Monday 19 January 2015

Obama is not positioning himself to best effect as he helps to boost self-assured Cameron

While David Cameron certainly boosted his ‘statesman-like’ credentials on his recent trip to The White House, the news reports revealed a couple of fine details that provide useful pointers for business presenters.

First, Cameron got ‘caught out’ lobbying senators on the President’s Iran sanctions bill and was confronted on the matter at the press conference. But he handled the situation in the way that the best magicians handle a challenging moment: make a bold move; then underline your move with a ‘convincer’.

Without the slightest hesitation he answered: “Yes I have contacted a couple of Senators this morning”. Then he followed through immediately with: “And I may speak to one or two more this afternoon”. He was firmly on the front foot. So much so, in fact, that he then took the opportunity (and what an opportunity!) to make a very self-assured statement about domestic matters and his belief that election debates need to be held outside of the main campaign.

President Obama, meanwhile has learned the trick of wearing European-style ties with stripes that slope upwards from left to right, so sending out more positive signals than the more traditional downward stripes worn by previous Presidents (see my previous blog here). Where his presentational style continues to falter a little is in the right-to-left line ups.


Rule of 6 of the Rules of Magic states that ‘Attention tracks from left to right, then returns to settle at the left’ – because in Western Cultures we read that way. This applies in particular when you are using a screen or other visual aids, but with just two people on show the person positioned on the left in the audience’s view will be assuming the more dominant position. Magicians know about this principle; Ant and Dec have a slightly different take, saying ‘the tallest must go on the left'; the White House needs to catch up!

Monday 12 January 2015

Tony Blackburn’s dumb-struck response to vintage record highlights the challenges of keeping abreast of the social agenda

I received a sharp reminder at the weekend of the way that our communication needs to shift and adapt to the changing moods and morals of the moment. I was listening to Radio 2 in the car with Tony Blackburn running through the top selling records of 1968.

Now, I’m the first to acknowledge that 1968 is a long time ago, but it was a good year for pop music and much of it remains as relatively common currency today.  We were treated to Hey Jude by the Beatles, I’ve gotta get a message to you by the Bee Gees and Do it again by the Beach Boys. Then came a record that outsold all of these and I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing as I listened to Gary Puckett and the Union Gap sing these lyrics:

Young girl, get out of my mind
My love for you is way out of line
Better run, girl
You're much too young, girl


With all the charms of a woman
You've kept the secret of your youth
You led me to believe
You're old enough
To give me Love
And now it hurts to know the truth

Beneath your perfume and make-up
You're just a baby in disguise
And though you know
That it's wrong to be
Alone with me
That come on look is in your eyes

So hurry home to your Mama
I'm sure she wonders where you are
Get out of here
Before I have the time
To change my mind
'Cause I'm afraid we'll go too far

Whaoo-oh-oh
Young girl, get out of my mind
My love for you is way out of line
Better run, girl
You're much too young, girl

What I remembered as a great up-beat pop song has become a no-go zone!  Tony Blackburn was broadcasting live and clearly felt similarly taken aback as he dropped the corny puns that had accompanied all the previous records and declared: “One slip of tongue with that one and we’ll all be out of business”.

I believe in direct speech and am probably not the world’s greatest supporter of political correctness, but we do all need to be on our guard for when what has seemed to be the norm becomes bad form.


I feel I would be scoring an ‘own goal’ if I embedded a video of Gary Puckett performing the said song, so try this one instead. It’s a personal favourite of mine from 1968, but rarely gets any airplay today: Jesamine by The Casuals.


Monday 5 January 2015

Tim Bell’s frankness about Frank shows the business communicator how to both charm and convince

Happy New year everyone!

I caught up on some reading over the break and especially enjoyed ‘Right or Wrong – The Memoirs of Lord Bell’ by Tim Bell, who for the past 40 years has been at the forefront of advertising, PR and politics. He also has legendary status as one of the greatest of all business presenters, deploying charm to the extent that dogs are said to cross the street to be stroked by him!

The book has actually received some mixed reviews, but for me any deficiencies in pacing and completeness are more than made up for by sometimes wonderfully indiscreet tales of cold calling FW de Klerk, Thatcher’s drinking habits, how the Westland crisis could have been avoided and behind the scenes manoeuvres with the likes of Hanson and Fayed. He also explains how and why he shifted from the advertising business to PR. It’s actually a tamer version of the story he told when I asked him myself at a talk he did with Professor Trevor Morris at Richmond University towards the end of last year. 


I had briefed two PR students who were accompanying me that Tim Bell had been super-successful in advertising, having effectively been the ‘third Saatchi brother’, but then switched to PR, probably having ‘seen the light’ while managing Margaret Thatcher’s election campaign. So I asked him: “Was there a specific moment – possibly during the election campaign - when you had an ‘epiphany’ that PR was the way forward”? “Well not really”, he replied, “the truth is that I was working with Frank Lowe and he didn’t like the fact that I was getting the credit for the company’s growth, so he said ‘you’ve got to go’! The solution we worked out was that I would run the PR companies we had been acquiring and leave him to focus on the ad agencies”.

All my nicely constructed theories about Tim Bell leading a progressive shift from advertising to PR went out the window! Was this proof of the theory that you should never meet your heroes? This had happened to me on a previous occasion when I quizzed Alastair Campbell on the intricacies of his famed Downing Street ‘Grid’ system for news planning. It turned out I had been giving him rather more credit than he was due!

Actually, I was delighted at the frankness of Lord Bell’s response. By being so open it made everything else he said all the more believable. When coaching business people in presentation skills I often encourage them to ‘let a light in on themselves’. Find a way, I say, to weave in a few relevant facts about your personal life. Then your audience will warm to you – one day dogs might even cross the street for a stroke – and everything you say will come over as more convincing.


Finally, I should say that I abandoned belief in the ‘Never meet your heroes’ theory back on the early-90s when it nearly caused to miss a meeting with Keith Richards. He turned out to be everything I had hoped and much more besides – including funny, erudite and beautifully mannered. He was also more than happy to pose for what we now call a ‘selfie’.