Kay:
Welcome back. Today we are talking a little bit about how to make things catchy.
Shi:
I feel like we could go on and on about what we’ve gotten to cover in this series here on the Kay & Shi Show. Communication and connection, the power of specific words, how to flip our language to be more empowering and more intentional. And now we want to talk a little bit from our marketing background here about how to make your message more catchy, or if we want to use Malcolm Gladwell’s words, we’ll say how to make it more sticky.
Kay:
Ooh, I love that you brought Malcolm Gladwell into this one. Let’s bring another one of our very favorite authors into this, Dr. Robert Cialdini for our very first tip today. He says, “If you want to make it climb, a.k.a. make it popular, you’ve got to make it rhyme.” So, if you’re looking to make something catchy, try rhyming.
Shi:
Simple, easy, effective. It’s been working on humans for hundreds of years. Rhymes are an excellent way to deliver a message, make it sticky, make it memorable and it’s more fun than you might think and not as hard as you might think either. So, if you’re looking to make something sticky or more memorable, rhyming is a great way to do it. In fact, after reading his book “Influence.” Literally, Dr. Robert Cialdini wrote the book “Influence.” It’s got tens of millions of copies sold. He’s a professor, talks about this subject at length. It’s probably one of the most well-referenced books on the topic of influence. Yeah, and he says, “If you want to make a climb, make it rhyme.” So, when we got the honor of introducing Dr. Robert Cialdini at an event where he gave a keynote, we did it in rhyme and he said it was the most unforgettable introduction he’s ever heard. And yes, if you’re wondering, what did we rhyme with Dr. Cialdini? It was influence genie.
Kay:
Well, what a clever and fun introduction indeed and we were able to delight the audience with that and Dr. Cialdini even asked for a copy of the rhyme afterward, because he was just so delighted by the rhyme itself. So, that’s our first tip on how to make it catchy. Now, second tip Shi, I think this is one of your favorites, and I love how expertly you apply this, especially in the writing that you do. This is known as the zoom-out approach.
Shi:
Well, you’ll love this, and you’ll start to recognize it in speeches, in writing, in blogs or articles, and books even. Starting in on a very specific moment with a character in a book or in whoever the character is, oftentimes it’s ourselves. Starting in a very specific moment and then zooming out to whatever the lesson is that you want, but really giving our reader or our listener, our audience member, something very tangible to hang on to. If you want to talk about the power of gratitude, you could just start off with the emotion of gratitude that is scientifically proven to benefit your life and make you enjoy your experience more. Or you can say, “Yesterday morning as I was sipping my cup of coffee, as the sun came up and I saw the steam dancing in the sunlight, I was reflecting on the power of gratitude. Did you know that gratitude is scientifically proven blah di, blah di, blah,” and you go on with it? But see how much more effective giving a visual was, a moment to give our reader something to imagine, to tap into before delivering the message. Again, coming back to that message and delivery content and context. The zoom-out approach allows somebody to get that emotional connection first so that we can communicate a message more effectively.
Kay:
Such a good approach for making something catchy and you can even hear the power in Shila’s example there. So, thank you so much Shi for bringing forward your gratitude example. Such a great way of showing just how somebody can use a zoom-out approach to make their communication more powerful. Now, the next thing we want to talk about is using numbers with your words to help them be more sticky. Now, we see this a lot in the blogging realm, in the world of online content creation. This idea of the three tips to do that. The five ways you improve your skin, the seven things you didn’t know about Princess Diana, or whatever, but we also like to use counting in the way of counting down. Four things in this, three things in this, two things in this lead to one of this. So, there are a few ways that you can use numbers to create language structures that help you in your writing and make things more catchy.
Shi:
What I love about doing a countdown as you just kind of demonstrated Kay is that ability to end with the number one gives you so much creative flexibility. You can say four kids, three days, two nights, one unforgettable vacation. Four dogs, three birds, two cats at the zoo, one memorable time with my kids this afternoon. You have so many options with the 4, 3, 2, 1. One sensational marriage, one happy anniversary, one never-ending couple. There are so many cool ways that you can do a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Kay and I like to see how crazy we can get especially in our travel recaps. It’s like a ten-day trip, nine trips to the grocery store, eight different dinners out those kinds of things. But anytime that you do this the reader’s mind or the audience’s mind wants to follow those numbers. So, you have this desire to see the completion of it. As soon as you see a countdown, you’re triggering someone’s brain structure to want to know how that ends and so it’s a really good way to bring somebody into that story that’s a little bit different than the zoom-out approach.
Kay:
We hope that you’ve enjoyed some of these influence tips, some of these connection tips here on Word Week on the Kay & Shi Show. What we really want you to take away from this week is that language matters, what you say and what you think really matters. When you bring a little bit of attention to it, you can literally shape your entire life. We hope you’ve had fun with us this week and remember, we’re always in your corner and we’re rooting for you.
Shi:
Thanks, everybody.
