Many people struggle with selling intangible ideas, benefits, and points of view. If you have a discomfort with abstractions, it’s difficult to modify your communication style to create a picture in someone’s mind of something that doesn’t physically exist.
One person who does a wonderful job of that on a weekly basis is Garrison Keillor along with the cast of “A Prairie Home Companion” radio program. Every Saturday afternoon, they bring to life a whole host of situations, characters, and even products that are completely fictional. So for today’s Change Your Character exercise, let’s delegate our task of conveying intangible ideas to them and see how the cast would approach the task by:
- Writing a script
- Incorporating rich, vivid language
- Featuring reoccurring characters
- Employing a variety of entertainment formats
- Telling stories
- Acting out skits with multi-talented performers
- Booking guests to help act out the stories
- Interviewing guests
- Intermixing real and imagined entities (sponsors, characters, etc.)
- Mixing comedy and drama
- Incorporating sound effects
- Having a band play music and theme songs
- Performing in front of a studio audience that provides real reactions to the material
Step right up to the microphone and share three new possibilities for helping your audience visualize intangible ideas based on each of the techniques above. If you need an additional push, try some Powdermilk Biscuits – they “give shy persons the strength they need to get up and do what needs to be done.”
Check out a compilation of "Change Your Character" creative thinking exercises and information on its use. – Mike Brown
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