Communications expert Andy Goodman has a great quote that I like to repeat when I want to drive home the power of storytelling in presentations or marketing (as opposed to merely presenting data).
Numbers numb, jargon jars, and nobody ever marched on Washington because of a pie chart. If you want to connect with your audience, tell them a story.
This being the 50th anniversary of the shooting of President John F. Kennedy, and the 50th anniversary of my first memory of any public event — or any event that occurred beyond my neighborhood, for that matter — I want to commemorate JFK by sharing five of my favorite JFK quotes. Feel free to add your own in the comments below. (If you need some help, there’s a lot of material on BrainyQuote.)
1. “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
2. “Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.”
3. “A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.”
4. “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”
And finally, appropriate for this time of year:
5. “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
Andy writes! 