A Case Study of Captivating Your Audience

This week I received a note from a friend I met through my newsletter. He occassionally writes with comments, questions and occasionally just to let me know how his speaking is progressing. This week he commented on a number items - however, I felt that on portion of his note was particularly relevant to everyone. He writes about he addresses an audience about a particularly dry technical subject.

Rather than trying to get his audience to change and understand EDI (the subject) he changed his presentation to meet their needs. He also incorporated a "prop" to lighten up the atmosphere and drive his point home. The prop in this case was a video of a show called the 2 Ronnies.

If you would like to see the video he used you can see it here.

4 Candles

Hi David,

<<SNIP>>

I was recently asked to give a speech on the benefits of EDI from a supplier’s perspective to 250 non-IT people from builders’ merchants. Initially my heart sank 30 minutes talking about EDI - the audience would be asleep, even worse, it was a whole day’s event about EDI how on earth do you keep the audience engaged. I trawled through your website and tried to get a better understanding of the audience and what they would be looking for and then came up with using a video clip to underline my point. By the way, the video clip was of the Two Ronnies and "4 Candles" if you haven't seen it, it is about how language can easily be misinterpreted. Just the point I wanted to make about the benefits of EDI. The speech went well and the audience seemed to appreciate the comedy sketch of 6 minutes that really rounded off the end of my talk.

Today, I was very pleased to have received an email from the organizer of the event not only thanking me but also saying that post event the feedback about EDI had been very positive and that the delegates enjoyed my talk as it was not full of jargon and the benefits to them were easily understood. It is nice to receive such a positive response and it made me realize that the more preparation you do, as well as plenty of practicing, it does pay off!

<<SNIP>>

All the very best

______________

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Hi __________________

<<SNIP>>

I can appreciate the challenges of making EDI an interesting subject for a non-technical audience. You however, did exactly what I have been encouraging you to do - you constructed your speech around the interests and understanding of your audience.

Tying your point about communication breakdown in with the 2 Ronnie's video was a terrific idea. Any time you can increase the emotion of your audience you are also going to increase their retention - humor is just as good an emotion as any other.

<<SNIP>>

Thanks,

David.

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Copyright © 2007 David Mudie All Rights Reserved

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