An imaginative innovation in a PowerPoint presentation?


In December, I reported on a meeting my wife had been to, at which there were some unscheduled PowerPoint presentations – see There’s nothing wrong with PowerPoint until there’s an audience

Yesterday, I made the mistake of going with her to another meeting of the same people at the same place.

You might think that a meeting of voluntary part-time stewards in a medieval bishop’s palace would be an unlikely venue for PowerPoint presentations, let alone that you’d see anything new in the way this latter-day scourge of audiences can be used. But you’d be wrong on both counts.

Our speaker’s imaginative innovation was not just to stand directly in front of the screen, but in front of the laptop and the projector as well – with her back to all the gadgets on which her presentation depended, as well as to all the people sitting on the front two or three rows.

This had two obvious consequences. One was that it was made it even more difficult than usual for her to find out what to say next (other than the fluent “Ers” and “Ums” that prefaced almost every sentence), as she had to turn round both to see the screens and to press the button on the laptop;

The other was that that her position a few metres in front of the middle of the screen prevented large swathes of the audience from seeing what was on the screen (even if they had wanted to).

Luckily for them and unluckily for everyone else, they weren’t missing much, as there was nothing to look other than lists of items in a multi-million pound plan for developing tourism at the palace.

Whether or not it counts as another innovation, our presenter’s choice of clothing – jeans with a top that exposed her rather unsightly naval – at least raised questions in our minds: was this a deliberate bid to look as different as possible from this smartly turned out late-middle aged, middle-class audience? Or was it just casual weekend attire that was being worn to remind us that she, unlike us, was having to work on a Sunday?

If nothing else, we learnt that it has yet to occur to anyone at the palace that it might be worth spending a small fraction of the millions of pounds in their budget on some presentation skills training for development officers (or an even smaller fraction on a copy of one of my books).

In any case, twenty minutes of this dire performance was more than enough to convince us that we were in for a repeat of the event reported on in December and that our time would be better spent by leaving in search of the cup of tea that had failed to materialise before the meeting started.

‘From Stalin to Mr Bean’: putting two parts of a contrast in the most effective order

In case anyone thinks that the last posting was intended as a criticism of Vince Cable’s rhetorical skill, I haven't forgotten that his most famous line came when, as acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, he produced a devastating contrast at Question Time in the House of Commons (see below).

If he had said that Mr Brown ‘had become more like Mr Bean than Stalin’, the contrast between a bumbling fool and an autocratic dictator would still have been there and would no doubt have raised a laugh or two.

But on that occasion, he got the order of the two parts of the contrast the right way round, and not only had a tremendous impact there and then, but also did his own longer term reputation no harm at all.

The line also inspired a purely visual representation of his point on you YouTube that can be seen HERE.

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How to improve impact by sequence, repetition and a rhetorical technique

In Vince Cable’s speech at the spring conference of the Liberal Democrats in Harrogate a couple of days ago, there was a sequence that would have been more effective had he (or his speechwriter) reversed the order in which he mentioned the two points, used repetition and packaged it as a contrast.

The line went as follows:

"Public companies should publish full pay package of all their highly paid employees [applause starts] as well as the directors."

You can see the sequence by looking here (1 minute, 25 seconds into the video), and will notice that the audience started applauding immediately after he said ‘employees’ and before he got to the key phrase ‘as well as the directors.'

As the current situation is that pay packages of directors already have to be published and Cable’s new/controversial point was that this should also apply to all highly paid employees, this would have worked better if the 'news' had come second rather than first.

It was also crying out to be turned into as a more explicit contrast between directors and other highly paid employees, with key words repeated, along the lines of the following:

"Public companies should not just publish the full pay package of their directors.
"They should publish the full pay package of all their highly paid employees."


Rhythmically and for adding emphasis, it would arguably have been improved further by making the second part of the contrast slightly longer, as in:

"They should publish the full pay package of each and every single one of their highly paid employees."

Either way, the applause would still have come immediately after the word ‘employees’, but it would have sounded more emphatic and there would have been no risk of the key point being drowned out by the applause.

Brown’s ‘poetry’ heads up news of his speech to Congress

The previous post highlighted the frequency with which Gordon Brown used 'poetic' devices, like alliteration and imagery, in his speech to the US Congress earlier this week.

When it comes to getting key messages across, the advantage of using these and other rhetorical techniques is that they are they much more likely to be noticed (and perhaps even remembered) by the audience than if the same point had been made in a more bland or mundane way.

I first discussed how the way a message is packaged in a speech can affect its chances of reaching a wider audience in my book Our Masters' Voices (1984), using examples from speeches by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and other leading politicians of the day.

Luckily for politicians, then and now, their audiences also include the media, whose reporters and editors react in much the same way as any other member of an audience, and are therefore likely to turn similar lines into prime-time soundbites.

A nice example of this came from the top of Sky News reports of Mr Brown’s speech to Congress, which opened by quoting his most-repeated alliterative phrase and one of his more powerful metaphors:

Unexpected poetry in Gordon Brown's speech to the US Congress


Readers of my books will know that they emphasise the importance of simple poetic elements, such as alliteration and imagery, in the tool-kit of effective public speakers. But such poetics have never been very evident in past speeches by Gordon Brown.

That’s why the most surprising thing about his speech to the US Congress earlier today was his use of at least 37 examples of alliteration and/or imagery (see below for more detail) – though his alliteration score was somewhat boosted by his repetitive use of the phrase in the first half of the alliterative title of the speech: With faith in the future, we can build tomorrow today.

For someone who has spent most of his life on the political platform, his sudden conversion to poetics raises the interesting question of whether there are new speechwriters at work in Downing Street – and, if so, who are they?

(P.S. Answer: Eight months later, I was fascinated to discover that there were indeed new speechwriters at work, but not in Downing Street. The PM apparently paid West Wing Writers, a Washington company run by former Democrat speechwriters, $7,000 to work on the speech - bringing the total paid to them since he became Chancellor of the Exchequer to more than $40,000).

Meanwhile, here are the examples spotted so far (alliteration in bold, imagery in italics):

GORDON BROWN:
F-f and b-b alliteration + imagery (building):
The very creation of America was a bold affirmation of faith in the future: a future you have not just believed in but built with your own hands.

Imagery (writing a book):
And on January 20th, you the American people began to write the latest chapter in the American story

B-b and s-s alliteration + topographical imagery (plains, streets, sands, beaches, bridges to denote battle fields in different wars):
And let me pay tribute to the soldiers, yours and ours, who again fight side by side in the plains of Afghanistan and the streets of Iraq, just as their forefathers fought side by side in the sands of Tunisia, on the beaches of Normandy and then on the bridges over the Rhine.

F-f alliteration:
And let it be said of our friendship - formed and forged over two tumultuous centuries, a friendship tested in war and strengthened in peace

F-f alliteration (echoing Churchill's use of same f-words):
And when banks have failed and markets have faltered …

P-p alliteration (+ contrast):
Not an alliance of convenience, but a partnership of purpose.

W-w, f-f and r-r alliteration (+contrast):
wealth must help more than the wealthy, good fortune must serve more than the fortunate and riches must enrich not just some of us but all.

W-w and d-d alliteration + imagery (contagion):
And we need to understand what went wrong in this crisis, that the very financial instruments that were designed to diversify risk across the banking system instead spread contagion across the globe.

C-c and f-f alliteration:
And this is not blind optimism or synthetic confidence to console people; it is the practical affirmation for our times of our faith in a better future.

F-f alliteration:
Every time we rebuild a school we demonstrate our faith in the future.

S-s and f-f alliteration:
.. every time we increase support to our scientists, we demonstrate our faith in the future.

F-f alliteration:
.. we conquer our fear of the future through our faith in the future.

M-m and p-p alliteration:
And I believe that you, the nation that had the vision to put a man on the moon, are also the nation with the vision to protect and preserve our planet earth.

Weather imagery + c-c-c-c alliteration:
An economic hurricane has swept the world, creating a crisis of credit and of confidence.

T-t alliteration:
We are summoned not just to manage our times but to transform them.

W-w and d-d alliteration + imagery (contagion, again):
And we need to understand what went wrong in this crisis, that the very financial instruments that were designed to diversify risk across the banking system instead spread contagion across the globe.

T-t and s-s alliteration:
And America and Britain will succeed and lead if we tap into the talents of our people, unleash the genius of our scientists and set free the drive of our entrepreneurs.

C-c and f-f- alliteration:
And this is not blind optimism or synthetic confidence to console people; it is the practical affirmation for our times of our faith in a better future.

S-s and f-f alliteration:
.. every time we increase support to our scientists, we demonstrate our faith in the future.

C-c and f-f alliteration:
And so I say to this Congress and this country, something that runs deep in your character and is woven in your history, we conquer our fear of the future through our faith in the future.

F-f and p-p alliteration:
And it is this faith in the future that means we must commit to protecting the planet for generations that will come long after us.

Imagery (sowing seeds):
As the Greek proverb says, why does anybody plant the seeds of a tree whose shade they will never see?

M-m and p-p alliteration:
And I believe that you, the nation that had the vision to put a man on the moon, are also the nation with the vision to protect and preserve our planet earth.

Imagery (water and rippling):
No matter where it starts, an economic crisis does not stop at the water's edge. It ripples across the world.

P-p, f-f and t-t alliteration: and 'building' image:
Let us restore prosperity and protect this planet and, with faith in the future, let us together build tomorrow today.

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation


If you've never seen the PowerPoint version of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address, have a look here.

Gordon Brown's model example of how to express condolences

In earlier posts, I have commented on the importance of funeral orations and have also sometimes been critical of Gordon Brown's speech-making.

But, when it came to his offering condolences to the leader of the opposition on the death of his young son, Brown's short statement in the House of Commons last week was about as moving as these things can get - and was deservedly recognised as such in parts of the media that are not normally known for supporting the Prime Minister or the Labour Party.

For students of speech delivery, listening to a speech while reading the script can be a useful and revealing exercise, especially in learning how pauses can be used to express emotion, and you can check the transcript against Mr Brown's delivery here. You can do the same thing with Tony Blair's 'People's Princess' speech by clicking on the funeral orations link above.

BROWN: I know that the whole House will want to express our sorrow at the sad death this morning of Ivan Cameron at the age of just six years old, and our condolences go out to David and Samantha and to the Cameron family.

I know that in an all too brief young life, he brought joy to all those around him, and I know also that for all the days of his life, he was surrounded by his family's love.

Every child is precious and irreplaceable and the death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should ever have to endure.

Politics can sometimes divide us. But there is a common human bond that unites us in sympathy and compassion at times of trial and in support for each other at times of grief.

Sarah and I have sent our condolences to David and Samantha and I know that the whole country – our thoughts and our prayers – are with David, Samantha and their family today.