What are words worth?

I love words. One of my earliest memories was learning the word ‘soporific’ from Beatrix Potter The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies. “It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is `soporific’” I remember the furore caused when our then Prime Minister Paul Keating called the Malaysian Prime Minister a ‘recalcitrant’ and Dame Judi Dench as M calling Bond a “..sexist, misogynist dinosaur…”

Fabulous stuff!

So, should we be trawling the online thesaurus’ and dictionaries and cramming our speeches full of enthralling, captivating and illuminating words?

Not necessarily. According to advertising legend David Ogilvy author of “Confessions of An Advertising Man” the most persuasive words are simple, action oriented and memorable.

He list his favourites as:
suddenly, now, announcing, introducing, improvement, amazing, sensational, remarkable, revolutionary, startling, miracle, magic, offer, quick, easy, wanted’ challenge, compare, bargain and hurry.

So as yourself, what it is that you want people to remember? Your use of the word ‘recalcitrant’ or the emotional response generated by “I have a dream”?

Building a pitch

It is unrealistic to meet someone and in 30 seconds convince them to hand over the $200,000 you need for start up capital.

As Seth Godin says:
“No one ever bought anything in an elevator. The purpose of an elevator pitch isn’t to close the sale.

The goal isn’t even to give a short, accurate, Wikipedia-standard description of you or your project.

And the idea of using vacuous, vague words to craft a bland mission statement is dumb.

No, the purpose of an elevator pitch is to describe a situation or solution so compelling that the person you’re with wants to hear more even
after the elevator ride is over.”

Passionate people persuade – you first objective is to gain more time…