Alan Barker

How do I write copy? Let me count the ways...

An interesting conversation on LinkedIn in the past couple of days, started by Peter Whent. He posted this headline from MailOnline:

Peter remarked:

You could have used a copywriter but you chose not to.

The flurry of comments included this from Jonathan Staines:

This headline was written by a journalist in a high-pressured newsroom, not a copywriter. They are two very different types of writing work. A copywriter has more time to compress the message into as few words as possible. News journalists don’t. Trust me, I’m married to one! I’m not suggesting it’s not a very good headline but some poor soul had about 3 minutes to write it.

Which got me thinking. Copywriting and journalism: two very different types of writing work?

Maybe. But we call both 'copy', don't we? And, intriguingly, these two meanings of the word - marketing copy and journalistic copy - arose at roughly the same time.

Rewind to the late nineteenth century.

The telegraph had been invented in 1837. Samuel Morse had developed his famous code in 1838. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. By 1880, journalists were using these new electronic technologies to dictate stories down the line to newspaper offices, where copy-editors would - well - copy them.

The OED lists the first journalistic use of the word 'copy' in 1886, when Oscar Wilde wrote:

Miss Broughton has been attending the meetings of the Psychical Society in search of copy.

And here's George Bernard Shaw, a mere three years later:

Those Socialist speeches which make what the newspapers call ‘good copy'.

Lee Tracy as Hildy Johnson in The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Image from Wikipedia

Very quickly, this meaning of the word ‘copy’ transferred from journalism to advertising. The first OED listing of the word ‘copy’ meaning the text of an ad first appears in 1905, in a book called Modern Advertising:

The design and 'copy' used in the four-inch advertisement may involve just as much time.

Note the scare quotes around the word: obviously still a novel usage at this point.

For the rest of the twentieth century, these two senses of the word 'copy' continued, more or less separately and in parallel. Journalists wrote copy but not, on the whole, advertisements; copywriters wrote marketing copy but not, on the whole, news stories. (Both, of course, wrote headlines.)  David Ogilvy and the Mad Men of the 1950s probably never wrote articles - although Ogilvy's famous long copy for Rolls Royce bears a superficial resemblance to one.

But over the last twenty-five years, electronic media and the internet - the descendants of the telegraph and the telephone - have merged these two streams; the resulting turbulence has generated a whole host of different kinds of copy.

Call it 'content'.

Copywriters now produce press releases and advertorials, instructional guides and case studies, blog posts and thought leadership - all of which demand journalistic skills. They also write social media posts and tags, and even - yes, indeed - ads.

I suspect that journalists are also increasingly having to write copy that draws on the skills of marketing. Who writes the teaser copy on a newspaper's website? The standfirst that invites the reader into an article? The tweets and LinkedIn posts promoting their latest column, or the blurb on the back cover of their latest book?

We're all writers, and we're all doing different kinds of writing work. The top skill required of copywriters in 2024? I'd say: versatility.

I work as a copy editor, proofreader, and training consultant. I run CIM's Copywriting Masterclass.  Book your place here.

 

Speaking a better future into existence

Philip Collins

When they go low, we go high: speeches that shape the world – and why we need them

4^th Estate, 2017

ISBN 978 0 00 823569 7

£8.99

Ignore the clunky title. Philip Collins’ impressive new book is not just another anthology of speeches, but a powerful and passionately argued polemic.

Collins believes fervently in liberal democracy. And open, public speech is democracy’s very life blood. But our democracy is in poor shape. “If we want to attend to the good health of our democracy,” he writes, “and we really must, then we need to attend to the integrity of the way we speak about politics.”

The ailment, he claims, is disillusionment, which he suggests may arise from democracy’s manifold successes over the decades. Those successes mean that there’s less to fight for; all too often, political speech has become dull. In fact, he suggests, “most political speeches today are unnecessary.”

But democracy will always face new conflicts and threats. “It is the nature of human beings to disagree. Politics is the means by which that division is recognised, negotiated and settled.” That’s why politics demands speech: “it is in the spoken word that the defence of politics has to be conducted.” A speech is a performative act: it enacts the very process of politics. In this argument, then, rhetoric and politics become virtually synonymous.

Disenchantment with politics fosters the illusion that there is an alternative. The current contender is populism, which Collins roundly condemns but perhaps doesn’t quite pin down. If democracy – he quotes his hero Camus – is the system for those who know that they don’t know everything, the populist always claims to have all the answers. 

Collins places populism in the context of a long and heterogeneous absolutist tradition. Democracy demands patience – “and patience,” he writes, “is usually in short supply. Many distinguished people have called for a short cut to utopia.” But, from Plato to Mao, the politics of the shining path invariably leads to tyranny. And tyranny silences, with catastrophic consequences.

Collins develops his thesis into five claims. Politics gives voice to the people, promotes peace over war, speaks nations into being, improves the condition of the people, and tames the worst human instincts. “All of these virtues,” he writes, “require poetic political speech,” so he creates five main sections, illustrated with a clutch of speeches and bookended with essays elaborating his argument.

These essays are the most engaging parts of the book: at times, more so than the speeches themselves. Collins' practical insights into speechwriting are useful but sporadic. (You can find a selection of them here.)

More absorbing are his broader discussions, pitting the slow-burning successes of democratic politics against the demagogues and the revolutionaries – all those who thought that they were on the right side of history. Camus, writes Collins, “understood that history doesn’t have a side. History does no work for us; we have to choose for ourselves.” The greatest speeches – in the face of time and chance – make that choice.

Tyranny denies the possibility of choice by removing the possibility of conversation. “To live in utopia is to be amidst perfection already achieved. Nothing develops and nobody can change their mind.” Collins analyses oppression in rhetorical terms. Camus again: “Tyrants conduct monologues above a million solitudes.”

That remarkable sentence signals the ambiguous power of rhetoric sitting at the heart of Collins’ argument: the power to overcome fear, despair and isolation by welding its audience into a community.

Populism does so by demonising. Collins watches Hitler scapegoating Czechoslovakia, in the speech he gave in 1938, immediately before annexing the Sudetenland. “One of the puzzles of Hitler’s rhetoric,” he writes, “is how someone whose thinking was so disordered, in every sense of that term, could be so effective on the stage.”

The solution is in the rhetoric itself, which bodies forth the utopian dream in the very act of entrancing its audience. The order Hitler craved was possible only the podium. By creating an identification between himself and his audience, he manages to seal off, for a while, the exigencies of reality. As Collins writes: “the novelty in his rhetoric was to create a bound community, a Volksgemeinschaft, just by talking it into life… This is the trick of the shaman. He has created a need and a Weltanshauung and claimed it was what the people thought all along.”

Exactly. Binding is what rhetoric does. As Collins himself ruefully admits, “it is the pinnacle of what every speaker would like to achieve; for rhetoric to be true as soon as I say it, and because I say it.”When

Political truth has to be talked into life. It’s never transcendent; it always emerges from the clash of arguments. You’ll find yourself arguing with Collins as you read. That’s surely his intention. And, because, as La Rochefoucauld said, “the passions are the only orators that convince,” Collins argues that democratic politics must rediscover “the principle of hope.” Rhetoric matters because we need a “better, more enchanted politics.” The responsible democrat must describe what has gone awry and find words to speak a better future into existence. “The spectre of utopia is profound fear; its promise is extraordinary hope. The purpose of politics is to contain the fear so that the hope can thrive.”

(About) 630 amazing power words that will astound your reader!

“For beginning writers,” writes Jon Morrow of Smartblogger, “power words are one of the easiest tools to master. Unlike many storytelling strategies, which can take years of practice to master, you can start sprinkling power words into your writing, and you’ll notice an immediate lift in the quality of your prose.”

A power word, according to Morrow, “is defined by its ability to make you feel.” It derives its power from the emotional reaction you have to it. Because that reaction, like all emotional reactions, is unconscious – at the edge of rational control – power words promise to sneak under the reader’s cognitive radar and influence them to buy or click.

Beyond emotion, power words probably tap into other sub- or unconscious responses to language. Connotations, for example, generate power. Kevan Lee, in a useful post, gives a good example. “The difference between ‘joining’ and ‘signing up’,” he writes, “is the difference between fellowship and enlisting. A word changes the meaning, the mood, and the motivation.”

Absolutely.

Lee also references another source of verbal power: the so-called ‘bouba-kiki’ effect, which suggests that our brains somehow attach abstract meaning to the actual sounds of words in a consistent way. (A ‘bouba’, for example, is probably rounded or soft, while a ‘kiki’ is probably sharp and jagged.)

Don’t ignore the poetic or musical power of your copy.

I’m grateful to Kevan Lee for a lot of the material here. Let’s follow him and consider a few lists of power words – from short to long.

To begin: he lists these as the five ‘most persuasive words in the English language’. Well, maybe. Sometimes. 

• You
• Free
• Because
• Instantly
• New

Moving on, we come to David Ogilvy’s famous list of the twenty most influential marketing words. 

• Suddenly
• Now
• Announcing
• Introducing
• Improvement
• Amazing
• Sensational
• Remarkable
• Revolutionary
• Startling
• Miracle
• Magic
• Offer
• Quick
• Easy
• Wanted
• Challenge
• Compare
• Bargain
• Hurry

(This is an interesting piece on the origin of the list.)

From twenty to forty-eight. And I feel a need to start listing alphabetically. This list apparently derives from a study of best-selling magazine covers. It will probably serve you well in promotional copy and email subject lines.

• Amazing
• Anniversary
• Basic
• Best
• Big
• Bonus
• Complete
• Create
• Discover
• Easy
• Exclusive
• Extra
• Extraordinary
• First
• Free
• Guarantee
• Health
• Help
• Hot
• Hot Special
• How to
• Immediately
• Improve
• Know
• Latest
• Learn
• Money
• More
• New
• Now
• Plus!
• Powerful
• Premiere
• Profit
• Protect
• Proven
• Results
• Safety
• Save
• Today
• Trust
• Ultimate
• Understand
• Win
• Worst
• You

Now for two, longer lists. Each, intriguingly, is exactly 120 words long.

First, ExpressWriters offers this list that, they claim, “can boost your headlines and power up your content for better click-through’s [sic] and results.” And they throw in 10 “compelling call-to-action phrases” for good measure.

(Pity about the wandering apostrophe.)

 

The second list derives from a recent webinar at Leanplum about push notifications: messages sent from an app directly to someone’s mobile device. The message appears even if the device is locked or if the person is inside a different app. Push notifications, say Leanplum ingenuously, “are useful for sending information to app users in real time.” 

According to Stefan Bhagwandin, “effective mobile messaging is a huge challenge for mobile marketers. Not only will these “power words” amplify your creativity and app engagement, but they will increase your open rates, retention, and revenue.”

Leanplum examined more than 2.6 billion mobile push notifications sent by brands between January 1 and December 31, 2016. Each word in the dataset was isolated and assigned an engagement score based on how it affected open rates across different campaigns. The researchers found that the words with the highest engagement scores fell into four main groupings:

• words that convey urgency (alert, pending, critical);
• words that convey exclusivity (accepted, eligible, limited);
• words that convey emotion (dream, epic, warning); and
• words that convey value (bargains, deals, sale).

The list has its eccentricities. I’d guess that ‘tick-tock’, ‘inventory’ and ‘forfeiture’ (really?) are unlikely to appear on any other list of power words. But in the new world of mobile apps, power presumably shifts.

And finally, this ‘monster list of power words’ comes from Jon Morrow of Smartblogger. Morrow offers no fewer than 317 “Emotion-Packed Words and Phrases That’ll Instantly Make You a Better Writer”.

Morrow helpfully categorizes his list: ‘words to provoke fear’, ‘words to encourage and energize’ and so on. And, generously, he offers his list free. Download a copy here.

Download Sb-power-words

For me, all of these lists can act like oracles. Use them to stimulate new ideas.

And then test them.

Modular enchantment

Trivium:

the classical liberal arts of grammar,logic & rhetoric 

Edited by John Martineau

Wooden Books, 2016

£14.99

ISBN 978 1 907155 18 5 

John Martineau has developed Wooden Books, based in Glastonbury, as a collection of beautifully crafted pocket-sized oracles, which he describes as “a mathemagical ancient wisdom series”. Each book promises knowledge hidden, forgotten or downright arcane, in modular form (no chapter runs to more than two pages). Production values are high: Trivium, like all the other titles in Martineau’s catalogue, cries out to be picked up.

Enlightenment and entertainment are cunningly intertwined.

The trivium is the trio of liberal arts that, in medieval universities, comprise the humanities: grammar, logic and rhetoric. (Wooden Books has also produced a companion volume, Quadrivium, covering the four ‘scientific’ arts: maths, geometry, music and astronomy.) The subjects are ‘liberal’ because they liberate the student into citizenship: without them, we cannot participate fully in civil society. (Tell that to the vice-chancellors of our universities...)

Trivium will give you a pleasurable smattering of each art, with some amusing add-ons to keep you turning the pages.

This is actually a compendium of six short books by different authors – with three appendices by yet more; as a result, each section treats its subject slightly differently.

Turn to Andrew Aberdein's and Adina Arvatu's section on rhetoric – and there’s no need to read Trivium end-to-end – and you’ll find a decent enough introduction to its classical roots (but nothing about later rhetorical theory). There are gaps, even in such a brief overview: although it describes the five canons, it barely mentions topics of invention and deals not at all with the skills of delivery. You’ll find a few intriguing pages in the appendices on proverbs and the art of memory, but no fewer than 37 of the section’s 52 pages are given over, perhaps inevitably, to figures of speech.

Rachel Holley does a much better job with grammar. It would be hard to imagine a more cogent account.If you're looking for a straightforward guide to the basics, you won't go far wrong.  (Though at one point, at least, Ms Holley does go wrong - very slightly.)

At the other end of the scale, Earl Fontainelle promises much with logic and actually over-delivers: some aspects of the subject are introduced without being explained.

These core sections are framed with material reflecting the development of the humanities in the Renaissance. Octavia Wynne takes us on a wonderful journey through poetics: you need never worry again about distinguishing an anapest from a villanelle. As with every section, the quotations are wide-ranging and rich. The final book in the collection, by Gregory Beabout and Mike Hannis, offers the most through-written account of its subject, ethics.

Trivium opens with a marvellously batty “poet’s dictionary of enchantments” by John Michell, whose esotericism places him at the very heart of Wooden Books’ ethos (some of us fondly remember his book, The View over Atlantis, and his musings on ley lines...) Michell sees each letter as embodying some kind of natural meaning; “in some cases,” he suggests, “even the shapes of letters ... seem to accord with the sounds they denote.” With a nod to Plato’s Cratylus and some splendid cartoons, his dictionary opens the ear to the infinite possibilities of euphonics.

Trivium, then, is a book to dip into for inspiration and delight, though at a fairly hefty price. Put it in the bathroom (other small rooms are available).

The best lack all conviction

Mark Thompson: Enough Said

The Bodley Head, 2016

ISBN 978-1847923127

£25.00

The simple answer to the question Mark Thompson asks himself  – “What’s gone wrong with the language of politics?” – is that it has split in two. 

On one side, “the weirdly affectless and dehumanized style in which many public policy documents are written.” 

On the other, “honesty of emotion and at least the appearance of being willing to engage with the lowliest members of [a] chosen community.”  Thompson labels these two rhetorics rationalism and authenticism. 

“Something has gone awry with our politics,” he says; but it’s a mark of his intellectual sophistication that he resists simplistic explanations.  Instead, he places public language “in the centre of a causal nexus”: “our institutions and organizations,” he writes, “are living bodies of public language, and when the rhetoric changes, so do they.”  He quotes George Orwell (whose Politics and the English Language he submits to a nuanced analysis): “the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and … one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”

The dichotomy between gutless rationalism and the “punctiliously immoderate language” of authenticist politics is hardly a new phenomenon. As I read this book, I kept hearing Yeats's words from 1919: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst  / Are full of passionate intensity.”

In our own day, rationalism is evidenced in the impenetrable policy wonkery of government departments and NGOs, which Thompson traces to the gradual breakdown of technocratic consensual politics in the post-war period.  As data has become ever bigger, it has become harder to explain or justify policy decisions clearly.  (Deciding on a third runway, for example, is far more difficult than deciding to build Heathrow in the first place.)  Decision-making must involve compromise, but compromise hardly figures in political campaigning, which has by now become more or less a continuous process.  “The zone of ambiguity and flexibility,” writes Thompson “– that zone where almost all political progress takes place – has become rhetorically insupportable.” Instead, rationalism fetishises dialectic (and evidence), while the authenticist foregrounds narrative.  The rationalist venerates facts and evidence; the authenticist dismisses both as 'factoids', preferring greater, fuzzier, 'truthier' truths.

From a longer perspective, Thompson seeks the roots of both rhetorics in the Enlightenment. 

Rationalism derives from the empiricism of Hume and the positivism of Comte, and authenticism from the counter-Enlightenment writings of Johann Georg Hamann, through Hegel and Kierkegaard to Nietzsche and Heideigger (in whose work it connects explicitly to nationalism). 

Authenticism fuels the contemporary distrust of the political class.  Nietzsche, along with Marx and Freud, figures large in what Thompson calls “the school of suspicion”: all three “detected a layer of falsity and deception in human utterance that must be stripped away before the truth can be revealed.”  The meme of ‘false consciousness’ proliferated in the (very authenticist) counterculture of the 1960s and has now gone mainstream.  The presumption of bad faith in every politician (“Why is this lying bastard lying to me?”) also colours the investigative and analytical journalism that forms such a major part of Thompson’s own career (DG of the BBC, CEO of Channel 4, CEO of the New York Times). 

His analysis of these two competing rhetorics thus spirals, like a widening gyre, to encompass the media, celebrity advocacy and all the other components of an increasingly complex public space.

At every turn, his deep understanding of rhetorical principles – from Aristotle onwards – is leavened by vivid stories drawn from his experience.  He discusses Thatcher and Reagan, Berlusconi and Putin, Clinton and Trump.  He describes the parabolic adventure of spin from Campbell to Cameron.  All the big stories are here – the notorious Belgrano phone-in on Nationwide, Jo Moore’s “a very good day” email after 9/11, the David Kelly tragedy – and, in substantial chapters that repay repeated study, Thompson explores how a failing public language affects the discussion of three contentious issues: the presentation of scientific research, the decision to go to war, and the boundaries of free speech. 

How, then, to address the crisis? Thompson calls up our capacity for prudence – what the Greeks called phronesis – to help us “perform a sense-check on anything that sounds too good to be true.”  One way to develop prudence, he suggests, is to put public language “at the heart of the teaching of civics.”  It’s a tall order: “the humanities as a whole,” he writes, “stand at low tide, judged less economically valuable … than the sciences.”  But if the most important question confronting any society is how we are to live with each other, then becoming skilled in public language must be a first step in addressing it.  Thompson’s words should raise a cheer among all right-thinking liberals: “Let’s teach our children rhetoric.”

And where can we professional rhetoricians seek improvement, at the verbal end?   “The seeds of renewal,” writes Thompson, “germinate in unexpected places:” in the language of the immigrant, the refugee and the marginalized; in satire; and – intriguingly – in hip hop.  And he sees a promising new bud within political discourse itself.  “Though it is often spoken by the weak and dispossessed,” he writes, “there is something unstoppable about the language of fairness.”

Mark Thompson’s remarkable – and remarkably readable – book bulges with useful information and ideas.  For anyone who contributes to public language, Enough Said is essential reading.

The Essentials of Speechwriting - the book

 

 

 

This book supports my course, The Essentials of Speechwriting, which I run regularly for the European Speechwriter Network.

 

 

 

 

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If you would like to discuss running this course in your organization, or if you would like to book a place on the network's public course, please contact Brian Jenner:

[email protected]

You can find out more about the European Speechwriter Network here. 

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Enjoy!

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How can I produce a great equity research report?

It’s clearly a question lots of people want to answer.  It's the question most often asked on the training programmes I run.  (You can find a typical outline here: Download Kairos_EquityReportWriting_proposal).  My Slideshare presentation, How to Write an Equity Research Report, has enjoyed 33,000 hits since I uploaded it in 2009.  (Take a look.  Click on the image.)

 

 

 

 

 

Large investment brokers print maybe 1,000 pages of research each week.  And a further 1,000 electronic pages.  A large fund management house receives maybe 7,000 envelopes of research in the post every Monday morning.  Maybe your report is in there somewhere, competing with 500 other researchers for your reader’s attention.

How will you make your report stand out from all the rest?  After all, you all have access to the same information (presumably). 

It’s not about the information.  It’s about the idea.

Why is your reader reading it?  Not to understand how you did the research.  Not to explore the finer points of a company’s profit margins or acquisitions policy. 

Your reader wants to know how to deal.

And only you can tell them.  No amount of information will do that job.  No algorithm, no software, however fancy, can give them that answer.  Only you, with your uniquely powerful human mind, can persuade them to deal.

So: the one thing you need to do to produce a great research report is take a position.

Don’t do what everyone else is doing.  Anyone can comment on the trends in financial statements, or compare a company’s valuation metrics with those of its peers.  And they do. 

Be different.  Find something interesting to say. 

Ok, that’s not easy.  It’s hard: most of the interesting things have been said. But having something to say is your job.  It’s what you’re paid for.  It's what puts us ahead of the computer.

If you really want to get ahead, study the craft of persuasion.

Here are three signposts to head you in the right direction.

• Find the story,
• Construct an argument.
• Bring it alive.

 

Find the story.  Use this simple narrative structure to help you. 

Situation: What are the market’s assumptions about this stock?

Problem: Why are the market’s assumptions wrong?

Question: What’s the key question arising from my insight?

Response: What’s my position?

SPQR:  you might recognise it as the motto of the Roman Republic.  That might help you remember it. (There's more about this structure here.)

How do you find the Problem in this sequence?  Daniel Martins, in a recent post on Linked In, suggests that every good stock call meets at least one of two key criteria: results and valuation.  He gives the example of a ‘buy’ call:

“1.Better-than-expected results. The analysis must show evidence that the company whose stock is under analysis will perform better than consensus seems to expect, in the case of a "buy" call. Little does it matter if I believe Facebook will double its earnings by 2018. The real question is: does the market ... believe that the company will grow earnings at a faster or slower pace than what I expect? If the latter, then maybe I have a "buy" recommendation in the works.

2.Higher valuation. For a "buy" call, the analysis must support that "the market" should and will value the company's stock at higher multiples (or the present value of the company's future cash flows at a lower discount rate). For example, is it fair that Apple’s stock be valued at 12 times the company's 2016 EPS consensus estimate?”

A 'sell' call would go the opposite way: you predict worse results and a lower valuation than consensus.  The trick is to put your position in context. 

Ok.  So you have your position.  Now you need to:

 

Construct your argument.  What makes an argument convincing?  Two things: logic and imagination.

Logic first.  The basic form of an argument is simple: [A] because [B].  Martins offers this hypothetical argument:

"Stock XYZ is a 'buy' because the company's flagship product will continue to be in high demand, as the Internet of Things continues to grow at a fast pace in the next 5 to 10 years".

The logic just isn’t there.  The word 'because' is doing no work.  As Martins says:

“While the statement may suggest that Company XYZ is in a high-growth industry, it tells me nothing about whether I expect (1) the company's future results to beat expectations and/or (2) the stock to be valued at higher multiples than it is now.

“In other words, it tells me nothing about whether the stock is a good buy.”

He suggests that the logic is stronger in this argument:

"Stock XYZ is a 'buy' as I expect EPS to grow 20% faster than the market projects in the next five years, and because the probable deleveraging of the company's balance sheet should lead to lower perceived risk and P/E expansion to 15 times."  

And hey!  You can impress us with your analytical skills.  But do so, please, in support of a robust argument.

 

Bring it alive.  Now, imagination.  Every argument in the real world depends on an appeal to more than logic.  We all know that smoking is bad for our health, but no amount of statistics can compare in impact with the picture of a lung ravaged by cancer – or, alternatively, the story of Uncle Basil who smoked 50 a day and lived into his nineties. 

Bolster your argument with material that stimulates your reader’s imagination.  Give your reader images, concrete examples, stories.  Use rhetorical devices. (Tricolons; antithesis; erotema. Look 'em up.  Learn, my friend, learn the craft.)

Make the argument human.  Jon Cooper, in a great posting on Quora, has this useful checklist (thanks, Jon):

Who are the players in this industry? What personalities are involved, either as corporate entities, or the specific people involved?

What are their inputs and outputs? What’s going on in those markets? Is the secular trend in market participants growing or shrinking? How about market size? How about supply constraints?

When are they chronologically weak or strong? Are there cross-industry dynamics in time that matter? How about intra-industry? Any regulatory changes on the horizon?

Where do these players operate? What’s going on in those localities?

Why have these players chosen the courses of action that they did? Is there evidence that the criteria they chose to set their direction are the right ones? Do you agree with their professed rationales?

How do these players view themselves and their peers? How are they viewed by other powerful actors that matter?

Check out, also, this blog post.  You’ll find plenty to inspire you there.

So: why do so few analysts dare to take a position?

Simple.  They don’t want to be wrong. 

And, many times, you will get it wrong.  But, you know: that’s not the point.  As Cooper says: “Whether you are right or wrong matters less than that you express a point of view that engenders a thoughtful conversation with the folks who will commit risk dollars.”

We're not academics.  We're in business.  The point is not how accurate your predictions are, but whether you provoke people to deal.

A reminder: I run training and coaching programmes for research analysts.  You can find a typical outline here:

Download Kairos_EquityReportWriting_proposal

Writing for Impact

I used these slides as part of my presentation on Writing for Impact at the Charity Fair run by the Directory of Social Change, on 24 May 2016.  Enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download DSC_CharityFair_Writing_With_Impact_slidedeck_blogversion_v1

Speechwriting for diplomatic candidates in South Korea

This is an adapted version of the slidedeck I use on the speechwriting module that I run for the Korean National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul.  The slides include references to a workbook that accompanies the course.  This link is aimed primarily at students who want a copy of the slidedeck.  But it might be of interest to anyone interested in speechwriting.

i also run speechwriting courses in other organisations and venues, and run The Essentials of Speechwriting regularly for the European Speechwriter Network.  Check out their website for details of the next course.

If you want to discuss training for speechwriting in your organisation, please contact me through this blog, or through my website.

Download KNDA_blog_version_course_slides

Arouse, Withhold, Fulfil

Houston, We Have a Narrative:

Why Science Needs Story

Randy Olson

University of Chicago Press

2015

978 0 226 27084 5

$20; £14.00

 

Scientists urgently need to use narrative well, and Randy Olson has developed a set of tools to help them.  But the tools can easily become empty formulae, so Olson offers a strategy to help scientists develop an enhanced understanding of narrative: what he calls ‘narrative intuition’.

That summary of Olson’s new book a model he calls ‘ABT’: and, but, therefore.  Olson borrowed it from Trey Parker, one of the writers on South Park. Hollywood, claims Olson, is the place to go for such models. 

(He gives short shrift to humanities departments, who are so busy ideologising that they wouldn't know a narrative if it...  Olson is not polite about humanities academics.)

Olson has developed this material in the years since publishing Don’t Be Such a Scientist.  That book offered five key principles of good science communication (I discuss them here); this one develops practical, useable techniques.

Why does science need narrative so badly?  Partly, says Olson, because scientists tend to communicate by offering “piles of facts”.  Partly because science is signally failing to engage a non-scientific audience.  (He is especially good on the conundrum of communicating climate change.)  And partly because a lack of narrative awareness is damaging science itself.  Journals are increasingly publishing research that’s ‘significant’ rather than sound: according to scientists Olson has spoken to, many papers in Science and Nature are overstated in their conclusions.  “Most of the claimed statistically significant effects in traditional medical research,” claims John Ioannidis of Stanford, “are false positives or substantially exaggerated.”  (Olson noticeably avoids discussing the role of Big Pharma in all this.)

The other reason scientists need to understand narrative is that they’re so hostile to it.  This storyphobia, Olson suggests, is the result of a profound misunderstanding of the terms narrative, story and storytelling.  He quotes Yarden Katz, in a paper called Against Storytelling of Scientific Results: “Great storytellers embellish and conceal information to evoke a response in their audience.”

Not so, says Olson: Katz and other scientists are confusing content with form.  True, stories can deceive, fabricate and exaggerate; but they can also be “accurate, honest, true and reliable”.  Storytelling itself is as value free as E=mc².  

“The bottom line,” asserts Olson, “is that I fail to see anyone taking [a] critical approach to these terms.”  

So, in this book, he sets out to do just that.

He defines a story as “a series of events that happen along the way in the search for a solution to a problem.”  Given this definition, Olson can link narrative to both explanation and argumentation.  He claims, for example, that the IMRAD structure of experimental papers – Introduction (I), Methods, Results And Discussion – “is the structure of a story, which has a beginning (I), middle (M & R), and end (D).” 

Sleight of hand?  IMRAD is surely an explanatory structure, designed to help other scientists replicate an experiment.  My own experience of working with scientists suggests that they tend to offer, not "piles of facts", but over-elaborate explanations.  Our task as science communicators is surely not just to find the core narrative, but to help scientists explain better.

Olson goes further.  He compares ABT to the argumentation structure offered by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein in their book They Say, I Say (present what your opponents say, then what you have to say, before reconciling the two).  The two structures are the same! What’s more, they share that structure with the Hegelian Triad (thesis, antithesis, synthesis).  Narrative encompasses, not just explanation, but argument as well.

Little wonder that Olson can claim, “in science, narrative is everywhere.”

Heady stuff.  And perhaps he’s on to something.  Maybe the rhetoric of explanation and argumentation really is founded, at some deep, intuitive level, on narrative.  Maybe narrative itself instances an even deeper, musical structure of statement, tension and release: a structure that finds expression in IV-V-I chord progressions, in sonata form and the twelve-bar blues.

(Marcus Webb spoke illuminatingly on this theme at a recent conference.) 

It’s a pattern humans can’t resist: arouse, withhold, fulfil.  Maybe, if we can tap into that deeper structure, we can make our explanations and arguments more compelling.  And maybe this is useful, not just for scientists, but for anyone who wants to engage audiences in important issues.

To help us on our quest, Olson offers three tools, on three levels: word, sentence, paragraph.

ABT is the shaping tool at the sentence level.  And, but, therefore sits at the heart of his method because it embodies the narrative structure in a single, tripartite statement - and, probably, because Olson has found it the most practically useful of his techniques.  The model  bears a striking resemblance to Barbara Minto’s ‘situation, complication, question, response’ structure (which I use, substituting ‘problem’ for ‘complication’ to create SPQR as a Roman-themed mnemonic).  It also closely resembles the Freytag Triangle, although Olson doesn’t say so.

[Source]

ABT, says Olson, can rescue scientists from the structures they so often use: AAA (And, And, And) and DHY (Despite, However, Yet).   ABT informs the elevator pitch.   ABT, in short, “is the age-old structure of logic that works best for the masses.”

At the word level, Olson offers us the Dobzhansky Template.  Named after a notable Russian geneticist, this template helps us in our initial efforts to “find the narrative on a given topic”.  Which sounds very like Aristotle's "discovering the best available means of persuasion;" this template brings us close to invention, one of the five canons of classical rhetoric. 

The template goes like this:

Nothing in ___________ makes sense except in the light of __________ .

Fill in the blanks.

(Picture source: AZ Quotes)

The Dobzhansky Template gives your presentation a single focus.  It helps you stay on message when talking to the media.  It even helps you write grant proposals.

But this isn't quite invention proper.  The template focuses on a subject, rather than a topic.  The practical question for the science communicator is: how does subject [b] make sense of subject [a]?  Invention would suggest topics to answer that question: patterns of explanation, like comparision, cause and effect, categorisation...  patterns which simplify complexity.  None of this is quite narrative; but then, I've noticed that some patterns of explanation compel attention more than others - perhaps because they arouse, withhold and fulfil in a kind of narrative way. 

I'll try the Dobzhansky Template.  And I'll let you know how I get on.

At the paragraph level, Olson offers us the Hero’s Journey, as defined by Joseph Campbell and made famous by George Lucas.  Olson, wisely, tells us to treat this one with care.

All three  of these tools can become empty formulae, but none more so than the Hero’s Journey.  Check out the hundreds of books on movie writing that rely on it, and the resulting proliferation of identikit movies, “as if,” to quote Peter Suderman, “a mad scientist has discovered a secret process for making a perfect, or at least perfectly conventional, summer blockbuster.”  (An ironically apposite image, linking Hollywood to science in just the way Olson doesn’t want.)   Scientists can go to Hollywood for technical help with narrative, but they must resist “bending the science to tell a better story.”

(Olson recommends a good TED talk by Matthew Winkler on the Hero's Journey.  Find it here.)

Olson’s wisdom consists in precisely this: understanding that we should use his models perceptually rather than mechanically.  They help us see the structures inherent in our material, but we should resist imposing them unthinkingly.  The Hero’s Journey – that most seductive model of all – works best as an analytical tool, not a creative one.  “If you get to know it well,” he writes, “you’ll end up spotting the elements, by themselves, in real world situations.”

And, when you do start to spot those elements, you’ll develop narrative intuition: “the ability not just to know the basic rules of narrative but to have absorbed and assimilated them so thoroughly you can actually sense them.”

Narrative intuition helps you decide how much narrative to include; it helps you find the specifics that bring a narrative to life; and it helps you develop what Olson calls relatability: of character (“You’re just like me!”) and narrative (“That’s just what I did!”). 

But – and here Olson displays his wisdom once more – narrative intuition doesn’t come quickly

This book, like all Olson’s work, will benefit presenters of all kinds – not just scientists.  He mentions Nicholas Kristof, for instance, who dares to suggest that NGOs should embrace the dark arts of marketing to get inside people's brains.  And John Yorke, whose book Into the Woods delves into the fractal nature of stories.  And Karlyn Campbell, who writes in her book, The Rhetorical Act:

"Truths cannot walk on their own legs.  they must be carried by people to other people.  they must be explained, defended and spread through language, argument and appeal."

"This is a source of irritation for many scientists," claims Olson, "but it's the real world."  Hear, hear.

And there's more: hints and tips, examples and case studies, drawn from his own practical experience as a trainer, from real scientific papers and elsewhere. You’ll find yourself scurrying off to all the other books he’s read, and the TED talks he’s watched (and given).  

Olson is on to something.  I think he understands that narrative has some irreducible core of mystery; it can't ever quite succumb to rational analysis.  When it works, something magical happens.  That magic is what we rhetoricians are hunting for.  Olson's book will help us.  I for one will be using his ideas in my own quest, not least in my work with scientists.

I help scientists develop their communication skills, including - well, yes - their narrative intuition.  Find out about my work with the British Science Association here.  Contact me if you'd like to discuss training or coaching in science communication.

Appearances are everything

Simon Lancaster

Winning Minds: secrets from the language of leadership

Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

ISBN 978 1 137 46592 4

£19.99

Books for leaders – and for aspiring leaders – need to combine pragmatism, intellectual credibility and flair.  Many leaders are ex-managers: they’re no longer interested in doing things right, but in doing the right thing.  They want to know how to inspire.  They want ideas that are powerful but not complicated, delivered in a style that’s racy without being superficial.

Simon Lancaster manages all this with aplomb.  Other political speechwriters have tried to transfer their attention to the broader canvas of corporate leadership, not always successfully.  Lancaster at least shows that he’s worked with leaders outside the Westminster bubble.

His aim is to link rhetoric and neuroscience.  He notes, for example, that figures of speech might have specific psychological effects.  Take asyndeton, the omission of conjunctions:  the resulting short, sharp clauses imply rapid, shallow breathing and hence anxiety (one of David Cameron’s typical rhetorical strategies).  We’re more likely to believe statements if a speaker simply repeats them, or – intriguingly – if they contain rhymes. 

But Lancaster wants to go further: he suggests that “new developments in behavioural economics and neuroscience” show Aristotle’s rhetorical theories to have been “astonishingly accurate”.  

The neuroscientific framework Lancaster chooses to structure the book isn’t, in fact, new at all.  Paul MacLean’s theory of the triune brain appeared back in the 1960s; Lancaster seeks to align it to Aristotle’s three musketeers.  Logos, for example, maps to the neocortex, and pathos to the limbic, ‘emotional brain’.  The fit between ethos and MacLean’s ‘reptilian brain’ – which Lancaster renames ‘the instinctive brain’ – feels more forced, although the point that we expect our leaders to provide security and rewards is well made. 

Lancaster fits his various tools and techniques into these three neural compartments.  He clearly thinks the ‘instinctive brain’ by far the most important: he devotes 82 pages to it, compared to 47 for emotion and only 34 for the ‘logical brain’. 

He also touches on Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrell’s APET model – without acknowledging them, which is a shame.  Griffin and Tyrell stress the importance of pattern-matching: we create meaning by filtering sensory impressions through mental patterns, some inherited and some learned, and ‘tagging’ them emotionally.  These matches are mediated by the limbic system, which regulates the hormonal responses that Lancaster is so keen on:  the book is filled with “squirts” of dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin.  So the division between ‘instinct’ and ‘emotion’ seems fuzzier than he implies.

Unsurprisingly, language is Lancaster’s forte.  The chapters on metaphor and story are among his best.  You want to understand a leader?  “Analyse their metaphors.”  What’s your personal story?  How does it demonstrate your values?  How do organisations assemble stories into cultures?  Any manager seeking to transform themselves into a leader will find Lancaster’s answers useful.

And he understands the great rhetorical lesson is that appearances are everything.  If you can’t be honest – and leaders often face that challenge – then you must create “the illusion of honesty”.  The logical brain responds, not to actual logic, but to “the appearance of logic”.

Which doesn’t set us up very well for the final section.  If the logical brain is interested only in what seems logical – well, what price rational thinking?  (But then, rhetoric and logic have always enjoyed a stormy relationship.)  It’s hard to see how tricolons have much to do with logic.  And the Ciceronian speech structure (Exposition, Narration, Division and the rest) is surely not an exercise in balance (to which Lancaster devotes a whole chapter).  When did you ever hear a great leader open a speech with “On the one hand...”?

This final section loses momentum.  It’s a pity, because so much of the book is genuinely insightful and readable.    

There’s a hidden lesson in this book.  It’s never stated explicitly, but Lancaster’s superb examples of imaginary speeches point up a skill that’s critical for speechwriters, and probably for leaders as well: an endless curiosity about general knowledge. 

I run The Essentials of Speechwriting regularly for the European Speechwriter Network.  To find out about the next course, go to their homepage and look at 'upcoming events'.