Persuasive Speaking: Sound Bite Rescue - moving your speech from obscurity to front page, a lesson from Eric Holder

In the previous post, I noted how the wrong sound bite can destroy your intended message. Here is a prime example of the sound bite saving the speech.

Yesterday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke to Justice Department employees as part of Black History Month. As Holder is the first African-American to serve as attorney general, the speech would have received some mention in larger papers, although likely tucked away where few would read it. 

Enter the well-planned sound bite: "...in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."

That one provocative sound bite moved the speech from obscurity to page one.

Lesson: If you want your speech to be remembered, if you want your listeners to talk about it for days after you deliver it, you need to use at least one well-crafted, on-message sound bite that engages the listener's emotions and thoughts. Most business speeches fail this lesson.