West Wing's President Bartlet on words and public speaking

We had to turn it off. As this week’s TV entered the eighth circle of Hell with yet another "scripted reality" show (in other words, complete unreality), we had to turn it off. 

Or rather, turn to the Box Set of “The West Wing” which we are watching yet again. The scene featured President Bartlet complaining about the presentation style of a preacher whose service they had just attended.

Bartlet himself is a superb speaker, with his scripts written and perfected by Toby and Sam. (Yes, I understand they are TV characters. I still love them). In the scene we watched, he talks about the possibilities of public speaking – if we take care to craft the words we use.

“Words, when spoken out loud for the sake of performance, are music. They have rhythm, and pitch, and timbre, and volume. These are the properties of music, and music has the ability to find us and move us, and lift us up in ways that literal meanings can’t”.

When you are next preparing a presentation, think about the actual words you will use. Try to add figures of speech, metaphors, alliteration – all the devices you learned in English class. Rhetoric – the art of crafting how you say things in order to enhance your powers of persuasion – is the mark of a great speaker, or great presenter.

There are several online sites about rhetoric – take a look, and improve your presentations by employing rhetorical tricks, tropes, and triples. (Yup, that was one – an alliterative triple).

Incidentally, don’t overdo it. The response from Bartlet’s wife (played by the incomparable Stockard Channing, the real attraction in “Grease”) is “You are an oratorical snob!”

Health campaigns save lives, and save money. So why cut them?

Unbelievable, isn’t it?

In response to a parliamentary question recently, Health Minister Simon Burns revealed that UK Government spend on health advertising this year has been cut from £60.3m to £4.2m. Not cut BY £4.2m, but cut TO £4.2m.

Even to my non-mathematical mind, that’s a cut of more than 90%. By any standards, it’s a hell of a cut.

That’s not surgery, that’s trauma. In fact, it’s sick. (And I don't mean sick as a good thing - "it's well sick, innit?"). 

Because if ever the argument “It’s not a cost, it’s an investment” applied, it is to health advertising. Health advertising works. It reduces illness. It saves lives.

Yes, we’re in a recession. A deep recession. So we should be looking for ways to save money.

But if you want to save money Mr Burns, you need to increase health advertising.

Health advertising isn’t a huge cost – but treating seriously ill patients is.

This came home to me at a Marketing Society event last year when I watched The Bridge advertising agency demonstrate the results of a small-scale, low-budget campaign to raise awareness of bowel cancer in (mostly) men over fifty.

The PowerPoint wasn’t great, but the results were. The NHS had sent out the usual self-testing kits, but in this case had also run an ad campaign designed to increase participation. And awareness had risen dramatically, both prompted and unprompted, all that marketing speak. And participation had increased dramatically too.

But most importantly, as more people had participated, many, many more instances of suspected cancer had been found. Pre-cancerous traces identified and treated – and therefore, lives saved.

But let’s forget about the lives saved. Let’s think like the Government think. Purely in financial terms.

Many of those people with pre-cancerous symptoms would have gone on to develop bowel cancer. These cancers are not only nasty, and potentially fatal, they are also expensive to treat. Very, very expensive.

It costs a lot more to treat someone once the cancer has developed than it does if it is caught at an early stage. Millions and millions of pounds. Certainly, a lot more than a few 48 sheet posters and TV commercials.

A 90% cut in the health advertising budget isn’t just short-sighted, it’s stupid.  It is saving a penny now to pay a pound later.

And in case you think this is a whine based on self interest, it isn’t. Well, not wholly. I don’t work in health advertising. I don’t work for an agency with health advertising business. But I do have an interest.

Because the presentation I saw last year finally convinced me to take my own testing kit out of the bottom drawer. No pun intended.

I fasted. I locked myself in the loo. Then I undertook the strangest sampling campaign I’ve ever been involved in.

And I sent it off. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually post my poo. Well, except to Piers Morgan.

Back came the response – “we have some concerns”. Within a few days they had me in hospital, for a full “investigation”. You don’t want to know the details. No, honestly.

I was clear. And clean, as it happens. But if I hadn’t been “clear”, they could probably have treated it there and then. They may well have saved a life – they very definitely would have saved money.

You see, Mr Burns? It’s not a cost. It’s an investment.