speaking

The Temperance Movement at Shepherd’s Bush Empire 4/14 (I was there!) by Rob Blackham

Your favourite band records a single. Perhaps an album. They get cover artwork designed. Then they book a tour.

This all costs money upfront, in the hope that people will like their music and buy it.

They have to promote themselves, so they arrange media interviews on shows that their target audience will see or hear, and in areas where they are travelling.

If they’re lucky, they will earn more money than they spend, and people won’t just download or share their music without paying for it.

It’s not miles away from the professional speaking business.

We create a talk. Perhaps a series of talks. We get slides designed. Maybe publish a book or create a course. Then we go out speaking (our US friends would say we go out to ‘rock the platform’).

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I was invited to deliver a workshop at the recent PSA Mega convention. (It was about the 4 x 4 x 4 approach to speaker websites, thank you for asking.) Afterwards, I took my own advice and captured video testimonials from some of the attendees, using my iPhone.

Here’s the video I made.

As you may know, sound quality is important, and you can’t rely on the in-built iPhone microphone to do a good job.

Some people have asked me how I did it. I like to be helpful, so I’ve written this post to answer the question. BUT this is a story about how NOT to do it! It’s a lesson in ‘buy cheap, pay dear’.

Here are the various tools I used, together with the lessons I learned:

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As you may know, one of my main hobbies is jazz dance – I’ve been taking classes since 1983. At the moment, we are learning a lovely routine to ‘Feeling Good’ by Michael Bublé. So Read more…

My dad tells a story about a friend of his who visited the United States. As you may know, the US visa entry form you fill in on the plane has some tick boxes where you declare yes/no to such things as ‘carrying guns’, ‘running drugs’ or ‘assassinating the president’, presumably so they can sue you if you do any of these things. I can’t imagine a real gun-runner, drug-dealer or assassin would tick ‘yes’, but my dad’s friend wrote ‘sole purpose of visit’ and of course was immediately deported. It seems customs people do not have a sense of humour  – you have been warned!

I had a call from a fellow professional speaker the other day, asking for advice on the content of her next speech. She had been given a topic by the organisers, knew I was going to be in the audience and – rightly – was checking with a sample of the attendees to find out what they needed to know so she could tailor her content to suit.

I told my caller it was all about objectives. I asked her what she was hoping to get out of the (free) presentation. Her objective was to show the audience what she could do, so they could recommend her in future. So I suggested – as my mentor once (more…)

Frank Sinatra Harry Connick Junior Two handsome singers. ‘So what does this have to do with your Bad Ads blog?’, you may be asking yourself. ‘What does this teach me about UK advertising and marketing?’ Read more…