I was surfing around and came across these elements of a great speech. (Thank you Toast Masters of New Zealand) Interestingly enough, most of it is what I use to write radio commercials!
Top 10 Elements Of A Great Speech:
1. Speak to their hearts - a great speech should be personal, touching your listeners in their head, heart or their wallet
2. Make it real - your listeners feel like they are living the moment with you.
3. Make it memorable - your listeners will remember your main point far into the future, even if they forget your name or speech title.
4. Make it valuable - give your listeners some useful information they can take away with them.
5. Connect with your audience - make your speech relevant through use of humor, personal stories, or your body language.
6. Make it fun - if you're having a good time, so will your audience.
7. Make it visual - use quotes, stories, anecdotes, props and word pictures so your listeners can see it with their mind's eye as well as hear it.
8. Make it passionate - if you really care about your topic, so will your audience.
9. Be enthusiastic - your enthusiasm is infectious.
10. Be clear, concise and brief - keep your words simple and to the point.
Top 10 Elements in Writing a Great Commercial
1. Speak to their hearts - A great radio commercial should be personal. In most cases, people listen to the radio alone in their cars. There may be 12,700 people listening at one time to your station, but they are all an audience of one. Use the word "YOU" as much as possible. "You" makes the listener an active participant in the ad.
2. Be Real - Avoid reading directly from a script. Use bullet points whenever possible and don't worry about saying something stupid. Mistakes can be edited out later. If you do use a script, make sure you write it the way real people speak. Always use contractions. Don't use what I call, "Ad Speak". Ad Speak is the language you hear in commercials every day that no one actually uses in real life. MRS.JOHNSON: "Hey there Timmy, we are all out of bathroom tissue at our house. Do you think you could ask your mother is we could borrow some of yours?" TIMMY: "Hi Mrs. Johnson, I would really like to share our family's best kept secret with you. We use Charmin bathroom tissue. It's squeezably soft and it two-ply." That conversation never happened anywhere in real life. A real conversation would sound like this: MRS: JOHNSON: "Timmy, check with your mom and see if we can have a couple of rolls of toilet paper." TIMMY: "OK, I'll be right back!" Don't force a situation into a commercial that would not happen in real life, unless you are doing it to be funny!
3. Make it Memorable - In the context of your commercials add in things people have associative memories with. Tell a story they can relate to. A story linked to the core values of the listener. They won't forget it.
4. Educate - Teach the listener something they didn't know. Give them new information about something they do know about. Give them information they would love to share with other people.
5. Connect the Listeners - Don't take yourself too serious. Be humorous when it makes sense. Don't be afraid to tell personal stories, people relate to real personal stories. They have most likely been through similar issues, whether good or bad.
6. Be Fun - Smile and laugh while you are recording, people know when you are having a good time. Allow them to participate.
7. Make it Visual - Use rich words to paint vivid pictures and allow the listener to paint images on the canvas of his mind. These images will be remembered longer than the ones they see with their eyes.
8. Be Passionate - The reason I like to use the business owner as spokesperson most of the time is because they have the most skin in the game. They have the most to win and the most to lose. They are usually the company's best sales person, because they were the original and first salesperson that trained all of the other sales people in the very beginning. He or she is most passionate!
9. Be Clear and Brief - Great writers know where to begin, where to end and equally important, what to leave out.
10. Keeping in line with number 9, you can't share your entire message and story in one ad. You need to create a campaign of ads that dove-tail together unfolding your story a bit at a time. Over time the audience will get to know you and like you. "All things being equal, people do business with people they like. All things not being equal, people do business with people they like!"
Business Runs on Relationships, Relationships Take Time.
