer you will go far.

Message building and The Media Coach

We run message building workshops to help organisations plan external communications. We also have a twitter account @mediasizzle that just picks up examples of quotable language.

Image used under Creative Comms Licence credit “Descrier” descrier.co.uk