Communication lessons from Obama
It takes a nice bit of writing to make a professional copywriter blub like a baby.
But that’s what happened to me yesterday afternoon when I heard President Elect Obama talk last night. IN front of all my work colleagues. How embarrassing.
Mr Obama didn’t have a lot of body movement. Didn’t show a lot of emotion. But he did choose his words very very carefully. That speech ticked every box of in the copywriter’s check list. I’ll name a few, but I’d be very interested to see what people can add to the list.
1. It was addressed to people personally - it was about them. It began with “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible…” A lot of the speech used the second person.
2. Kept his theme: America’s capacity for change. In a way, he’s given this message at least 1,000 times over the last four years. Six months ago it was “Change we can believe in.” Six weeks ago it became “Change we need.” On his night of victory it was “Yes we can.” On the way out of the park, The Economist reports, people were giving out T-Shirts that read “Yes we did.” The words have changed to keep things fresh, but the theme has stayed true.
3. He won empathy by admitting that the opposing view (that of John McCain) had much to its credit. As a wise man has said, “A small admission wins wide acceptance.”
4. It had a good story about an individual. Here’s how it began: “This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.” As he told that story all you could hear besides was the sound of 250,000 people holding their breath.
5. He was visual. Here’s one example of many: “Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.” Not clever words. Not witty. But visual. The mind does the work and our hearts follow.
If the man is as good a President as he is a communicator, we may be in for a new Golden Age.
Matt
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Watershed indeed. It’s funny, there’s nothing new about sloganeering, but what gives it the edge is picking a slogan for a specific time and public mood that can really cut through.
I, like a lot of people probably, have been waiting for the orator to return to communication in politics (OK, I’m thinking of Australian politics, here). And the last great time I can think of is Rudd’s ’sorry speech’. Eloquent? Compelling? Well, in parts, maybe. But it was the specific time and public mood that I think really lifted it above the ordinary.
I’m also a fan of people (politicians, teachers, ministers, web copywriters even!) who can be courageous enough to really mine the English language for words that convey richer, more accurate meaning. So much of our language lies abandoned and unused, and can be employed well to do that ‘lifting’ of a message to be a clear signal above the noise.
November 8th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Good reflections. Perhaps the challenge with using different language is the vocabulary of your audience. Would Australians understand a speech if more complex (richer) words were used? I don’t know how we gauge this, but the safe approach is to stick to a year 7 level - you might not sound clever, but at least the constituents can understand you.
November 8th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Here’s an interesting and related post - “Obama and McCain’s church lessons”.
http://holycowablog.com/growth/obama-and-mccains-church-lessons/
November 12th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
@Steve: by ‘richer’ I didn’t mean ‘more complex’, and it’s not to sound clever; it’s to be clear. Consider the spread of weasel words (http://www.weaselwords.com.au/) in corporate communication, where it’s possible to string together a whole lot of phrases like ‘innovations in terms of going forward with leveraging stakeholders’… and not actually mean anything. Don Watson’s book ‘Death Sentence’ is a cracker if you’re into this sort of thing.