SECRET STUFF you shouldn't share with anyone.

"Look wise, say nothing, and grunt."
- Sir William Osler

I have to confess, I've yet to see "The King's Speech."

But I plan to. Maybe at the cheap seat show, but I'm going to
after I read a critique from one of my mentors.

And if you haven't seen it, maybe you should too.

Not just because I hear it's good, not because it won
some awards, but because it's jammed with secrets for
copywriters.

How so you say?

Let me back up a bit and share a pet theory.

Namely this: always, sales copy has tried to be
conversational. And always, what you're saying and
what you're selling is at least as important as how
you say it. Maybe even more so.

However, the amount of rhetoric and storytelling and
drama we're exposed to seems higher now than ever.

And, ironically, even though fewer of us read as
much as we should, our exposure to good and bad
writing -- especially the spoken kind -- is on the
rise too.

Our ears are becoming more finely tuned.

Says my theory, that's upping the stakes for anybody
who writes copy that's meant to persuade.

In other words, it might not be enough anymore just
to write breezy, free-flowing prose that disappears.

Lately, the best copy I'm seeing is crafted not just
as conversation, but as tightly as a good speech. This
is a revelation to me, but to someone who doesn't care
about marketing and writing in a conversational style,
IT WON'T MEAN CRAP.

In fact, I've been thinking about this for a while in
my M.E.N.(marketing email newsletter).

I've even starting audio clips and analysis of some
of history's great speeches through YouTube, etc.

Like the one in the movie, most of the ones I've
come across are political. Maybe that's just because
politicians have such a love for the podium.

Or maybe that's because rhetoric expert Max Atkinson
conveniently wrote up a lot of these secrets
himself, in a recent article for the BBC.

Forget any baggage you might have with the content
or the speakers, and let's see what we can learn.

We'll start here...

* JFK AND THE POWER OF CONTRASTS

No doubt you've heard bits of John F. Kennedy's "Ask
not..." inaugural speech.

What you might not know, however, is how much the
success of that speech depended on a couple of 2000-
year-old secrets.

The first is a no-brainer: alliteration.

This is where you use the same letter sounds to start
off closely connected words. Used well, it can make
words flow. But be careful. Too much and your writing
will start to sound like a tongue twister or a nursery
rhyme.

Kennedy's other trick was called the Power of
Contrasts. With this one, you're putting two
contrasting ideas against each other.

It's like trying to force together magnets. The way one
idea pushes against the other, it increases emphasis.

A good example is the line, "Signifying renewal as well
as change." An even better one is the "ask not" quote
that made the speech famous, "Ask not what your country
can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

Kennedy averaged a contrast every 39 seconds. And you
can bet not one of those contrasts was an accident.

* MARC ANTONY AND AUDIENCE TARGETING

We'll credit this next trick -- as Atkinson does -- to
Shakespeare's version of Marc Antony, who asked
"Friends, Romans, [and his] Countrymen" to lend him
their ears.

But you could credit Kennedy for this one too, since he
was a master at using audience-targeting phrases in his
speeches... especially the ones that were televised,
for the first time, to live audiences worldwide.

* RON AND THE RHETORICAL ANECDOTE

Maybe it was his acting background, but Ronald Reagan
leaned hard on his storytelling skills at the podium.

For any occasion, the so-called "Great Communicator"
seemed to have a folksy tale in his kit bag.

Like all great storytellers, he kept the language
colorful but simple. And held off just long on the big
finish.

It's worth mentioning, by the way, that Reagan spent a
lot of time polishing his persuasive speaking style...
as a traveling pitchman for General Electric.

It's also worth mentioning, the actor in Reagan
understood the value of plainspoken passion, even when
others didn't.

For instance, his own speech-writing team didn't like a
line he'd written into his famous Brandenburg Gate
speech in 1987. But he gave it anyway, "Mr. Gorbachev,
tear down this wall!"

* OBAMA AND THE TRIPLE-WHAMMY

Love him or hate him, there's no doubt Obama has
delivered some landmark speeches.

And like Reagan, he also uses the storytelling secret.
Maybe more, though, Obama likes to use the Power of
Threes.

It's a simple idea: When you use lists of anything,
list them in threes. There's something that just feels
complete about that number.

In Obama's election victory speech in Chicago, he spoke
for 10 minutes and gave three-part lists 29 times. Now
remember, he's NOT the one writing what he says. He's the
mouth piece. He just delivers the message.

* THE "OTHER" FAMOUS KING'S SPEECH

Of course, no list of rhetorical razzle-dazzle would be
complete without the "other" famous speech by a King.

Of course, I'm talking about the "I have a dream"
speech delivered by Martin Luther King.

Other than the timing in history, what made it such a
landmark hit?

It's worth remembering King was a preacher. So even
though he was just 34 at the time, he was a seasoned
pontificator.

What you might not know, however, was that the most
quoted part of the speech wasn't supposed to be in it.

King's aides and advisors even told him to cut the "I
have a dream" section, because he'd already used it in
25 other speeches and sermons.

But King decided otherwise. He added it back into his
speech as his killer finish. And he did it on the fly.

The device is what you call an "anaphora."

That's when you repeat words in phrases, in a
deliberate pattern.

King uses the "I have a dream..." sentences re-
emphasize a point. And all told, he uses that and other
anaphora patterns eight times in the same speech.

In fact, King loved writing with repetition to make his
point. Consider, one of the most common words in his
speech was "freedom." He repeated it 20 times.

The next most frequent were "our" (used 17 times) and
"nation" (used 10 times), followed by "justice" (used 8
times).

In that alone, you've got the cliff notes of the whole
message. To top it off, King used lots of vivid
imagery, strong contrasts, and allusions to other
famous speeches to add even heft and credibility.

We could go on.

Lincoln, Roosevelt, Twain and others.

The point is, don't be fooled: when anybody gets up on
a stage to make a speech -- royalty included -- they're
selling something. Did you read that. They are selling.

If you're a chiropractor you're selling.

Sorry, it's the truth. If you're a preacher, you're
selling something. If you're a politician, you're selling.

It's a given the good ones will get SOMEONE in the
audience worked up. What's valuable for us is taking
time to figure out how they're doing it.

After all, they certainly did.

I love chiropractic and I love life. Make sure you read
this as often as you can as I'll be giving you more STUFF.

And it'll help you become a better person and a better
marketer.

I wish you the best.

Dr. Carney