American speechwriting guru, Mike Long, was in London this week to deliver a special workshop on ‘Strategic Speechwriting’ for the European Speechwriter Network. One of the many highlights was his mnemonic for constructing a speech introduction.
It went as follows:
Acknowledgements
Rapport
Topics
Sub-topics
The Acknowledgements are the important people in the room you’ve got to recognise. The Rapport is the way you get attention. Mike emphasised that this should be some personal connection with the city, the venue or the audience. Getting straight down to business is a bit like waving your invoice.
The Topics are the three ‘subjective things you want people to believe or feel’ – that’s essentially the body of your speech. And the Sub-Topics are the headline facts or figures to illustrate the topics.
Mike put it succinctly as, ‘Give them a map and some crayons’.