Have you ever got to get a message across, and you’ve only got a really short amount of time?  

So I was working with this guy yesterday, and he’s got a three minute time slot.  

So the business he works for is sponsoring an event, and they’ve got three minutes on stage, where they’re allowed to do a bit of a spruik and a little bit of about who we are and why you should use us.   

Anyway, he’d written out his three minutes speech, and he came to me for some advice around, you know, is this enough?  

What would you do differently?  

How could you make it more memorable?  

Anyway, I read it.   

And it was fine, right.  

But it was very much the same as every other sponsor would get up and say. 

So I said to him, “do you want to do something different, then here’s what I would do.” 

Firstly, is to think about what are the key points that you want to get across, so just write down the three of those.  

The second thing is, I don’t really understand what you do, so what is a metaphor that you could use that would explain to someone who didn’t understand, what it was. 

So a metaphor is just when you take two different things and you connect them.  

 “His attitude was like a sinking ship.” 

It doesn’t mean it is a sinking ship, it just means it’s like one.  

So it’s metaphorically speaking, this thing is like that thing.  

Now, coming up with metaphors is really important that you understand who the audience is.  

So he was able to understand that the audience were 98% male, and they’re in a state where they’re very, very big AFL supporters.  

Normally you’ve gotta be very careful of sports metaphors, because not everybody gets them.   

But in this case, it would be quite appropriate, especially given the audience.  

So we came up, or he came up with a metaphor that would describe what his business is.  

Now, if you get stuck with metaphors, this book, I never metaphor I didn’t like, is brilliant, just to give you some inspiration about how you could link one thing to another.   

Anyway, it’s really super.  

But that was really powerful.  

So we came up with a metaphor.  

The second thing was for each of the points, it’s like instead of just saying “you’re experienced”, right, because everybody says that, share a small or a short story where you’ve displayed that experience, give it some colour, give it some emotion, give it some specifics.   

Now, we had to be quick, because he only has three minutes all up, but share a story.  

And he shared his story, it had the name of one of the clients they work with, which is really impressive.  

So he was name dropping, but without being eeky and you know, egotistical. 

And it got the message across really powerfully.  

Then we came up with another message and did something similar. Sorry, another point.  

Then with a third point, this time, I said don’t use a story, let’s use a fact or a statistic, or some evidence or some results that you’ve got and use that.  

So we’re really tapping more into the left brain.   

So to describe this point, or to bring this point to life, what are some stats or some data or some numbers that you could use to make the point really clear.  

And we put all that together, came up with a call to action at the end that actually tied back to the metaphor in the beginning.  

So it was quite beautiful.  

And this guy’s a really engaging, charismatic speaker.  

So already in just rearranging the message, breaking it down into the key points, using things like left brain and right brain metaphors and analogies, some stats and some facts, it already made it feel more like him, and far more exciting and so much more memorable.  

His next question was, well Kim, I’ve got a couple of slides I can use.  

And I had a look at the slides.   

And it’s like, no, no, no, because that defeats the purpose of what we’ve just created.  

I said, instead, I just want you to find some really powerful pictures, and they’ve got a massive database of photos already that they’ve taken.  

So I said, find a really powerful one that marries up, one that marries up with the metaphor that you are sharing at the beginning, one that marries up with the next one, which was around the experience, one that marries up with the next one, and that’s it. 

Because the visual is only to allow people to see and complement the words that he was using in the stories or the facts and the data.   

And that’s it.  

So he gets to present that in, in July, so a couple of weeks away now and I’m going to be eagerly awaiting how he goes.   

Because if nothing else, it was different to all of what other sponsors typically get up and share.  

It captured those that are right brain and left brain and had some visuals that complement the message.  

And hopefully he will have got the message across in three minutes and made it more memorable that people actually take up the call to action.  

Thought it was useful if you’ve got a message that you need to get across in a very short amount of time.   

This might be a couple of things for you to consider because after all, You are Valuable!