PT Insights

Jan
10

Long Story Short

Bob Brody

While appearing live on national TV, I recently learned all over again a lesson about an issue close to everyone connected with public relations: the matter of brevity.

I was to be a guest on “The CBS Early Show” for a segment about parents’ new year’s resolutions for 2012.

At 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning in the CBS studio I rehearsed my intro. Afterward, the producer came over to me and said, “You went a minute and 15 seconds. That’s much too long, babe. You need to cut it in half. Thirty seconds, tops.”

Great. Now I had to take the messages I had crafted, all the while imagining myself as Michaelangelo sculpting David, and chip away morethan half. And for the next two hours, as I prepared to go before the cameras and the blinding studio lights to say my piece in front of about 2 million viewers, my attitude somewhere roughly in the middle of the spectrum between absolute confidence and petrified panic, I chiseled like a diamond cutter on 47th Street. I also practiced my lines at least 10 times.

You already no doubt appreciate the value of brevity in communications. In the recent Republican presidential debates you can hear how the candidates have come to speak fluently the language known as sound bite. Good. You recognize that, as studies have shown, the less you say, the morelikely your words will be remembered. Doubly good.

Maybe you’re even familiar with the observation about brevity, my favorite of all time, from the versatile French genius Blaise Pascal. Roughly translated: “My letter is too long only because I lacked the time to make it shorter.”

And that’s the key right there. Brevity seldom happens by accident. Brevity is the result of the strictest discipline. You can achieve that brevity, on behalf of yourself or your organization, only if and when you know, with absolute certainty, exactly what you need to say.

So how did my CBS close-up go? You tell me:

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