What Speakers Can Learn from PSAs
This is the fourteenth post in Authentalk’s series about how to write subject matter-specific speeches. Call it Attentiain.
What movie best captured your attention in its cold open?
I’ll bet it didn’t give too much away.
The Social Network begins with a young Mark Zuckerberg's girlfriend breaking up with him — not a single image of Facebook. The Matrix starts with Trinity escaping from the agents, with no mention of Neo. Jaws opens on a shark attack, without introducing Quint or Hooper. Up walks us through a montage of Carl and Ellie's whole relationship before Russell, the kid, ever appears. Inglourious Basterds introduces us to Hans Landa, but leaves out the Basterds themselves. Scream kills off Drew Barrymore before the main characters even show up. The Dark Knight opens on the Joker but no Batman.
When I help people improve their speeches, I emphasize the importance of those crucial first minutes. You don't want to introduce yourself too soon or state your thesis outright.
What you want to create is a knowledge gap: your audience should grasp the general territory, but still want to keep learning more. The best way to do that is through storytelling — always visceral, always visual, sometimes humorous, sometimes dramatic. The audience should sense they're being taken somewhere before they know exactly where.
And whatever you open with, you have to bookend it at the end. Everything in those movies comes full circle: Zuckerberg's misanthropy, the battle against the Matrix, hunting the shark, going to Paradise Falls, confronting the Jew Hunter, unmasking Ghostface, confronting the Joker's schemes.
In competitive forensics, we call this the vehicle: a hook you open with and keep weaving throughout the entire speech.
One nationally ranked oratory contestant had a speech about our failure to know how to give up, so he began with the foolish optimism of the Rio Olympics. When he arrived at his three recommendations on defeating the sunk cost fallacy, he structured them as Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Another had a speech about the problem with escapism, so he wove stories of Harry Houdini, the master escapologist, throughout.
The vehicle gives the audience something to hold onto while your argument builds. And it gives you a spine, so when you land your final point, you can bring the image back and the whole speech snaps into place.
So where do you find material like this? Where can you see attention-grabbing storytelling that earns your attention before it pivots to a thesis and call to action?
I recommend Public Service Announcements.
PSAs have 30 to 90 seconds to make you lean in. They all have a point beyond "buy our product." And the most effective ones prompt you to Google the cause, which is exactly what a great speech opening should do.
Here are seven favorites, each built around a different technique you can steal.
Smokey The Bear (1980s)
Smokey works because the message is delivered by a lovable creature with something to lose.
This Is Your Brain on Drugs (1980s)
Ask: what's the simplest, most visceral image that captures my core idea? Here, the speaker just cracks the egg and lets it sizzle.
House Hippo (2007)
You can set up a scenario the audience accepts uncritically and then reveal what they should have questioned.
Dumb Ways to Die (2013)
The audience that would ignore a traditional safety announcement watched this 170 million times on YouTube and drove a measurable 21% reduction in train incidents.
Most Shocking Second a Day Video (2014)
Take your audience's familiar world and place it inside the problem you're trying to illuminate.
Back-To-School Essentials | Sandy Hook Promise (2020)
Weaponize a familiar genre by fulfilling its form while subverting its content.
A helmet has always been a good idea (2021)
Borrow credibility from an unexpected source, ideally one so removed from the usual argument that your audience can't mount their normal resistance.
Three questions to take into your next speech:
Which of these techniques fits the story you're trying to tell?
What image could function as your vehicle?
How can you bring your opening back at the close, so the speech completes a circle?
The best speeches, like the best cold opens, make sure you can't look away.
