Guest Post- Bruce Turkel: The Simple Precision Of Language

"Remember Gershwin when you’re writing to be understood and when you’re writing to be influential. Your reader most certainly won’t read your text the way you want them to read it; instead they’ll bring their own pacing, emphasis, and meaning to your words. To build your brand value it’s important that your intention be so clear that your audience will internalize it no matter how they pace their reading."

Good Morning Folks,

Today's guest poster will help anyone who makes Power Points, sales calls or other presentations to avoid audience confusion and misinterpretation to be more effective communicating their intentions.

He is Bruce Turkel, founder and executive creative director of the brand management firm, Turkel Brands. Buce has helped create some of the world's most compelling brands including Miami. Bruce has worked with Hasbro, Nike, American Express, Charles Schwab, Citicorp, Discovery Networks, Bacardi, Sol Melia Hotels, Azamara Club Cruises and many more great companies.

A captivating speaker and author, Bruce has spoken at MIT, Harvard, TEDx, and hundreds of corporate and industry conferences. Bruce appears regularly on FOX Business and has been on CNN, ABC, CBS, and NPR. He has been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, Communication Arts, and AdWeek.

Bruce, over to you:

Do you know how to read musical notation? If you do you know that when you’re reading music you’re actually reading at least two things simultaneously. Written music tells you what note to play and when to play it.

Written language, on the other hand, only tells you one thing – what letter to pronounce. Of course, punctuation helps indicate pacing – pause at a comma, stop at a period (I’m not really sure what to do at a semicolon) but it’s still up to the reader to interpret how the author wanted the piece paced.

For example, read the following sentences aloud and place the emphasis on the bold faced underlined word. You’ll see how the pacing, and the meaning, can change based on where you choose to place the emphasis.

I didn’t say you should leave now.

I didn’t say you should leave now.

I didn’t say you should leave now.

I didn’t say you should leave now.

I didn’t say you should leave now.

I didn’t say you should leave now.

I didn’t say you should leave now.

Music notation is not like that. The composer provides the note to play, the time signature to play it in, the exact time each note should be played, the way the note should be attacked and the volume with which the note should be played. That’s why an entire orchestra can play a piece of music simultaneously and get it mostly right on their first reading. Of course the conductor can add flavorings and nuance, as can each player, but the basic structure still provides instructions for every part of the composition.

At the same time, musical notation has a way to allow the musician to add his or her own ideas, or improvisation, to the piece. Here the composer might suggest what the musician should play but also provides for the instrumentalists to create their own music and explore their own musical ideas by playing what they feel, and hopefully, what fits into the structure of what the rest of the ensemble is playing.

Ironically, written language, which doesn’t put nearly the same restraints on interpretation of prose, has no such flexibility. Sure, a rabbi or minister might halt their liturgical reading to allow parishioners to riff on a theme (they call it private mediation) but when was the last time you were reading a novel and the author inserted a few blank pages for you to add your own thoughts? There’s no room for readers to add their own words to a written piece.

That’s why sarcasm and irony seldom works well in print or static online advertising. It’s one thing for the copywriter to add their own inflection to a headline when they present it to a client but it’s quite another to expect a reader to add that same emphasis. Instead, the language of ads must be clear, simple, and to the point. Hopefully this will cause an emotional response without depending on a specific interpretive performance from the reader.

Imagine if Gershwin had e-mailed the lyrics of his famous song to his manager:

“You like potato and I like potato,

You like tomato and I like tomato,

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato,

Let’s call the whole thing off.”

Say what? Call the whole thing off just because we both like the same vegetables? Clearly something was lost in the transmission.

Remember Gershwin when you’re writing to be understood and when you’re writing to be influential. Your reader most certainly won’t read your text the way you want them to read it; instead they’ll bring their own pacing, emphasis, and meaning to your words. To build your brand value it’s important that your intention be so clear that your audience will internalize it no matter how they pace their reading.

And by writing simply and clearly, the results of their interpretation will be music to your ears.

Want to read more from Bruce? Visit his blog at TurkelTalks.com

Have a GREAT day as I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

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 “Life Begins At The End of Your Comfort Zone”

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Ted Tuesday— Malcolm Gladwell: The Unheard Story of David and Goliath

Moral of the story: The Goliath might not be strong and David might not be weak. Things are not always the way they seem to be. So "don't bring a knife to a gun fight." (FSO competitors take notice)

Good Morning Folks,

Today's TED Talk is a religious story but also is a metaphor for our mission here at FSO. It's about innovation. (re)IMAGING. Change and finding the power within oneself to believe that you can be all that you can be.

Moral of the story: The Goliath might not be strong and David might not be weak. Things are not always the way they seem to be. So "don't bring a knife to a gun fight." (FSO competitors take notice).

In this video, a young shepherd, a mighty warrior, an impossible victory. But, asks Malcolm Gladwell, is that really what the David and Goliath story is about?

It's a classic underdog tale: David, a young shepherd armed only with a sling, beats Goliath, the mighty warrior. The story has transcended its biblical origins to become a common shorthand for unlikely victory. But, asks Malcolm Gladwell, is that really what the David and Goliath story is about?

Detective of fads and emerging subcultures, chronicler of jobs-you-never-knew-existed, Malcolm Gladwell's work is toppling the popular understanding of bias, crime, food, marketing, race, consumers and intelligence.

I think that one way to read the story of David and Goliath is as a parable about advances in technology and the loss of an old way of war. For a long time, in Ancient Greece, the archers and cavalry were an afterthought to the infantry. But then, advances in technology (better saddles, stirrups, and bows) started to make cavalry and archers valuable. They started to turn the tide in battles (Alexander conquered the world with cavalry). And this took away a lot of the face-to-face, "honorable" engagement of war. So Homer, wanting to commemorate the great old heroes of yesteryear, made them all infantryman. And he made the cowardly villain an archer (Odysseus also uses a bow, and tellingly, he wins Achilles' armor from Ajax--a giant infantryman-- further symbolizing the death of the old way of war).

For the Israelites, perhaps, technological advances (better slings, etc.) were what allowed them to hold off against neighboring tribes. So the slinger (David) becomes a hero, instead of a villain, for killing off the great fighter of yesteryear (Goliath).

This same parable still gets told about more modern warfare. In Kurosawa's masterpiece, Seven Samurai, most of the samurai (who each represent a samurai of legend) are killed by modern guns.

Have a GREAT day as I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

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 “Customers are hard to build and easy to loose”

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