In Praise of Boris Johnson’s Speeches

Brian Jenner argues that the London Mayor’s speeches are smarter than most people give him credit for.

While searching for candidates for the UK Speechwriters’ Guild Business Communicator of the Year 2012, I found a speech by Boris Johnson on the CBI website.

It was so good, it was tempting to put him forward for the award, even though he’s a politician, not a business man.

What makes Boris so special?

He has a light touch. He said his political hero was the mayor in Jaws. The mayor was the one who wanted to keep the beaches open.

This isn’t the first time that he has used a reference to popular film culture. In his 2008 New Year message he quoted Colonel Kilgore from the film Apocalypse Now, making an analogy with the recession. Lt Col Kilgore said: ‘Some day captain, this war is going to end.’ Boris insisted that one day the recession would end.

Would they understand the reference outside the art house cinemas of Islington? It was so simple, it wouldn’t matter. By using the quotation, he underlined the hopeful sentiment.

Boris peppers his speeches with surprises and self-deprecating modesty, but he also makes very serious points. He invokes the German beschäftingungs Wunder – the small employment miracle, perhaps for comic effect, but it works also as a memorable phrase.

He burbles on but he underlines the message of dealing with youth unemployment and the status of London as a European capital. Whether he’s plugging a biodegradeable coffin, a Barclay’s bike or a hydrogen generator, he’s not afraid to sell London with undisguised joie de vivre.

I say to my friends at the Treasury, F D Roosevelt had the new deal, I’ll give you the wheel deal.

A leader has to tell people what to do. Boris grasps this. Von Moltke the Elder said that ‘Strategy is not a lengthy action plan but rather ‘the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances’’.

This is what’s lacking in many of the Big Society speeches. What exactly do we have to do to be part of the Big Society?

The Mayor’s message is encapsulated in one simple quotation from Mahatma Gandhi: ‘We’re putting the village back into the city.’

Every Londoner can understand that. We want the fruits of global capitalism, but it’s no good if you can’t have a civil conversation with a next-door neighbour. We need homes with ‘rooms big enough for human beings rather than hobbits’.

It’s a message that can guide every decision made in the Government hierarchy without the leader ever having to give explicit instructions.

Boris also has a vision. He can make very serious speeches like the one at the launch of a report on Britain’s airport capacity. He wants a new London airport in the Thames Estuary saying, you can’t put a ‘Quart into a pint pot at Heathrow’.

Max Atkinson points out that every speaker has the challenge of keeping the attention of the audience. Boris uses humorous asides, and questions to the audience to achieve this.

He’s spirited. He made good jokes about how the rioters didn’t steal any bikes or antiquarian books. Having pointed out how London leads the world in green energy conservation, he quipped.

One thing we’re not going to be lagging in London, is lagging.

He said:

We export teabags to China

We export bicycles from Chiswick to Holland

We export TV aerials from Wandsworth to Korea

We export cake to France from Waltham Forest

He does lapse into manically self-centred hyperbole about Britain, or London, being responsible for every significant innovation in green energy, sport or trade, but it keeps his audience entertained.

There’s a corny line used by public speaking trainers which goes, when Aeschines spoke the people said, ‘How well he speaks’, when Demosthenes spoke the people said: ‘Let’s march!’.

Boris Johnson’s delivery can be erratic, but his speeches have charm and remind you that we can all contribute to making London a better place. He makes you want to be part of the process.

Chip and Dan Heath explain in their book Switch, How to Change Things When Things Are Hard if you want to change anything, analysing a problem in depth often doesn’t help. Instead observe what works and copy that.

The Mayor pulls off the Classical hatrick: docere, movere, delectare (educate, motivate, entertain). He livened up the CBI which is good for British business. He gives excellent speeches which invigorate our public life. We wish there were more like him.

Soapbox (this article appeared in PR Week 14 October 2011)

I’ve been commissioned to write an analysis of the speeches at the Party conferences by Messrs Clegg, Cameron and Milliband, but I’ve got a confession to make. I didn’t watch them.

Instead I’ve been reading Chip & Dan Heath’s book, Switch: how to change things, when change is hard. The authors say analysing the causes of a problem rarely helps to solve it. If we want to change something we have to study what’s working and champion that.

As a speechwriter, I love listening to great speakers but I don’t expect to find them at party conferences.

If we want to change that, we’ve got to ask where we will we find them. Who is putting on the events that everybody wants to be at? Where do the great speakers go?

The answer is TED (Technology Education Design) – a private non-profit organisation. It began in the States and is now a global umbrella for several conference formats.

I’ve watched a future Prime Minister, Rory Stewart MP, give an unforgettable speech about foreign policy in Afghanistan. I’ve heard Sir Ken Robinson talk passionately about education policy. I spotted a brilliant speech at a TEDx in Brighton about the problems creatives have communicating with business people.

For me, there is a huge difference between these speeches and the speeches you get at party conferences: TED talks make me want to leap out of my chair and get involved in the world.

TED has a rule that no presentation can last longer than 18 minutes. If the Party leaders took only one lesson from TED, that would be a sensible one.

TED find articulate people with ideas worth spreading and they give them a platform. That’s the sort of thing we’d all like to see at a C21st party conference.

Brian Jenner runs the UK Speechwriters’ Guild

Pitching the World

Lots of our members would like to go freelance. Last week a blogger reported his experiment of writing to 650 MPs offering his services as a speechwriter. He tried raw honesty as as tactic and submitted a sample speech.

You can read about his experiences here: http://pitchingtheworld.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/how-to-be-a-political-speechwriter-part-one/

The Ups and Downs of Speechwriting

Speechwriting can be a satisfying and lucrative career. But our jobs hang by a thread, and we can never afford to forget that.

There are two ways of dealing with this insecurity. One is by using speechwriting as a stepping-stone to an editorial or managerial position. The other is by cultivating speechwriter survival skills.

Here are some tips I’ve picked up over the course of my own career:

First: Always remember that you have two clients: the person you write for – and yourself. And you are just as important as the client.

There’s no conflict of interest here. If you’re working to make your client look good, you’re also making yourself look good. For example: You’re hired to write speeches? Offer to ghost an article or op/ed for your client. If it gets published, the client looks good and you’ve got another choice writing sample to add to your portfolio; something to show potential employers that you’re good at different kinds of writing.

Second, Be visible. One reason why speechwriters are so vulnerable is that we’re often faceless, anonymous beings. Some of us think that being invisible makes us secure. Wrong. Don’t assume that if you keep you’re head down and do a good job, you’re safe, because you’re not.

Be visible. Be visible within the organization. Volunteer for projects that will help you grow professionally, win you friends and allies, and add to your portfolio. Offer to write an article for the company magazine, for instance.

Be visible outside the organisation as well. Look for opportunities to speak and write outside of your job. Build a network, because some day it may be your lifeline.

Third: Always have a contingency plan; always be prepared for the possibility that you may find yourself suddenly unemployed.

That means belonging to professional societies that have job banks; that means cultivating recruiters before you need them; that means scouting potential employers.

It also means learning how to market yourself. Here again, I recommend seeking opportunities to speak and to publish outside of your regular job. I know that freelance speechwriting on the side can be a dicey proposition, but you can still write an article, review a book, and add otherwise add writings samples to your portfolio.

I’ve always liked General George Patton’s definition of success. Patton said that success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom. And he was right.

Everybody falls at one time or other, sometimes through no fault of our own. But how high you bounce depends on you.

Hal Gordon is a former White House speechwriter. Click here to visit his website.

Book Review – Management Speak: Why We Listen to What Management Gurus Tell Us

By David Greatbatch and Timothy Clark
Published by Routledge, (156 pages)
ISBN 041530623X, £29.99

This book is a laconic, but rather devastating academic analysis of how business gurus ply their trade. Part of me thinks there may be a streak of envy in all this because academics are notoriously poor communicators. All the same the authors dissect how the gurus work their magic. They tell rather banal stories, they avoid criticising the audience directly, they make everyone laugh and they craft tales which paint themselves as being at the cutting edge.

The authors show how Atkinson’s analysis of political rhetoric is equally applicable to the spellbinding oratory of the gurus. Reading it fills you with confidence as a speechwriter, because you’re studying the flesh and bones of oral communication. What many people might find slightly disturbing is how they borrow from techniques used by charismatic preachers like John Wesley. Sure enough I watched some Tony Robbins after reading the book and saw some rather clever techniques being used. Read more