speechwriter’s notes II—maximising impact

March 11, 2022 by

Maximising the impact of a leader’s speech

A speech is far more than its words and where it’s delivered.

If the aim of a speech is to spread a message, the speech itself is just one component of the messaging.*

To maximise the impact of a leader’s speech, it needs to be embedded into the broader messaging strategy and will require:

– Strong strategic focus

– Objective-led content

– Clear narrative structure

– Natural flow and build-up of points

– Key phrases and soundbites

– Authentic voice

The speech itself is a central event, and communications will work across three phases and in the relevant channels (all of them, usually) to maximise and leverage its impact:

– Pre (buildup)—: announcement/“teasers” on social media, external media, website, newsletters, mails, connecting with potential audiences and partners

– During—: live commenting/coverage during the event, esp on social.

– Post—: interviews, high-level summary and reporting, more detailed follow-up to specific targets, external media

*Yes, there are exceptions. ? When the speech, speaker and topic are already at the centre of attention, then anything will be news. – But that’s usually only at moments of global crisis, high-profile scandal or disaster—or, more positively: when the message is world-changing good news.)

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global branding in education

February 15, 2019 by

Interesting piece, Global Branding and the Celebrity University, by Sheldon Rothblatt.

He focuses on universities, but some of the themes apply to schools and the broader educational context:

For universities to thrive in the global economy, they must be world class university brands.

A strong brand is required, not just for basic recognition and awareness, but to inform people’s perceptions of the university and its standing  in terms of teaching and research.

Some of these perceptions are created by global rankings (eg Times Higher Education, Shanghai, Quacquarelli Symonds).

In the ranking stakes, European universities lag behind US universities – only one (Oxford) is in Shanghai’s top ten, for example.

While ranking offers a necessarily limited perspective, it is highly influential.

But, because ranking methodologies tend to focus mainly on research outcomes and awards, they have an inbuilt weakness: they sideline some of the classic aims of university education – to develop intelligence, open-minded discussion, citizenship and cultural values in students.

As such, rankings give little insight – or, if so, a distorted view – into the learning experience that students will have at a given university, which is the most important aspect driving their choice of which university to attend.

In building world-class educational brands, therefore, it is important to take the wider view and to achieve a balance between teaching and research. One challenge is how to communicate the quality of the learning experience, given that it is largely qualitative.

It’s a good example of the limits of measurability and data-driven decision-making — or, in this case, brand building – also relevant beyond education, because data (for all its importance) is often fetishised, and given disproportionate importance across many areas of business, government and policy-making.

 

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speechwriter’s notes I: on voice and vision

December 29, 2016 by

A while back, I was writing a speech for a visionary leader.

(To be clear, it wasn’t Martin Luther King… this was 2012!)

It was the first time we’d worked together.

I was having a hard time finding the right “voice” for the leader, one to suit both the topic and the leader’s character — one of those blunt, plain-speaking types.

The leader was truly charismatic. But that came out in the ideas and the values they stood for, not in their vocabulary or the way they spoke.

I was halfway through when they asked me to share the speech, so I shared my draft.

“This language… is too simple,” they said. “Can’t you make it more inspirational?”

“I can make it whatever you want,” I said. “But what does inspirational mean to you?”

They mentioned Martin Luther King – the March on Washington.. John F. Kennedy – the Inauguration… Ronald Reagan – the Berlin Wall…

Three of the most famous and influential speeches of the past century–no false modesty, no undue pressure there. Three speeches, delivered by masters of delivery, blessed with a faultless sense of drama and timing — true performers, who relished their performances, who believed, and lived their message.

But then, thinking about those speeches, something struck me:

I have a dream… Ask not what your country… Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

They were all written in very simple words, talking about very simple (but very high) ideals–making appeals which remain inspirational today. They didn’t just believe in their ideals, they lived their ideals and they embodied them…

My client’s thoughts on the circular economy, for all their topical edginess, weren’t really in the same league.

More to the point, now, my client was misremembering the speeches. In memory, the speeches had become something they weren’t. This often happens with speech more generally – people remember the effect the words have on them, far more than the actual words. And with speeches, especially such iconic speeches, some people think they are full of cute rhetorical tricks, flowery poetic language. Some people think their power comes from some occult power of words — and my client wanted some of that.

But the power of those speeches is in the vision they hold out, in the beliefs and conviction they convey, not in the words used to convey them.

In a speech, words are vehicles for vision, and it’s not what you say that shapes a vision, it’s what you make people see — that’s why getting the voice right is so crucial.

Sometimes, a speechwriter has to prune the words, strip them down to let the vision shine through.

I tried to explain this to my visionary leader–but they stuck to their guns, insisted they wanted a fancier speech. So, to cut a long story short, I gave them what they wanted. I composed a speech full of high-falutin’, flowery, Latinate language, climactic rhythms, telling poetic images. Beautiful in its way, but more of a tired Hollywood scriptwriter’s idea of speechwriting skill.

My visionary leader practised delivering the speech to a couple of colleagues. It fell pretty flat. People were too polite to make it plain, but they weren’t exactly being swept away by the power of the oratory.

The client looked at me and we agreed we had to ditch the flowery stuff. Express the ideas, the vision, the belief, in the simplest way we could.

And so I rewrote the speech.

Now, it is much, much harder to write simply, to cut and edit your words so that they sound like the speech of a real, plain-speaking human being. Like their own, unmediated words.

In the end, when my client made the speech, it went down well. People gathered round to congratulate, saying they’d never heard the ideas come over that powerfully before. They said the words inspired them, opened their eyes to dazzling new possibilities.

Afterwards, we reviewed the event and the speech.

“It went really well,” my client said with a smile. “It looks like I can just talk in my own language. I don’t really need a speechwriter.”

I laughed.

Because words can get in the way of vision. And sometimes, a speechwriter should just get out of the way and let the vision speak as simp]y as it can.


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Kafka’s “Ungeziefer” in “The Metamorphosis”

June 26, 2013 by

franz kafka

franz kafka

I first came across Kafka’s Metamorphosis when I saw Mel Brooks’ Producers on TV. Plotting to produce a sure-fire Broadway flop, the characters look for the worst musical plot in the world – a premise so dire it’ll get booed off stage and close on the first night, so the producers can run off with their investors’ money.

Max, played by Zero Mostel, is reading through a list of plot ideas. When he reads this one: “Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to discover that he had been transformed into a giant cockroach -“  he tosses it aside, saying:  ‘ Nah, it’s too good.’

Despite that, as any pedant will tell you, the zoological specificity of Mel Brook’s line is far from precise as a translation of Kafka’s humour.

Describing Gregor Samsa’s metamorphosis, Kafka uses a vague term, “ungeheures Ungeziefer.” Although vague, that term carries some heavy symbolic baggage. And translators have struggled with it these hundred years (Die Verwandlung was first published in 1915). Aside from the Producers’ giant cockroach, the “ungeheures Ungeziefer” has been translated as “a monstrous vermin” and “a verminous bug”.

Etymology gives no clear guide on how to translate “Ungeziefer”, even when adding to the heavy symbolic load.
The etymological roots of “Ungeziefer” are in Middle High German (whose literature Kafka studied in Prague) –  “ungezibere”,  which means “non-sacrificial animal” (especially insects – and similar to the idea, in other cultures, of the “unclean animal”.).

The difficulty is not so much in the specific words as the fact that Gregor’s point of view concerning his own state mutates as the story proceeds. The metamorphosis, in other words, is not a fait accompli at the beginning, but a process yet to be completed. Hence the imprecision in that first sentence.
In later passages the Ungeziefer is more precisely, but always contradictorily, described. The charlady, for example, calls Gregor a “dung beetle” (“Mistkäfer”). She seems to say it quite affectionately, but that term, too, is symbolically loaded. According to the ancients, the dung beetle was a protector of the written word, as well as a symbol of fertility – to the Egyptians, scarabs were talismans and amulets, used on seals, rings and grave goods.

egyptian scarab beetle

egyptian scarab beetle

At the physical level Gregor, at different points in the story, starts to talk with a squeaking, animal-like voice, loses control of his legs, hangs from the ceiling, starts to lose his eyesight, and wants to bite his sister – not really helpful in determining his taxonomy.
Although Kafka famously wrote that he hated metaphors, these varied aspects of Gregor’s metamorphosis – both physical and symbolic – add to the resonance of the story, a resonance made more baffling, more moving by the very fluid nature of its inspecificity. That inspecificity contrasts with the earnestly specific way Gregor describes his physical condition, and intends to commute to his work as a salesman.
None of this  helps the translator looking for the perfect rendition of “ungeheures Ungeziefer”. I think I’ll put my money on Mel Brooks’ giant cockroach after all.

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