Tricolons: how they can work for Obama, Brown, and you

Firstly, let’s make a few things clear: Barack Obama has never asked for my help on his speeches; neither has Gordon Brown; and I’ve drawn heavily on an article on Obama’s use of Roman-oratory technique in this post.

Did you see that? The paragraph above uses three points to add rhythm and emphasis. That’s a tricolon – a trick that orators, speechwriters, and spinners of all stripes use to make their writing flow. There you go, another tricolon.

Charlotte Higgins’ article explains that the tricolon is one of several tricks of Roman oratory that Obama uses in his speeches. These tricks work well on our ear and brain, and they’ve been around for a long time. Long enough for Cicero to have mastered them in the first century BC (he’s the fellow in the photo at the top of the page).

We thought it’d be interesting to compare Mr Obama’s use of the tricolon with Mr Brown’s. We know it’s not fair – one’s a world-renowned orator, the other’s not – but it offers some useful lessons. For business writers, and maybe for political leaders too.

The gaps between tricolons are bigger in
a Gordon Brown speech…

We looked at Brown’s recent speech to the US Congress, and Obama’s inauguration speech. (You can find the text of Gordon Brown’s speech here, and Barack Obama’s inaugural address here.)

Brown uses one tricolon for every 168 words, Obama’s tricolons zing you every 156 words.

The tricolon-count isn’t the be-all and end-all. But if you read the two speeches one after the other you can’t help but notice the difference between them. The Obama speech has more flow and more persuasive power – and the tricolons are one of the things that make the difference.

..and longer sentences make Brown’s speech 17% harder to read

The bad news for Brown’s speech gets worse when we turn to readability scores.

Readability tests show that:

• Brown’s average sentence is 14% longer than Obama’s.
• Brown’s speech is 17%% harder to read).
• You need nearly three more years in school to understand Brown’s speech.

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Microsoft Word’s readability tests
You can judge the readability of text by looking at the average number of words per sentence, and the total syllable-count per sentence.

Microsoft Word uses two readability tests developed by Rudolf Flesch, an American readability expert born in 1901, and his colleague JP Kincaid. The tests are based on evidence that hard-to-read text tends to have long, complex sentences and lots of multi-syllable words.

Long sentences and a high syllable-count make readers lose their place. Readers then have to go back and re-read that sentence or paragraph. Or maybe they’ll just leave the text, and go off and do something else.

Barack and Stevie – a tricolon-match made in heaven

Barack Obama gave Stevie Wonder the Library of Congress’ Gershwin Prize for Popular Song on the 25th of February 2009. He said that Stevie had been the soundtrack to his youth, and added this tricolon-form praise:

“Stevie has always drawn on the incredible range of traditions in his music and, from that, he’s created a style that’s at once:

• uniquely American,
• uniquely his own,
• and yet somehow universal”.

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We’d like to point out that Stevie minted his own memorable tricolon way back in 1970 in the form of his upbeat floor-filler ‘Signed, sealed, delivered’.

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Make your writing clearer and more persuasive

We’re advocates of ‘the magic of threes’ (and tricolons). Our writing training shows professional-services writers how to use threes to get their point across quickly and clearly. And we help writers see how shorter sentences and simpler language make your writing clearer and easier to read.

And rather than dumbing writing down, these techniques make complex information (like legal, investment research, and accounting updates) clearer and more useful to clients.

Here’s our free advice on the magic of threes and clearer writing:

• Threes work. They’re easy to remember, easy to read, and easy to say. They work well in briefings and reports – don’t save them for your speeches.
• Shorter sentences are clearer. Try to keep to one thought per sentence, and a maximum of 25 words to a sentence.
• Avoid the passive voice, and long words. Extra syllables and extra words slow readers down. The passive voice makes you add extra words to your sentences, and big (empty) words bloat your syllable-count (e.g. ‘use’ is always better than ‘utilise’).

The law of shiny things works like this: magpies can’t tell the difference between a diamond ring and a bit of Kit Kat wrapper. And humans aren’t that different.

A new delivery format or an extra bells-and-whistles feature will attract client attention – even if it’s not a step-change improvement. (Penicillin was a step-change improvement, touch screens are a shiny thing that may improve mobile phones).

There’s a bit of magpie in all of us, and our inner hunter-gatherer is always on the lookout for things that are different from the norm. But once you have the attention you have to deliver. The law of shiny things is not a licence for froth and baubles

The rise of video clips – the law of shiny things at work

Video clips on websites are a good example. Several UK law firms have adopted them in the last year – they give you a lawyer’s talking head rather than a screed of text. Here’s an example from Ashurst, a London law firm (we had no involvement in this piece of work): have a look

This is a good-practice example as it looks smart and there’s an easy-to-see-link to a briefing that fleshes out the content of the video clip (the briefing uses text tables too). But video clips work partly because they’re shiny things – different enough from the norm to get noticed. Once all firms use video clips they won’t be so shiny.

But a word in the defence of video clips: even when the format is less shiny (i.e. a norm rather than an exception) it will be just useful for clients. That’s because it takes less mental effort to process a video clip in ‘lean back’ mode than it does to read a briefing in ‘lean forward’ mode.

For now, video clips are a good illustration of the law of shiny things – they give you a low-cost way to stand out from the crowd.

A shiny-thing format that gives you a website you can email and print out. Without having to talk to the IT folks…

When we decided to market a joint-venture with Music Makers* (details at foot of page), a professional-services telesales firm, we had the law of shiny things in mind. So we developed this interactive PDF, or iPDF.

An iPDF is a PDF that behaves like a website. You can email it, and print it out, but it works like a website, and you can even embed sound and video – as shiny a thing as you ever saw.

Have a look another example and make sure you click on the sound clip – it’s under the big red arrow in the upper-left corner: try the sound clip in this iPDF. And the links in the right column of this iPDF are cunningly set to open web pages in a new tab.

Embedding sound clips is easy to do, and means that you can have a neat way to email clients something that’s a cross between a PDF, a website/microsite, and a podcast.

Product features can be shiny too

Slinky content-delivery formats aren’t the only way to tap into the law of shiny things – helpful product features are shiny things too.

Useful know-how update features – clear headlines, summaries that highlight action points, helpful text tables – all help to make your products shinier than your competitors’. We cover these topics in our writing training, and our pet client-focus mnemonic will help you focus on these client-focused features.

From touch screen phones to, well, more touch-screen phones

Pre iPhone, hardly anybody had seen a touch screen phone. At the moment touch-screen phones are still fairly shiny, but not for much longer. Most higher-end phones now have touch screens. And at the time of writing Nokia – who sell about a third of all mobile phones – is wheeling out its first touch-screen phones.

The shininess of the touch screen phone is on the wane, but goodness it’s given Apple one wild ride – they sold over 17m in the 18 months between June 2007 and December 2008.

And that is the second part of the shiny thing law – the shiny thing of today will become the plain-vanilla feature of tomorrow.

So if you want to make use of that magpie-instinct in your clients, keep an eye out for the next big shiny-thing.
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*Music Makers are a professional-services telesales firm
They arrange new-business meetings for law firms, accountants, insurance and financial services firms. Previous and current clients include Mazars LLP, Haines Watts, Hoodless Brennan & Partners Plc, Clyde & Co, and Katten Muchin Rosenman Cornish LLP. Find out more at www.musicmakers.tv

Make simple changes that clients will notice

It’s not hard to improve professional services client-updates and newsletters, and investment research reports. Most are virgin territory when it comes to scope for improvement. They’re the blank bits on the maps of unexplored continents of client service.

But improving updates, briefings, or any kind of written document (this includes emails and websites) does take focus. Our pet mnemonic may be able to help you with that focus.

Here it is: ‘Running Animals Beat Crawlers’. It picks up on several principles in our writing training, and will help you remember the following checklist:
– Relevance
– Actions
– Brevity
– Context.

Relevance

Two points here. Get the right information to the right people, and make it clear who a particular update is relevant to – in the first few words of that update.

The first point (send clients and prospects relevant content) is a bit airport-marketing-book. And it’s often over-stated as a concern or risk. Firms of all kinds bewail the fact that they don’t have clean and reliable list and client-preference data. Well, no-one (or almost no-one) has.

The good news about the second point (make it clear who needs to pay attention) is that it’s easy to do, and it doesn’t involve huge software-and-data projects. All you have to do is make it clear who your information is relevant to right up front – in the headline, on the cover, in the first sentence.

You might highlight that this is a development that’s particularly relevant to smaller firms, or firms that are involved in a certain type of business. Or maybe you can flag that this is information that compliance officers, or general counsel need to pay attention to. Or finance directors and plc-board members.

So there’s a lot to be said for doing what you can in about relevance in the (rather long) interval between where you are now, and an idealised clean-data future.

The flipside is the effect that poorly targetted updates can have. Imagine you’re a general counsel at a commercial property firm, and you receive update on disputes over leylandii hedges. Your regard for that real estate team might slip a few notches. Don’t laugh. It happened.

Actions

Highlight any actions that clients can take. If you can’t think of any appropriate actions, ask yourself why a client should read what you’re writing – and why you’re sending it to them.

If actions aren’t clear-cut, but you think it’s a development that your clients and prospects will care about, then make the implications clear. Maybe you can describe common pitfalls, areas of uncertainty, or how relevant rules are usually applied.

Or use scenarios to sketch out what the development might mean to different kinds of firms in different situations – a good technique where the situation is a bit murky. Scenarios help to turn abstract problems into specific situations – you might even think about testing the scenarios with a couple of friendly clients to see what they think. And they’ll like as not give you further ideas, or the confidence that you’re on the right track.

Whatever you do, avoid the most depressing final sentence ever… “we will watch these developments with interest”.

Brevity

Send clients the briefest possible summary and make it easy for them to request further information.

Context

Make the context clear for clients. Expert authors often forget that clients may not be as up to speed on the detail and background of a particular development. While you may have followed the events and issues around a specific development, clients may have had other things on their mind.

Think about whether it would be helpful to explain the background to new regulations, or other cases that have covered similar issues. It’s often a good idea to put some of this background in a box, or text table. Or you might use a decision tree, flow chart, or data, to help clients see the bigger picture.

Lawyers who use numbers and data will stand out from the crowd

There’s a myth that lawyers don’t ‘do’ numbers. Believers say it’s because lawyers live in a world of words where numbers don’t get a look-in.

We’re less convinced – 0ur view is that business is pretty numbers-focused, and lawyers are part of business. Numeracy may not be a lawyers’ first skill, but it’s definitely in the skillset.

Clients do ‘do’ numbers even if lawyers appear not to. And there’s a lot of data that relates to legal topics – but when did you last see a chart in a law-firm update or briefing.?

Charts and data-tables (and interactive charts like the one below) would make memorable legal-update features.

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Here are three examples of data that clients would find interesting

A firm that uses data to explain or illustrate legal developments would show clients that they speak their language (our writing training includes a module on using data and charts).

Here are just a few charts that clients have never seen from a law firm (as far as we can tell, but we’d love to be proved wrong):

• Trends in EU competition fines:
  Here are some quick snippets of EU-competition data: over €2.25 billion in fines in 2008; six of the ten largest individual fines since 1969 were handed down in just two years – 2007 and 2008.
• Pension-fund debts of UK Plcs in last five years:
  It may sound like something you’d find in the FT – but pension-fund trustees would find this interesting, if a tad depressing.
• Statistics on IP mediation and dispute resolution:
  We couldn’t find published data on this topic, let alone charts of the data. It doesn’t mean that the data doesn’t exist, it just means that it’s not been gathered and presented in a way that supports an argument or illustrates a point.

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Interactive charts: a neat way to give clients an insight into data

A first step along the data-presentation road would be more charts and data tables in updates and e-bulletins. But if your team has found some interesting data that supports an idea you’re keen to explain to clients, then step right up to the interactive chart.

Interactive charts let you change variables and see how this changes results. As humans, we find this kind of thing very helpful because we learn a lot about the data-set as we see the results change. The demo we’ve put together uses data from a number of US clinics on the amounts of a specific drug, Avastin, prescribed to treat different kinds of cancer.

Interactive charts help you understand data. You can see the data change as you alter filters and parameters (see video above – full-screen view is best)

The key interactive feature we’ve added is a slider that lets you ‘time slice’ the data – as you drag the slider over the upper chart area detailed data on a specific month is displayed in the lower chart area.

The video above shows a very short (38 second) clip of a demo website we put together to show how interactive web-based charts can work. This kind of technology is pretty simple now: all it takes is a little thought and imagination, and knowing the right people (which means us).

Go to the live interactive chart (thanks to Majestic Research*)

Firstly, it’s a demo so there are a few glitches. Secondly, please note that the data shown is purely indicative and not for investment purposes. The data was provided by Majestic Research* – a New York based investment-research firm we’ve done some interesting work for.

Do have a quick look at the video above before you try the live chart – the video shows how the chart works.

To see the live chart – you can click-and-drag and timeslice to your heart’s content – click here.

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*Find out more about about Majestic Research at www.majesticresearch.com

Updates: tiring to produce, and they put your reputation at risk

There’s just no way to soften the blow – it may be worse if your clients do read your updates than if they don’t. You might say that this is pretty obvious: why wouldn’t you judge lawyers by their opinions on a legal development?

But few law-firms think about updates in terms of the risk that they pose to their reputation – and revenue.

Publications are usually seen as something that you have to do to stay on the radar of prospective clients and keep up with other firms. So the idea that all the effort that goes into them could be counter productive really is bad news.

Law firms make clients drink from a legal-news hose

Take a few minutes to imagine what happens when there’s a legal development that merits an update or an e-bulletin. Firstly, a legal publisher like PLC will almost definitely publish an update before you do. It’s their day job, and they don’t have to fit updates around the rest of their work. It is their work.

If you think that a development is worth writing about, then it’s odds on that your competitors agree. So they’ll write updates and e-bulletins too. And, just like you, they’ll send them to clients and to aggregators like Linex and the Banking Legal Technology portal. So a client’s likely to hear about the same development several times over.

Collectively, law firms make clients drink from a hose of information.

Multiple updates on the same topic invite comparisons

And it’s really easy – and sort of irresistible – to compare what different firms say on the same topic.

If they read your update then they can immediately form a view on:

• Whether you’ve just wasted their time by getting them to read something unimportant.
• How commercially aware you are – did you miss the business impact?
• Your grip on the topic compared to your competitors’.

Think about client-needs, or turn the e-bulletin tap off

Clients can do two things to lower the reputation-risk of their client-facing know how:
– Turn the e-bulletin tap off and publish far fewer ‘news’ updates.
– Adjust your updates so that they give clients more of what they want.

Reducing your e-bulletin update output may seem a mad idea – many firms feel that they have to cover high-profile developments or their clients will think they’ve missed them. But let’s be clear – our suggestion is to cut down on the news items, and make sure that when you do send clients something it’s interesting and thoughtful.

Leave news chatter to your competitors, or cover it in a couple of lines – you could make a feature of the fact that you’re not bothering clients with run-of-the-mill developments.

If you want to follow the second option – adjusting updates so that you give clients more of what they want – you could make some simple changes:

• Talk to clients about what they’d like you to cover, and whether they’d prefer regular updates or informal briefings around a pre-agreed agenda once a month or quarter.
• Ponder our client-focus mnemonic Running Animals Beat Crawlers.
• Train your authors to write in a more client-focused way (e.g. have a clear summary, identify action points). Maybe some writing training would be a good idea – it’s a cheap way improve updates.

There’s lots of scope for client service, and distinctive approaches, around client updates. And you’re likely to be pleasantly surprised by how straightforward it will be to make the changes that clients value.

The good news – it’s a very low bar

All firms have similar problems and very few firms do a consistently top-notch job – just a few simple tweaks and you’ll stand out from the crowd.

A little less news, a little more focus on what clients want. Before you know it you’ll be offering clients clients an enticing taste-sensation, rather than making them drink from that hose.

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That picture of a broken cup: Brian Morris, a talented Australian photographer gave me his permission to use the image at the top of this article. See more of Brian’s work at www.mono-art.com.au