{"id":225,"date":"2014-11-03T09:13:43","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T09:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=225"},"modified":"2014-11-03T12:50:15","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T12:50:15","slug":"the-phrase-that-pays-what-about-batman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/the-phrase-that-pays-what-about-batman\/","title":{"rendered":"The phrase that pays &#8211; What about Batman?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few times in the last few months I&#8217;ve been asked about &#8216;key phrases&#8217; &#8211; and what brought it to mind today was this post about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dougstevenson.com\/2008\/11\/22\/brand-your-speech-with-mental-velco\/\">mental velcro<\/a>: in it, the author talks about ways to make your presentation memorable.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the best example I can think of from recent months is President Obama&#8217;s &#8220;Yes, we can.&#8221; Irrespective of your political views, there&#8217;s something to be said for the fact that this (very!) simple mantra went some way to making as popular as he appears. Well if it works for the president might it work for the rest of us?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yes we can.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Perhaps. There&#8217;s a risk of it sounding somewhat patronising and over-simplistic, of course, so it can back-fire pretty easily if you&#8217;re not careful. We&#8217;ve had quick whip-round for thoughts and ideas here in the office and come up with some thoughts\/guidelines. What do you think?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keep it simple &#8211; it&#8217;s got to be something that has <strong>instant<\/strong> appeal. That means that there should be no complicated syntax.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t make your audience think too hard about things. What you mean should be immediately obvious.<\/li>\n<li>Simplicity shouldn&#8217;t lead to the phrase being purile, though. Without being too enigmatic it&#8217;s important that the phrase has &#8216;weight&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>This emotional weight of your &#8216;catchphrase&#8217; can (and maybe even should!) come from the fact that it captures the whole idea of your presentation in that single, simple phrase. If you can link it to something that&#8217;s in people&#8217;s minds already you&#8217;ve got a better chance. Let&#8217;s face it, everyone has heard someone say &#8220;Yes we can&#8221; at some point in their lives.<\/li>\n<li>Give it a pattern &#8211; just like learning the words to a song are easier than learning the same amount of prose because of the music, there should be a certain &#8216;music&#8217; to your phrasing. That&#8217;s why the well known trick of giving things in threes works so well &#8211; that&#8217;s the shortest number of words you can use to create a pattern.<\/li>\n<li>Alliteration is hand&#8230; so is rhyming&#8230; \u00a0isn&#8217;t that why nursery rhymes work so well<\/li>\n<li>Tricky diction <strong>isn&#8217;t<\/strong> your friend. \u00a0If people can&#8217;t say it easily they&#8217;re not going to try! (Just look at all the research on business names and how they should be immediately accessible)<\/li>\n<li>You need a cadence. A cadence is the way music ends so that you know it&#8217;s the end (not fading out); some word combinations can work the same way &#8211; you <strong>know<\/strong> it&#8217;s finished.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here are a few I&#8217;ve heard recently,\u00a0but no doubt you&#8217;ll have better examples&#8230;<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 336px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bestcoloringpagesforkids.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Printable-Coloring-Pages-Batman.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bestcoloringpagesforkids.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Printable-Coloring-Pages-Batman.jpg\" alt=\"Batman\" width=\"326\" height=\"464\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Batman &#8211; from bestcoloringpagesforkids.com<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p>Dance like no one is watching<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>and the world&#8217;s most famous&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I have a dream<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From a business point of view, one of my big professional &#8216;keynotes&#8217; is about how to deal with life when everything is out to get you (you know the days!) and the strapline that goes with it is simple: &#8220;<strong>Can you cope with the crap?<\/strong>&#8220;. Another one I use in my training was stolen from a choreographer friend of mine who was\u00a0berating some ballet dancers (who had complained that people didn&#8217;t understand how hard it was to dance). Brutally but accurately, Amanda said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If it looks like you&#8217;re working hard, you&#8217;re not working hard enough!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But\u00a0my personal favorite for my private life (drumroll, please)&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What would Batman do?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, okay, I&#8217;m not <strong>entirely<\/strong> serous about that last one&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few times in the last few months I&#8217;ve been asked about &#8216;key phrases&#8217; &#8211; and what brought it to mind today was this post about mental velcro: in it, the author talks about ways [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2861,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/2861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}