Vicky was excited. I mean extremely excited. A friend of hers had arranged an opportunity for her to attend their company staff conference, where a former Olympic athlete would be speaking. The organization was investing a considerable sum of money for this celebrity to address over 300 staff.
A week after the event, Vicky and I met up. As a professional speaker myself, I was keen to hear about the impact the celebrity had made and the ways his message would help his audience.
âSo what was he like Vicky?â
Vicky appeared starry-eyed as she recalled the event.
âHe was gorgeous. All the women instantly fell in love with him. In fact, some of the guys probably did too.â
âInteresting,â I replied. âBut what would you say you took away from his message?â
âWell,â continued Vicky, clearly excited as she relived the experience, âif you were patient you could wait around at the end and have your photograph taken with him and his Olympic medal.â
âThatâs brilliant Vicky, but can I ask you this: what was your key takeaway from his presentation?â
Vicky paused before finally replying: âThatâs a tough one. I canât remember exactly, but I know he was really good.â
It got me thinking. How often do we hear a message but very quickly forget it? Sometimes that might be acceptable if the speakerâs message was meant solely to entertain. But what if it isnât? What if you have an important message to communicate that you need people to remember?
The problem is weâre often so busy focusing on what weâre going to say that we donât take time to think about how to say it in a way that people will remember.
The challenge you face as a communicator is not that the attention span of your audience is necessarily short â itâs that their attention is constantly being bombarded by messages and distractions screaming âlisten to me, notice meâ. Believing that saying something once in a potentially unengaging way is going to be remembered by people is, Iâm afraid, a reflection of either naivety or arrogance, or perhaps even a combination of both.
Advertisers know they need to get your attention and then communicate their message in a way that is memorable. After all, whatâs the point of an organization investing in advertising if you then canât remember the point of their message? They know that getting your attention is just the start. They then need you to remember their message.
Thatâs crucial for us to remember as communicators.
Ever heard the phrase âpeople wonât remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feelâ? Personally, I think that could be a cop out. How about when we communicate with people, our aim is that theyâll remember how we made them feel AND what we said?
Hereâs the deal:
We need to learn how to cover our message in Velcro, rather than coat it with Teflon.
Making his message sticky and memorable was a priority for Steve Jobs. Thatâs why, when he wanted you to remember something, heâd repeat it over and over. Why? Because repetition aids retention. Iâll say that again â repetition aids retention. He wasnât bothered if people said âSteve, you mentioned that earlierâ. He knew that. But he intuitively knew the following:
Your message needs to stick if itâs going to be a hit.
Repetition is one way to do that. Weâll be exploring lots more ways throughout the book, but let me share one approach Iâve used to make my message sticky and memorable â using visual and quirky language. And the reason? Well the reality is, the more people hear overused and overfamiliar phrases, the more those words will over time, figuratively speaking, âgo in one ear and out the otherâ.
So, for example, in my book SUMO (Shut Up, Move On) I explore a number of SUMO principles. Hereâs what they could be called if I expressed them in a more familiar way:
Take responsibility.
Have a positive attitude.
Set goals.
However, the language I use to describe each principle is phrased in a less-familiar way:
Change your T-shirt.
Develop fruity thinking.
Ditch Doris Day.
Hereâs the deal:
The unfamiliar gets our attention. And through repetition it also gets remembered.
Hereâs another way Iâve used the above strategy to get remembered.
My name is Paul McGee. I think youâd agree thereâs nothing particularly memorable about that name. My appearances in the media are occasional at best and, compared to many people operating in the world of motivational speaking, my life story is rather tame.
But my brand name ââThe SUMO Guyâ â gets me remembered. It gets peopleâs attention. It immediately conjures up a visual image and creates interest. Agree? The reality is I donât wear a sumo outfit or prance around on stage dressed in an oversized thong. Which might disappoint some, but probably comes as a relief to many. Either way, my brand name is memorable.
Then, explaining that SUMO is an acronym which can stand for Shut Up, Move On (or sometimes Stop, Understand, Move On) also gets me remembered. Itâs short and simple (words that have often been used to describe me, in fact). But because itâs short and simple, and also different and memorable, it sticks in peopleâs minds.
Now relax. Iâm not suggesting you have to come up with some weird or wacky way to communicate your message. Iâve simply shared a strategy that works for me. Youâre going to be learning many more, but although the context in which you speak is likely to be vastly different to mine, you might want to start thinking about how you could use less-familiar language to express a familiar idea.
The point I want to stress is this:
Having a great message is one thing. Getting it remembered is another entirely.
Pause for Thought
Think about the ways you communicate your messages to others. Could your approach ever be described as boring or bland? Do you say things the way youâve always said them? If not, great; but if you do, then perhaps itâs time to freshen up your style. Look for ideas, especially in the second section of the book, to see how you can make your message more sticky and memorable â trust me, thereâll be loads. In fact youâve been given two already. First, repetition â be prepared to repeat your message in different ways....
