Our Private Client Group offers confidential counseling and speechwriting services for CEOs and other senior executives and professionals.
David Ogilvy Was Right about Speechmaking
BY TOM KIRBY
A speech is not a Broadway play. As much as we speechwriters want to make clients look good, that is not our primary job. The reason executives are willing to give speeches is to further their business interests. Certainly, nobody wants to leave a negative impression with an audience or risk appearing unprepared or dim-witted, but image and style are secondary to getting results. On this point, David Ogilvy’s comment says it well: “When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let us march against Philip!’” When Ogilvy delivered this now well-known remark, he added, “I’m for Demosthenes.”
In spite of all the warnings to the contrary, speechwriters often fall prey to what I call the Carnegie Hall Syndrome. We put too much emphasis on entertainment value and too little on substance. This is particularly true of those whose clients are industry celebrities.
Although the primary work of speechwriting is done alone, it pays to take advantage of opportunities to sit with the executives, managers, salespeople, and others in the audiences we are writing for. (Put aside for a moment the fact that the primary utility of many speeches is their collateral value in print form). This is the best way to stay in touch with how speeches are received and evaluated by people in the room when they hear it live.
You can get some valuable “end user” feedback with your own shirttail survey. Ask people to name “the best speaker they have ever heard.” I have been asking this question for over twenty years. Except for a few famous business speakers, I have rarely heard the same speaker mentioned more than twice. But when I ask why someone thinks a particular speaker is really good, the answer is nearly always, “Because they know what they are talking about.”
If you pursue the subject with business people who are not directly involved in the speech creation and delivery process, you will hear another common report. “Most business speakers are boring.” In spite of the best efforts of writers, editors, coaches, and staff professionals, the collective field of executive speakers is as bland in their delivery as their suits are gray.
Business executives have personalities and speaking styles as varied as the endless variety of kinds and types in the general population. Some of them are natural crowd pleasers, born salesmen, hams, grownup class clowns, and would-be standup comics. But most business speakers are much better at planning and managing than they will ever be at motivating audiences.
No amount of good writing will ever make a poor speaker sound great, yet a lot of energy is wasted trying to do just that. Sometimes the tireless labor of seeking exotic quotations and the latest one-liners results in making the situation worse by spotlighting an executive’s weak delivery.
The live delivery of a speech or business presentation is a single, seamless event made of two discrete substances: content and delivery. When I ask workshop participants which of the two is more important in a successful speech, the first general response is that I have asked a trick question. In a live speech, you can’t separate content from delivery. But most savvy business people will tell you – perhaps reluctantly – that delivery skills are usually more important than the actual content of a speech to a live audience.
Personally, I have always felt that content is king. But you can’t deliver oil without a working pipeline. No matter how important the subject or how well-written the words, the effectiveness of a speech is usually dependent upon the speaker’s ability to connect with listeners and convince them that he or she is not merely going through the motions of reading a script into a microphone.
Writing for executives who are not in the upper quintile of platform performers is the arena in which speechwriters can do the most good – both for the client and the audience. The key is to know exactly what kind of help a speaker needs. My inclination is to start from scratch with a new client by listening to him or her in normal conversation. Tapes of previous talks or presentations can be helpful; however, many speakers take on a false persona when they speak to groups. They may have developed poor speech habits and may have cultivated a “speaking voice” which is different from the way they sound in less formal situations. Once I hear the real person talking to me, it is a lot easier to write phrases and sentences that sound more natural when delivered in a speech.
Most veteran speechwriters are not completely confident about the prospects of a speech until they hear it delivered by their client. They would rather discover problems in a rehearsal or read-through than to hear lukewarm or critical comments from listeners or business news writers. The reason so many speakers fail to rehearse their speeches is partly a time management issue. There is always something more important to do. And there is also the widespread misconception that the words of a well written script will somehow “speak for themselves.” Preparing for a live speech is not like cramming for an exam. Most speakers need objective feedback about inflection, pacing, and pauses.
Good speechwriters always try to arrange a dress rehearsal or practice reading session. This is a chance to listen with the ears of an audience member and give practical feedback. Although this aspect of the job has nothing to do with the work of research, positioning, drafting, and rewriting that we usually associate with speechwriting, my experience has been that getting a client to practice a speech can be the most important service we can provide.
Tom Kirby was formerly president of Ogilvy & Mather Speech Dynamics in New York City. His presentation, “How to Sell Big Ideas to Small Groups” was chosen for Business Weeks’s collection of THE FORTY BEST BUSINESS TALKS EVER RECORDED. This article originally appeared in the Executive Speaker newsletter.