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the-record-columns · 5 years ago

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Oct. 30, 2019: Columns

Watching TV with Sgt. Valentine

By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

When I was a small boy living with my parents in an apartment on Hinshaw Street in North Wilkesboro, there was an older couple living upstairs who had become very close to my mom and dad.

Their names were Stella and Isaac Valentine, Sergeant Valentine, to be exact; who had been through the Spanish American War, World War 1 and World War II. To say he was a career soldier was an understatement—he got angry when he was told he couldn't go to Korea.

Stella was like a grandmother to me, telling me often that, when I was a baby, she pulled me around in a little red wagon, and, like my mother, Cary, Stella would often remind me that she named me Kenneth and that I was a perfectly darling child.

I grew up on Hinshaw Street in the 1950's, and the Roy Cashion family, who lived in the house just below our apartment, and the Valentines upstairs, both had televisions. I would often watch cartoons on Saturday mornings with the Cashion girls, but most evening television I saw was when we would go upstairs to see “...The Sarge,” as Pa would say.

It was on these evening visits that I saw and came to love such shows as “I love Lucy,” “The Jack Benny Show,” “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Red Skelton Show,” and “The Jackie Gleason Show,” all for just pure fun. For action and drama, we had James Arness (and Miss Kitty) in “Gunsmoke” and Broderick Crawford in “The Highway Patrol.” An aside to Broderick Crawford; in 1949, he starred in the movie about he life of Huey Long, “The Kingfish” of Louisiana politics. The movie was called “All the Kings Men,” and it was a classic, and actually makes me thing a bit about the bitterness in politics today.

Moving right along, a couple of the shows were the most memorable to me “The Jack Benny Show,” starring the oldest 39-year-old man on the planet was some of the best dry-wit humor I have ever seen. Benny, along with his gravel-voiced sidekick Rochester, dealt with Benny's vanity and legendary penny-pinching-miserly ways through some wonderfully hilarious routines.

However, I suppose it was “The Jackie Gleason Show,” that I liked the best of all, and that was because of the classic skits Gleason and Art Carney produced called “The Honeymooners.” While I rarely ever admit that a computer has any use— except to stress people out who are writing on a deadline—if you take time to look up those old Honeymooner episodes, you will truly be entertained and amazed. Gleason played a hard-luck blowhard New York bus driver named Ralph Kramden, and Carney was the perfect straight man—along with Audrey Meadows as Kramden's long-suffering wife, Alice. Week after week Kramden got into one scrape or another while usually trying to get by with one scam or another by pulling the wool over Alice's eyes, only to ultimately be busted and looking foolish. No matter the circumstance or the plot of these skits, however, they always wound up well with Ralph holding Alice in his arms and ending with his trademarked line, 'Baby, you're the greatest!”

Now, for the thing that brought me to this column to begin with—the late Muhammad Ali. This may seem like a stretch, but switch gears in your mind to anytime you have seen Ali in the news in the past several years—a shaking shell of what he used to be.

When I would go to the Valentines apartment with Dad on Friday nights to watch television, there was a weekly program called the Gillete Cavalcade of Sports—the Friday Night Fights.

Boxing.

The old Sarge loved to watch boxing, and it was his TV, so we all watched with him. Even back in those days, long before medical issues were ever being raised, my daddy The Preacher wondered aloud about the point of boxing matches. I cannot honestly remember exactly how he would put it, but it was to the effect of; “If the object of the game is to injure the other player to the point of being unconscious, what is sporting about it.”

On the news during the coverage of Muhammad Ali's death in June of 2016, I heard it noted several times that he had taken 29,000 blows to the head during his boxing career.

Yes, 29,000.

Palestinian leader sentences 7-year-old Palestinian boy to death

By AMBASSADOR EARL COX and KATHLEEN COX

It seems paying salaries to terrorists is more important to the Palestinian Authority (PA) than continuing to pay for the highly successful, though incomplete, leukemia treatment for a 7-year-old Palestinian boy in Israel’s Ichilov Hospital.

Since his diagnosis in 2015, Majed has been receiving cutting edge treatment in Israel by Israeli specialists but the heartless PA recently ended his treatment. The family of Majed Muhammad Majed Ah-Sha'er has appealed to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, to change his decision but as of today, it remains the same. Young Majed is being used as a political weapon against Israel. In keeping with their “victimhood” narrative, the PA is claiming that young Majed could die and they are blaming it on Israel!

The Palestinian Authority is currently facing a dire, but self inflicted, financial crisis due to a decision by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to drag the Palestinian economy into an abyss. Rather than use the revenue in their coffers to pay for much needed medical care for Palestinians like Majed, the PA would rather direct their financial resources to preserving the PA's policy of encouraging terror by rewarding terrorists and their families with generous salaries.

Israel put an end to the Palestinian “Pay for Slay” program by withholding the amount ($138,000,000) the PA admitted to using from the tax revenues collected by Israel on its behalf, to pay salaries to terrorists. The PA views terrorists as their soldiers and therefore they claim to have a responsibility to pay terrorists and their families who are acting on behalf of the Palestinian Authority by fighting the enemy - Israel. So, in order to make up for the shortfall in revenue needed to pay the terrorists, the PA has decided to cut medical payments to Israel for the treatment of those Palestinians who need medical care beyond that which is available in Gaza or the West Bank.

Israel has collected more than $138,000,000 in tax revenue on behalf of the Palestinian Authority but the PA is refusing to receive the remaining tax money. They want it all or nothing without regard to the hardships this creates for Palestinian people like Majed and his family. Such decisions have little impact on Palestinian leaders, such as Jibril Rajoub, who recently received medical care at the same Israeli hospital where young (though poor) Majed was receiving treatment.

Abbas' decision to refuse the tax revenues from Israel is based on the PA's basic principle that the terrorists - all of them, without distinction between stone throwers and murderers, between members of Fatah or Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and so on - did not carry out acts of terror but only did what the PA "ordered them to do" therefore they are soldiers and deserving to be paid.

Israel is willing to give to the PA the funds it is withholding if the PA will agree to stop their “Pay for Slay,” or “murder for hire,” program. Thus far they have refused.

The Palestinians would rather send young Majed and others like him to early graves rather than stop paying murderers to kill Jews. This is pure evil.

Banjos, Gold and a few Ghost Stories

By CARL WHITE

Life in the Carolinas

The room was filled with visual displays of history and the sounds of Bluegrass music. I found myself in the midst of the long running weekly Friday night Bluegrass gathering with an audience of enthusiastic toe tapping fans.

I’m also a big a fan of Bluegrass music and the culture that defines it. A few years back, during an on location production trip to Leatherwood Mountains in the Blue Ridge, I had a long conversation with Jared Shumate. I had been considering producing a program about the culture of Bluegrass music for some time. I wanted to hear Jared’s thoughts because of his work as an associate producer on Life In The Carolinas. More than that we had the common experience of growing up in the foothills of North Carolina where great Bluegrass music is common place. It was during that conversation that the decision was made to launch The Bluegrass People, which can best be described as a living organic documentary project; it has a growing national and international following.

Over the years I have made several trips to Gold Hill NC for different stories, including the Friday night bluegrass event at the Montgomery General Store, run by Vivian and Hoppy. Vivian Hopkins is a business owner, an author, musician, road scholar and the President of the NC Bluegrass Music Association. Most important, she has become a wonderful friend and has worked with me on many projects, including The Bluegrass People.

Gold Hill is a charming historic destination with a definite place in history. It was once said by the mayor of Charlotte that he hoped that one day Charlotte would become as prosperous as Gold Hill. It is noteworthy that his wish did come true. The reason for the area's great wealth was due to the fact that Gold Hill was a successful gold mining community that predated the great California Gold Rush. Nearby Reed Gold Mine, established in 1799, has the prestige of being the first gold mine in America.

The dirt streets from the past have been paved. However, a wooden boardwalk on each side of the street gives you a sense of days gone by. It looks a bit like a movie set, but the buildings and the people are real.

I discovered that there are many ghost stories relating to the time when Gold Hill was thriving. The area was home to thousands of miners, hotels, salons, brothels and a few churches. There are stories of fits of rage with love gone wrong, business dealings gone afoul and just plain horrific accidents that cost the lives of many. So if there were to be a place with a good offering of ghost stores, Gold Hill certainly has a past that fosters that notion.

I had the opportunity to produce a TV special on the subject of the Gold Hill’s history and ghost stories, and there were things that happened that I have no answer for. I did not feel fear or threatened in any way, but I do understand why these ghost stories have survived the passage of time.

I love discovering places that have many sides to them. You know, the kind of place where every time you visit you find something new.

Gold Hill has given me several gifts. I have enjoyed music and the family-like spirit that represents an important part of the wonderful culture of this region. I have learned more about American history and how gold was a game changer for so many.

I have walked where some of our ancestors walked and where some say they still do.

Carl White is the executive producer and host of the award winning syndicated TV show Carl White’s Life In the Carolinas. The weekly show is now in its eleventh year of syndication. For more on the show visit www.lifeinthecarolinas.com and join the free weekly email list. It’s a great way to keep up with the show and things going on in the Carolinas. You can email Carl White at [email protected].

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anthonykrierion · 7 years ago

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Creative Inspiration: Content We Enjoyed this Winter

Long format we love you!

In the age of everyone having a blog, highly stylised long format can be what it takes to make your written content stand out. At Distilled we often ask ourselves does something being a blog post make it immediately feel less valuable than say, a white paper or a comprehensive guide? Is turning something into a simple blog post selling yourself short, is that format right for your content? With written content coming in so many forms from microblogging in tweets, to company e-newsletters, it’s important to find the right format for what you want to say, of course, sometimes that is with a simple blog post.

Each quarter at Distilled we look back over the content that has made us tick. Content that made us laugh, start heated debates, WOW at how pretty it is, or feel flabbergasted by the conclusions. Building on the 2017 summer and autumn roundup we launched last year, here’s what we loved (or loathed) with equal passion this winter. Starting with some beautiful long format journalism.

Poor Millennials - Highline Huffington Post

With so much content being churned out these days, one might argue that journalistic standards are slipping. Perhaps to fly the flag of quality, well-researched journalism once more, a select team at The Huffington Post has created a new arm called ‘Highline’. Each article features captivating movement as you scroll. Poor Millennials, which was 8 months in the making, discusses ‘Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression’. I found it relatable, even though I’m at the older end of the millennial spectrum.

The frank writing style and 8-bit illustrations pull you in. Pull quotes, stats and bold use of typography make this monster of a post easily digestible at a surface level if you don’t have half a half day to read the whole thing. The tone of voice is brash and allows you to feel justified in your bitterness towards the economy. The animations aptly depict millennials emotions in a very literal way, e.g. falling through space with no one to cushion your fall. There are graphs - in psychedelic pinks, and what feels like levels and character controllability, all harping back to the 90’s rave culture and gaming that millennials hold so dear.

Ungifted - Do The Green Thing

On the lead up to Christmas, we often run about like headless chickens buying up unnecessary bits and bobs for our loved ones, just because we need to get them something. ‘Do The Green Thing’ is a public service that uses creativity to tackle climate change. Needless to say, they would like to minimise the plastic tat lying in our landfills after the festive period. How? By inspiring us to give time not objects. And so ‘Do The Green Thing’ created ‘Ungifted’. It’s essentially a list of ways you can spend time with your friends/family, whether it be a winter bike ride, a night on the tiles, or a home-cooked meal. The long format page has little gifs depicting characters joyously appreciating these activities, and a long list of numerous ideas to incentivise our consumer society to change their habits. ‘Do The Green Thing’ could have easily added in stats about unwanted material gifts, or rubbish accumulated over Christmas to further bolster the message. The page presentation is fun, lighthearted, non-preachy, and not too content heavy. This makes content consumption, and subsequent change, more likely.

Find Your Happy Place - Budget Direct

Budget Direct - a car/travel/house insurance company - has collated data on the factors that affect living standards. The tool enables you to drag and drop a modular ordered list to define your own hierarchy for these standards. Is it house affordability or pollution which are most important to you? Once ordered the tool suggests in which city you might find your happy place. A more simplistic version of OECD’s Better Life Index. Suggesting a life in a far-off city, tells us something about ourselves and allows us to daydream about where we might be most happy. Perhaps we will even use Budget Direct to book our travel insurance when we visit there!

The Gourmand’s 10th issue - The Gourmand - Matthieu Lavanchy

The food and culture journal made waves with its 10th front cover. Working with photographer Matthieu Lavanchy they took food that had already been turned into an emoji, and turned it back into food… meta. The accuracy of the photography vs the emojis is uncanny. Taking icons we see regularly, and reimagining them makes you want to compare the photos to the icons on your phone, it gets you involved.

Thank you, Lamont - Lyft

Lyft is like Uber, a cab app. Lyft has created a series of videos where the premise is giving back to their drivers. They share individual, inspirational and memorable driver stories. With big faceless organisations, and especially those in low paid service industries, stories that show a human element - and even what a positive change working for this company has had on someone's life - stick in your mind. Lamont, the driver featured here, talks about the world being his home as opposed to favouring one place (a great all-inclusive brand message). Lyft surprise him by encouraging his exploration of the world with an all-inclusive around the world trip.

Bullying Jr - Burger King in association with No Bully

Partnering with a charity can really help a brand if there’s synergy with their core messages. It shows the brand cares and is willing to use their clout to speak out to help raise awareness (or money) for those less fortunate. Burger King ‘bullied’ one of their own burgers, to help raise awareness of the impact of bullying. The narrative starts with a fact; ‘30% of students are bullied’. It then shows a bunch of school kids bullying another child. Customers in the Burger King restaurant look on, clearly moved by the scene that is unfolding before them. Yet the majority of spectators do nothing.

Then it’s the burger’s turn. Before it is wrapped up it receives a few sharp punches, flattening and breaking apart the bun whilst the filling spills out. 95% of customers complained about their burger having been bullied, yet only 12% stood up for the bullied child. This campaign isn’t aimed at the bullies themselves. Rather it exposes the impact of the uninvolved bystander, the witness. It asks them to stand up. To say something. This works for a fast food restaurant whose customers are a real mix of ages, including kids getting a quick bite to eat after school. It is the sort of place in towns where children congregate, everyone needs to eat and everyone has the potential to be bullied/see bullying. An eating place should be safe space, where communities can come together to rest and recoup.

Taste Face - Marmite

Marmite has released a face recognition tool and a gene test where the brand states that it knows if you are a lover or hater of Marmite. Marmite has always been brasher than any other brand in actively saying that its customers HATE its product, but now it reveals that science can work out your taste preferences. I actually quite like Marmite but I tried to trick the face recognition tool into believing I am a hater, by pulling my most disgusted face… and it worked, branding me ‘73% a born hater’. For me, the fascination here is more how the face recognition tool works out how much you love or hate something as opposed to it being an accurate test. Is it shareable? Yes! It’s a smart way of having a bit of fun and, of course, people like to share pictures of their own face!

X-Rated Elf - Poundland

Every now and again a brand does something controversial that gets everyone talking. Remember the recent outcry when Dove showed a black person turning into a white person? Personally, I don’t think this marketing effort aimed to be controversial, but conversation was drummed up nonetheless.

Well, some brands create controversy purposefully, shamelessly. How? By talking about teabagging… Ummmm. Yup, that's right. That’s what Poundland made a figurine elf do for it’s Christmas campaign, which was released through a series of images on social. Other scenes showed a naked poker match (Joker Joker, I really want to poke her) and a penis shaped cactus drawn on an etch a sketch (That's one prickly Christmas tree).

While some people found this hilarious, it had many others up in arms, calling it rude, offensive and misogynistic. Poundland showed no remorse and was quoted saying ‘We're proud of a campaign that's only cost £25.53 and is being touted as the winning marketing campaign this Christmas!’ Poundland also threw caution to the wind by creating some unofficial brand partnerships with Barbie and Ken, and Twinings (who I believe asked them to remove their packaging from one of the scenes).

Holiday Video E-Card - R&O Construction - Becca Clason

Sometimes a client’s service or product can seem so boring it’s hard to imagine how you can let your creativity run wild. Introducing Construction company R&O and its holiday E-Card by typographic genius Becca Clason. Complete with construction sound effects and Christmas music - the asphalt, sawdust and cement greeting card video really gives you that Christmassy feeling while keeping R&O and the creativity they are showing in mind. The sawdust makes up the words ‘Wishing You’ while the word ‘JOY’ is lowered into place with what seems like a crane. Christmas is a great time and excuse to send out little reminders of your company.

Memory Powered Tree - Marie Curie

This Christmas, Marie Curie created a memory-powered Christmas tree next to the London Eye in Waterloo. Each time a memory was shared on social using the hashtag #LightUpChristmas, lights on the tree would shine a little brighter. This gave people a place to congregate to share memories of lost loved ones, and to celebrate the memories of those still with us too. Having a stunt in such a public space with a high footfall makes it a real talking point, and the activity makes you feel you’re part of a community - coming together to make a little magic happen.

Memories or money - lastminute.com

It’s important to drill down to the specifics of what you are selling with your product or service. Are you selling insurance, or peace of mind? Are you selling games or laughter? What lastminute.com sells is not holidays, it’s memories. It’s the romantic time you had in Venice, or how you were flabbergasted by the scenery in Alberta. It’s that wonderful memory that you will always have with you that matters. That is what you’re spending your money on.

In the video, a handful of people discuss their most poignant or exciting memories. A woman in a lab coat then asks if it’s ok to delete those memories for a fee. The participants (quite rightly) are horrified by the notion and say ‘no’, showing that the memories made are priceless. The video acts as an incentive to book a holiday and make more of those priceless memories.

What content have you enjoyed lately? Let us know in the comments.

Creative Inspiration: Content We Enjoyed this Winter was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

#Video And Blog Marketing

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davidrsmithlove · 7 years ago

Text

Creative Inspiration: Content We Enjoyed this Winter

Long format we love you!

Poor Millennials - Highline Huffington Post

Ungifted - Do The Green Thing

Find Your Happy Place - Budget Direct

The Gourmand’s 10th issue - The Gourmand - Matthieu Lavanchy

Thank you, Lamont - Lyft

Bullying Jr - Burger King in association with No Bully

Taste Face - Marmite

X-Rated Elf - Poundland

Holiday Video E-Card - R&O Construction - Becca Clason

Memory Powered Tree - Marie Curie

Memories or money - lastminute.com

What content have you enjoyed lately? Let us know in the comments.

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ronijashworth · 7 years ago

Text

Creative Inspiration: Content We Enjoyed this Winter

Long format we love you!

Poor Millennials - Highline Huffington Post

Ungifted - Do The Green Thing

Find Your Happy Place - Budget Direct

The Gourmand’s 10th issue - The Gourmand - Matthieu Lavanchy

Thank you, Lamont - Lyft

Bullying Jr - Burger King in association with No Bully

Taste Face - Marmite

X-Rated Elf - Poundland

Holiday Video E-Card - R&O Construction - Becca Clason

Memory Powered Tree - Marie Curie

Memories or money - lastminute.com

What content have you enjoyed lately? Let us know in the comments.

from Digital Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/creative-inspiration-content-we-enjoyed-this-winter/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#digital marketing

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ia-alfredopassos · 8 years ago

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A little more than a year ago, on a trip to Nairobi, Kenya, some colleagues and I met a 12-year-old Masai boy named Richard Turere, who told us a fascinating story. His family raises livestock on the edge of a vast national park, and one of the biggest challenges is protecting the animals from lions—especially at night. Richard had noticed that placing lamps in a field didn’t deter lion attacks, but when he walked the field with a torch, the lions stayed away. From a young age, he’d been interested in electronics, teaching himself by, for example, taking apart his parents’ radio. He used that experience to devise a system of lights that would turn on and off in sequence—using solar panels, a car battery, and a motorcycle indicator box—and thereby create a sense of movement that he hoped would scare off the lions. He installed the lights, and the lions stopped attacking. Soon villages elsewhere in Kenya began installing Richard’s “lion lights.”

The story was inspiring and worthy of the broader audience that our TED conference could offer, but on the surface, Richard seemed an unlikely candidate to give a TED Talk. He was painfully shy. His English was halting. When he tried to describe his invention, the sentences tumbled out incoherently. And frankly, it was hard to imagine a preteenager standing on a stage in front of 1,400 people accustomed to hearing from polished speakers such as Bill Gates, Sir Ken Robinson, and Jill Bolte Taylor.

But Richard’s story was so compelling that we invited him to speak. In the months before the 2013 conference, we worked with him to frame his story—to find the right place to begin, and to develop a succinct and logical arc of events. On the back of his invention Richard had won a scholarship to one of Kenya’s best schools, and there he had the chance to practice the talk several times in front of a live audience. It was critical that he build his confidence to the point where his personality could shine through. When he finally gave his talk at TED, in Long Beach, you could tell he was nervous, but that only made him more engaging—people were hanging on his every word. The confidence was there, and every time Richard smiled, the audience melted. When he finished, the response was instantaneous: a sustained standing ovation.

Since the first TED conference, 30 years ago, speakers have run the gamut from political figures, musicians, and TV personalities who are completely at ease before a crowd to lesser-known academics, scientists, and writers—some of whom feel deeply uncomfortable giving presentations. Over the years, we’ve sought to develop a process for helping inexperienced presenters to frame, practice, and deliver talks that people enjoy watching. It typically begins six to nine months before the event, and involves cycles of devising (and revising) a script, repeated rehearsals, and plenty of fine-tuning. We’re continually tweaking our approach—because the art of public speaking is evolving in real time—but judging by public response, our basic regimen works well: Since we began putting TED Talks online, in 2006, they’ve been viewed more than one billion times.

On the basis of this experience, I’m convinced that giving a good talk is highly coachable. In a matter of hours, a speaker’s content and delivery can be transformed from muddled to mesmerizing. And while my team’s experience has focused on TED’s 18-minutes-or-shorter format, the lessons we’ve learned are surely useful to other presenters—whether it’s a CEO doing an IPO road show, a brand manager unveiling a new product, or a start-up pitching to VCs.

Frame Your Story There’s no way you can give a good talk unless you have something worth talking about. Conceptualizing and framing what you want to say is the most vital part of preparation.

We all know that humans are wired to listen to stories, and metaphors abound for the narrative structures that work best to engage people. When I think about compelling presentations, I think about taking an audience on a journey. A successful talk is a little miracle—people see the world differently afterward.

If you frame the talk as a journey, the biggest decisions are figuring out where to start and where to end. To find the right place to start, consider what people in the audience already know about your subject—and how much they care about it. If you assume they have more knowledge or interest than they do, or if you start using jargon or get too technical, you’ll lose them. The most engaging speakers do a superb job of very quickly introducing the topic, explaining why they care so deeply about it, and convincing the audience members that they should, too.

The biggest problem I see in first drafts of presentations is that they try to cover too much ground. You can’t summarize an entire career in a single talk. If you try to cram in everything you know, you won’t have time to include key details, and your talk will disappear into abstract language that may make sense if your listeners are familiar with the subject matter but will be completely opaque if they’re new to it. You need specific examples to flesh out your ideas. So limit the scope of your talk to that which can be explained, and brought to life with examples, in the available time. Much of the early feedback we give aims to correct the impulse to sweep too broadly. Instead, go deeper. Give more detail. Don’t tell us about your entire field of study—tell us about your unique contribution.

Of course, it can be just as damaging to overexplain or painstakingly draw out the implications of a talk. And there the remedy is different: Remember that the people in the audience are intelligent. Let them figure some things out for themselves. Let them draw their own conclusions.

Many of the best talks have a narrative structure that loosely follows a detective story. The speaker starts out by presenting a problem and then describes the search for a solution. There’s an “aha” moment, and the audience’s perspective shifts in a meaningful way.

If a talk fails, it’s almost always because the speaker didn’t frame it correctly, misjudged the audience’s level of interest, or neglected to tell a story. Even if the topic is important, random pontification without narrative is always deeply unsatisfying. There’s no progression, and you don’t feel that you’re learning.

I was at an energy conference recently where two people—a city mayor and a former governor—gave back-to-back talks. The mayor’s talk was essentially a list of impressive projects his city had undertaken. It came off as boasting, like a report card or an advertisement for his reelection. It quickly got boring. When the governor spoke, she didn’t list achievements; instead, she shared an idea. Yes, she recounted anecdotes from her time in office, but the idea was central—and the stories explanatory or illustrative (and also funny). It was so much more interesting. The mayor’s underlying point seemed to be how great he was, while the governor’s message was “Here’s a compelling idea that would benefit us all.”

As a general rule, people are not very interested in talks about organizations or institutions (unless they’re members of them). Ideas and stories fascinate us; organizations bore us—they’re much harder to relate to. (Businesspeople especially take note: Don’t boast about your company; rather, tell us about the problem you’re solving.)

Once you’ve got the framing down, it’s time to focus on your delivery. There are three main ways to deliver a talk. You can read it directly off a script or a teleprompter. You can develop a set of bullet points that map out what you’re going to say in each section rather than scripting the whole thing word for word. Or you can memorize your talk, which entails rehearsing it to the point where you internalize every word—verbatim.

My advice: Don’t read it, and don’t use a teleprompter. It’s usually just too distancing—people will know you’re reading. And as soon as they sense it, the way they receive your talk will shift. Suddenly your intimate connection evaporates, and everything feels a lot more formal. We generally outlaw reading approaches of any kind at TED, though we made an exception a few years ago for a man who insisted on using a monitor. We set up a screen at the back of the auditorium, in the hope that the audience wouldn’t notice it. At first he spoke naturally. But soon he stiffened up, and you could see this horrible sinking feeling pass through the audience as people realized, “Oh, no, he’s reading to us!” The words were great, but the talk got poor ratings.

Many of our best and most popular TED Talks have been memorized word for word. If you’re giving an important talk and you have the time to do this, it’s the best way to go. But don’t underestimate the work involved. One of our most memorable speakers was Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain researcher who had suffered a stroke. She talked about what she learned during the eight years it took her to recover. After crafting her story and undertaking many hours of solo practice, she rehearsed her talk dozens of times in front of an audience to be sure she had it down.

Obviously, not every presentation is worth that kind of investment of time. But if you do decide to memorize your talk, be aware that there’s a predictable arc to the learning curve. Most people go through what I call the “valley of awkwardness,” where they haven’t quite memorized the talk. If they give the talk while stuck in that valley, the audience will sense it. Their words will sound recited, or there will be painful moments where they stare into the middle distance, or cast their eyes upward, as they struggle to remember their lines. This creates distance between the speaker and the audience.

Getting past this point is simple, fortunately. It’s just a matter of rehearsing enough times that the flow of words becomes second nature. Then you can focus on delivering the talk with meaning and authenticity. Don’t worry—you’ll get there. But if you don’t have time to learn a speech thoroughly and get past that awkward valley, don’t try. Go with bullet points on note cards. As long as you know what you want to say for each one, you’ll be fine. Focus on remembering the transitions from one bullet point to the next.

Also pay attention to your tone. Some speakers may want to come across as authoritative or wise or powerful or passionate, but it’s usually much better to just sound conversational. Don’t force it. Don’t orate. Just be you. If a successful talk is a journey, make sure you don’t start to annoy your travel companions along the way. Some speakers project too much ego. They sound condescending or full of themselves, and the audience shuts down. Don’t let that happen.

Develop Stage Presence For inexperienced speakers, the physical act of being onstage can be the most difficult part of giving a presentation—but people tend to overestimate its importance. Getting the words, story, and substance right is a much bigger determinant of success or failure than how you stand or whether you’re visibly nervous. And when it comes to stage presence, a little coaching can go a long way.

The biggest mistake we see in early rehearsals is that people move their bodies too much. They sway from side to side, or shift their weight from one leg to the other. People do this naturally when they’re nervous, but it’s distracting and makes the speaker seem weak. Simply getting a person to keep his or her lower body motionless can dramatically improve stage presence. There are some people who are able to walk around a stage during a presentation, and that’s fine if it comes naturally. But the vast majority are better off standing still and relying on hand gestures for emphasis.

Perhaps the most important physical act onstage is making eye contact. Find five or six friendly-looking people in different parts of the audience and look them in the eye as you speak. Think of them as friends you haven’t seen in a year, whom you’re bringing up to date on your work. That eye contact is incredibly powerful, and it will do more than anything else to help your talk land. Even if you don’t have time to prepare fully and have to read from a script, looking up and making eye contact will make a huge difference.

Another big hurdle for inexperienced speakers is nervousness—both in advance of the talk and while they’re onstage. People deal with this in different ways. Many speakers stay out in the audience until the moment they go on; this can work well, because keeping your mind engaged in the earlier speakers can distract you and limit nervousness. Amy Cuddy, a Harvard Business School professor who studies how certain body poses can affect power, utilized one of the more unusual preparation techniques I’ve seen. She recommends that people spend time before a talk striding around, standing tall, and extending their bodies; these poses make you feel more powerful. It’s what she did before going onstage, and she delivered a phenomenal talk. But I think the single best advice is simply to breathe deeply before you go onstage. It works.

In general, people worry too much about nervousness. Nerves are not a disaster. The audience expects you to be nervous. It’s a natural body response that can actually improve your performance: It gives you energy to perform and keeps your mind sharp. Just keep breathing, and you’ll be fine.

Acknowledging nervousness can also create engagement. Showing your vulnerability, whether through nerves or tone of voice, is one of the most powerful ways to win over an audience, provided it is authentic. Susan Cain, who wrote a book about introverts and spoke at our 2012 conference, was terrified about giving her talk. You could feel her fragility onstage, and it created this dynamic where the audience was rooting for her—everybody wanted to hug her afterward. The fact that we knew she was fighting to keep herself up there made it beautiful, and it was the most popular talk that year.

Plan the Multimedia With so much technology at our disposal, it may feel almost mandatory to use, at a minimum, presentation slides. By now most people have heard the advice about PowerPoint: Keep it simple; don’t use a slide deck as a substitute for notes (by, say, listing the bullet points you’ll discuss—those are best put on note cards); and don’t repeat out loud words that are on the slide. Not only is reciting slides a variation of the teleprompter problem—“Oh, no, she’s reading to us, too!”—but information is interesting only once, and hearing and seeing the same words feels repetitive. That advice may seem universal by now, but go into any company and you’ll see presenters violating it every day.

Many of the best TED speakers don’t use slides at all, and many talks don’t require them. If you have photographs or illustrations that make the topic come alive, then yes, show them. If not, consider doing without, at least for some parts of the presentation. And if you’re going to use slides, it’s worth exploring alternatives to PowerPoint. For instance, TED has invested in the company Prezi, which makes presentation software that offers a camera’s-eye view of a two-dimensional landscape. Instead of a flat sequence of images, you can move around the landscape and zoom in to it if need be. Used properly, such techniques can dramatically boost the visual punch of a talk and enhance its meaning.

Artists, architects, photographers, and designers have the best opportunity to use visuals. Slides can help frame and pace a talk and help speakers avoid getting lost in jargon or overly intellectual language. (Art can be hard to talk about—better to experience it visually.) I’ve seen great presentations in which the artist or designer put slides on an automatic timer so that the image changed every 15 seconds. I’ve also seen presenters give a talk accompanied by video, speaking along to it. That can help sustain momentum. The industrial designer Ross Lovegrove’s highly visual TED Talk, for instance, used this technique to bring the audience along on a remarkable creative journey.

Another approach creative types might consider is to build silence into their talks, and just let the work speak for itself. The kinetic sculptor Reuben Margolin used that approach to powerful effect. The idea is not to think “I’m giving a talk.” Instead, think “I want to give this audience a powerful experience of my work.” The single worst thing artists and architects can do is to retreat into abstract or conceptual language.

Video has obvious uses for many speakers. In a TED Talk about the intelligence of crows, for instance, the scientist showed a clip of a crow bending a hook to fish a piece of food out of a tube—essentially creating a tool. It illustrated his point far better than anything he could have said.

Used well, video can be very effective, but there are common mistakes that should be avoided. A clip needs to be short—if it’s more than 60 seconds, you risk losing people. Don’t use videos—particularly corporate ones—that sound self-promotional or like infomercials; people are conditioned to tune those out. Anything with a soundtrack can be dangerously off-putting. And whatever you do, don’t show a clip of yourself being interviewed on, say, CNN. I’ve seen speakers do this, and it’s a really bad idea—no one wants to go along with you on your ego trip. The people in your audience are already listening to you live; why would they want to simultaneously watch your talking-head clip on a screen?

Putting It Together We start helping speakers prepare their talks six months (or more) in advance so that they’ll have plenty of time to practice. We want people’s talks to be in final form at least a month before the event. The more practice they can do in the final weeks, the better off they’ll be. Ideally, they’ll practice the talk on their own and in front of an audience.

The tricky part about rehearsing a presentation in front of other people is that they will feel obligated to offer feedback and constructive criticism. Often the feedback from different people will vary or directly conflict. This can be confusing or even paralyzing, which is why it’s important to be choosy about the people you use as a test audience, and whom you invite to offer feedback. In general, the more experience a person has as a presenter, the better the criticism he or she can offer.

I learned many of these lessons myself in 2011. My colleague Bruno Giussani, who curates our TEDGlobal event, pointed out that although I’d worked at TED for nine years, served as the emcee at our conferences, and introduced many of the speakers, I’d never actually given a TED Talk myself. So he invited me to give one, and I accepted.

It was more stressful than I’d expected. Even though I spend time helping others frame their stories, framing my own in a way that felt compelling was difficult. I decided to memorize my presentation, which was about how web video powers global innovation, and that was really hard: Even though I was putting in a lot of hours, and getting sound advice from my colleagues, I definitely hit a point where I didn’t quite have it down and began to doubt I ever would. I really thought I might bomb. I was nervous right up until the moment I took the stage. But it ended up going fine. It’s definitely not one of the all-time great TED Talks, but it got a positive reaction—and I survived the stress of going through it.

Ultimately I learned firsthand what our speakers have been discovering for three decades: Presentations rise or fall on the quality of the idea, the narrative, and the passion of the speaker. It’s about substance, not speaking style or multimedia pyrotechnics. It’s fairly easy to “coach out” the problems in a talk, but there’s no way to “coach in” the basic story—the presenter has to have the raw material. If you have something to say, you can build a great talk. But if the central theme isn’t there, you’re better off not speaking. Decline the invitation. Go back to work, and wait until you have a compelling idea that’s really worth sharing.

The single most important thing to remember is that there is no one good way to do a talk. The most memorable talks offer something fresh, something no one has seen before. The worst ones are those that feel formulaic. So do not on any account try to emulate every piece of advice I’ve offered here. Take the bulk of it on board, sure. But make the talk your own. You know what’s distinctive about you and your idea. Play to your strengths and give a talk that is truly authentic to you.

Source: Chris Anderson, From the June 2013 Issue

A version of this article appeared in the June 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review. Chris Anderson is the curator of TED.

#presentations #chris anderson #TED #harvard business review #richard turere #jill bolte taylor #susan cain #ross lovegrove #reuben margolin

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