Dramatize Your Ideas
This is a time of dramatization. Merely stating a truth isn't enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship.
The movies do it. Advertisers do it. The difference between the idea that lands and the idea that doesn't is often not the idea — it's whether it was felt.
The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
The Bulletin was being maligned: too much advertising, too little news. Instead of publishing a defense, they clipped all the reading matter from one average day, classified it, and published it as a book — One Day, 307 pages. They sold it for a few cents.
That book dramatized the fact far more vividly than any rebuttal could. It conveyed the same information as pages of figures, but made it felt.
Rat Poison and Live Rats
Window display manufacturers of a new rat poison: instead of a sign, they put two live rats in the window. The week the rats were shown going about their business, the crowd loved it. Sales jumped to five times their normal rate.
National Cash Register's Speechless Convention
NCR discovered dramatization was the best way to train salespeople. They held a three-day convention — and gave not a single speech. All ideas were presented in little sketches and plays. The salespeople thanked their lucky stars because they didn't have to listen to even one speech about selling.
Jim Yeamans' Pennies
Jim Yeamans called on a neighborhood grocer with old cash registers. Instead of saying "your registers are outdated," he said: "You are literally throwing away pennies every time a customer goes through your line." Then he threw a handful of pennies on the floor.
The sound of pennies hitting the floor stopped the grocer. The words should have interested him; the sound reached him. He ordered all new machines.
Mary Catherine Wolf's Form Letter
Wolf couldn't get an appointment with her boss after requesting one all week. On Friday she wrote him a formal letter explaining the importance of the meeting — and enclosed a self-addressed form letter:
"Mary Catherine Wolf — I will be able to see you on ___ at ___ A.M./P.M. I will give you ___ minutes of my time."
At 2 p.m. the envelope was back in her mailbox, filled out in the boss's own hand. He saw her that afternoon. They talked for over an hour and resolved everything.
"If I had not dramatized to him the fact that I really wanted to see him, I would probably be still waiting for an appointment."
James B. Boynton's 32 Jars
Boynton had market research on cold cream competitors to present. First visit: argued about methodology, won the argument, lost the sale. Time was up.
Second visit: said nothing about data. He opened a suitcase and placed thirty-two jars of cold cream on top of the executive's desk — all competitors, each tagged with the research findings, each telling its story briefly and dramatically.
Ten minutes became forty minutes became an hour. The same facts, made vivid.
The Principle
Facts do not speak for themselves in any room. They pass through attention first, and attention belongs to whatever is alive. Make the idea live — through action, demonstration, image, surprise, or physical presence — and the fact lands where argument never could.
Connections
- arouse-an-eager-want — dramatization is one way to make the other person feel the want; abstract arguments rarely arouse, vivid demonstrations do
- give-honest-and-sincere-appreciation — showmanship requires noticing what will move the other person; both techniques require understanding your audience first
- talk-in-terms-of-interests — dramatization works best when the demonstration centers what the other person cares about, not what you want to prove