Displaying items by tag: speech writing

Have you watched Michelle Obama’s recent speech on YouTube?  She’s taken to video once more to speak to a nation, and to encourage them to vote for Joe Biden.  But did her speech have the desired effect?  Did it have the impact needed?  Will it bring about change?  Sadly we think not and here’s why:

1. IT FORGOT THE POWER OF A CLEAR PURPOSE:  When writing a speech always think of what your purpose is, and have this as the driving force.  We feel Michelle’s purpose here was to discredit Trump – and therefore this speech should have focussed in on hard facts as to why Trump cannot be trusted as a leader, rather than emotional prose.  A different type of script here would have been more effective.
2. DURATION:  Social media is a great platform for video messaging.  It has no rules when it comes to duration, unlike TV.  Here Michelle spoke for 24 minutes.  24 minutes is a long time, and a big ask for a viewer.  We think she could have been more ‘creative’ in how she used the time.  Michelle needed this video to go viral, and its lack of brevity we feel will mean that her desired audience won’t watch.
3. THINK OF YOUR AUDIENCE:  When writing a speech you need to write it for your audience.  Who are they?  Who do you want it to appeal to?  How do they like to be communicated with?  How can you best engage them?  We feel Michelle’s speech probably appealed more to her existing audience – the loyal Obama supporters, of which we are one, rather than a new audience that she wanted and needed to engage with here if she was to be in with a chance of convincing the right type of person not to vote for Trump.
4. EMOTIONS VS FACTS:  Appealing to the emotions is a great way to draw your audience in.  But once they are indeed in we feel facts can prove to have the most impact.  The endless evidence that Trump is a liar and an unsuitable president that was available for Michelle to use got instead overshadowed by an appeal for emotional engagement from her viewer - and we feel this was a major oversight.
5. THE GOOD BIT – MICHELLE CONNECTS AND SHE CARES:  Michelle is a great public speaker.  This was a pre-scripted presentation – every word carefully written and analysed.  When delivering a script it’s important to connect with it – speaking from the heart and not from the head.  Michelle is great at this.  She connects with every word, she uses every word, and this is why she is such a good presenter.

So, what are your thoughts on Boris' speech?  Do you think it delivered?  Was it clear?  Are we the nation fully briefed and inspired for change?  

We help a whole range of people deliver speeches and we write their scripts too.  So, here's what we thought: 

THE SCRIPT: The basics of any good speech are the words you use – your script. Without good content the rest falls down.  And in this speech the content had to be King.  But we felt his script was too conversional in style and too unstructured making it hard to separate the ‘chat’ from the all too important ‘key information’.  And any key bits of information lacked sufficient detail or explanation.  

STRUCTURE:  Having a clear structure is important for any speech, and it’s often good to set this out from the top.  Boris’ script lacked an obvious structure which could mean that any key details are then in danger of getting lost.  

With any speech making sure your viewer walks away with clear and informed ‘takeout’ is so important.   

ALLOCATION OF TIME:  Boris spent a lot of time praising the nation and most importantly the NHS at the top of his speech. Praise indeed, but these encouraging words were not meant to be the main purpose of this particular speech.  We felt he spent too much time at the top on general context, and not enough time on setting out his new plan.  Having a simple ‘running order’ where you allocate time to the key section of your speech forces your hand to focus in on what is important.   We felt Boris shoud have got to his key points of his new plan much much quicker.  And when Boris did finally get to his plan it felt rushed - it was as if he'd run out of time.

CLARITY: We feel Boris should have adopted a much more instructive approach to his speech, focussing in hard on the details of his new 'call to action'. His language and information needed to be more direct with more explanation and detail on the new points.  The nation has waited a good few weeks for this speech, so our expectations were high and our desire for detail was ready and waiting – but did Boris’ speech feed our need?  

THE PURPOSE: Whenever you are delivering a speech it's important to focus in on the purpose – and also not to forget this purpose.  Ask yourself ‘what do I want to achieve with this’?  So, what was Boris' purpose here - to rally the nation, or to give us clear instructions about how to move forwards?  We felt his purpose was lost. 

HIS DELIVERY: Boris has become a much more confident speaker.  As a leader he has found and developed his own style.  The thumping of the desk, the pointed fists to accentuate his key words…he has become more passionate, more focussed and more connected with what he is saying.  But, in this case we feel his impassioned delivery actually overshadowed the need here for good solid content – pure and simple.  Content in this case should have been King, not Boris himself. 

But what did you think?  Do you agree?  Did Boris deliver?  Did it give you what you needed?