The sun shone most of the time on the Notting Hill carnival today. Not that rain would have dampened the exuberance. Too many performers have anticipated the day, planning that started the day the last one ended, creating ever more exotic costumes, 100 strong steel band rehearsals,floats louder than ever, building to the fever pitch of carnival. 

 It was an experience anticipated by half a million people. They were not let down. It was joyful, surprising, engaging, vibrant, creative and loud.

 Compare with the average business pitch. Formal, predictable, safe.  And yet this audience too will have arrived with a sense of anticipation,  hoping for a performance that if not loud is surprising, engaging, vibrant and creative.

Next time you pitch, add a touch of carnival!

An article in the Daily Mail, marking the anniversary of Churchill’s “never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many  to so few ” speech, posed the question: could any modern politician have made this speech? Or one like it.

The answer is no. Not because there is not in Britain some smouldering orator waiting to ignite but because there is no situaton so desparate or despairing that calls for such a speech. Great orators greatest performances have been in response to a passionately held need to ‘bring a nation with them’, to change their views.

In the second half of the 20th century the few recognised orators include Martin Luther King- “I had a dream”, J.F.Kennedy- “think not what your country can do for you..” ( imitated by Cameron) and, less happily, Enoch Powell and his infamous “rivers of blood”. This century Obama- “Yes We Can” is the only English speaker seen as a true orator. 

The answer is also no because of the medium. Orators need platforms and audiences not the conversational approach of television. David Cameron’s celebrated ‘no notes’ platform speech at the Blackpool conference, whilst not great oratory, did win him the leadership. Churchill’s platform was, of course radio. Not as we know it today but radio as the nation’s lifeline with a captive and spellbound audience hanging on his every word.

 My last post, Make Feedback your Friend, described how experimental opera performers subjected themselves to the potentially painful criticism of a live audience.  An extreme form of rehearsal and rehearsal is something many pitch teams go out of their way to avoid. They settle instead for the run-through.

Is this enough and what’s the difference?

 The run-through is a necessary activity. It will involve talking through likely content, who says what and for how long, a discussion on visual aids, working out timings and hand-overs,  who sits where  or stands, how the room will be propped, where will the client sit, what are the likely questions and who fields them and so on.

Necessary but not a rehearsal. Pitching is performance and it is no good escaping the ‘pain’ of rehearsal with a run through. To improve performance you need an audience  in front of you. Other members of your team are not good for this. They already know what you are going meant say and will be be more concerned with content than your style.

Any non-participant, given a simple briefing of the context, can raise the value of rehearsal.  In any pitch you are putting on a show and in rehearsal you need someone to show off to.

The lively Riverside Studios in London’s Hammersmith are hosting this week  The Opera Festival. It is run by tete-a-tete, an organisation that sets out to help groups and individuals grow as artists. New and experimental performances take place on stage in front of a paying audience.   This not a rehearsal but it is a form of product testing.

The audience are more or less coerced into filling in a feedback form before they leave. The possible  overall ratings range from:  (1) =Sorry. didn’t work for me to: (4) =Bloomin marvellous. Then you can chose any three of;

Challenging.      Passionate.      Loved it.      Unengaging.       Unfinished.       Serious.       Original.       Commonplace.         Not my cup of tea.    Confusing.    Ship-shape.    Ship-wreck.

Listening to ‘funny’ amateur  reviewers discussing their feedback over drinks in the bar made you feel a touch concerned for the would be artists but this was an intelligent and brave exercise. Improvements will come, even if egos suffer in the process.

Pitches are performances yet it is surprising how few companies will put themselves through a similar feedback process.  It is called rehearsal. They are the ones who will be “unengaging” at best and “ship-wreck” at worst.   And “sorry it didn’t work for me”!

Athletics is not a team sport.  Success calls for individuals who are self-motivated to a ridiculous degree and totally selfish, to the point of obsession, in pursuing training schedules that will allow them to achieve the ultimate goal of the PB , the personal best.

 Spear-headed  by Jessica Ennis, who combines astonishing athleticism with steely competitiveness, all the British athletes who performed great feats in Barcelona did so as individuals. Team mates can’t help you jump higher. Well, not usually but this time there was another factor at work. It was camaraderie.

In various interviews, carried out in predictable fashion by the BBC, the athletes paid genuine tribute to the happy sense of team and the unusual level of camaraderie. Even ‘bad guy’ Dwain Chambers, who failed by 1/000th of a second to win a medal, was gracious to fellow team members in defeat.

They all felt this camaraderie, fostered by the ‘tough love’ of Head Coach, Charles van Commenee,  boosted individual performance. Compare and contrast with Capello and England’s so called ‘team’ in South Africa!

In any good business developing camaraderie is a given.  Sharing the adrenaline of competitive pitching is a great way of doing it.

Who is the best actor? Someone who knows both of them well says that it is their acting skills, demonstrated in their youth, that set them apart from their political rivals.

Gordon Brown might be cleverer but it was Tony Blair who knew how to  hold an audience, who understood that it was not what you said but the way you said it that that made the emotional connection, that projected likeability. This  won over voters. Brown never seemed to get this and believed his words and conviction were enough. Performance was beneath him.

 David Cameron is a lot better actor than Brown but not as good as Clegg. That is why in that all important first television debate Clegg won the viewer vote  so convincingly. This was a highly staged piece of theatre where acting skills allied to carefully prepared ’spontaneous’ scripts and professionally directed rehearsal played to his strengths.

Both  turned in superb performances in the famous  press conference in the Rose Garden at No 10, described as ‘like a light romantic comedy with male leads played by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth’. (No acid reference to Brokeback Mountain!)  Since then in the world of day-to-day politics and spontaneous interviews Clegg’s relative lack of  political savvy and leadership are  now evident, but it was  performance  that got him there.

In business pitches one of the commonest errors  is that of focusing on content at the expense of performance. Be a Clegg, not a Gordon!

This is the title of the opening chapter of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, What The Dog Saw. In typically exuberant style, it tells the extraordinary story of Ron Popeil inventor of the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ.

He came from a family whose descendants walked the boardwalks and the country fairs in the 1880s selling kitchen gadgets. It was Ron who was the pioneer in taking the secrets of the boardwalk to the television screen.

The QVC channel is not to everyone’s taste but it is hard not to be impressed by his infomercial for Showtime.  Twenty-eight minutes and thirty seconds in length, it was shot live before a studio audience, aired for the first time in 1998 and has run ever since.

The response was such that in the first three years sales of  Showtime exceeded a billion dollars.

Ron was pitching a product that he had invented and of course he made sure the ” product was hero”.  But there are other lessons for pitching mortals. Here are two of them.

In pitching parlance he knows how to  execute “the turn”. This turn, or simply asking for the business, is something many feel uncomfortable about and don’t plan. Think Ron.  “The pitchman must make you applaud and take your money”.

The product is good but Ron succeeds because he knows with absolute certainty that  “pitching is first and foremost, a performance”.

 With the Coalition honeymoon well and truly over, the election battleground is a fading memory and it is easy to forget that three formidable competitors, Cameron, Brown (remember him) and Clegg, fought the pitches of their lives, climaxing with the television debates. There was much to admire and lessons to be learnt!

 Mastery of content.

 You cannot perform well in any pitch if you have not prepared to the nth degree- studied, questioned, listened, researched- to be rock-solid over your content. Agree with them or not, you had to admire the levels of preparation by all three. All were impressively fluent in articulating their policies, responding strongly to anticipated but genuine questions.

 Powerful opening.

 First impressions really do count and Clegg knew this. With the element of surprise on his side, his ease in front of the camera and his clever opening statement, he set out his different positioning and paved the way for his successful performance, raising viewer expectation and undermining his rivals. Some opening!

 Rehearse, and then some

 Despite having to run the country (Gordon), their parties, develop policy, door-step marginals, kiss babies, handle countless interviews, take every photo opportunity, sleep occasionally they all found time to rehearse. And rehearse… (Brown even got Alistair Campbell to play Cameron). Non- rehearsal is the biggest sin.

 Beware vampires.

 A common error when caught in pitch fever is to think that an amazing video or visual demonstration will create the winning theatre forgetting that people buy people, not their props. The ‘vampire video’ distracts. Both Brown and Cameron over-played holding vampish wife hands!

 Power of the pause.

  As adrenaline flows, there is the temptation to show how clever you are, how much work you have done and to fill all the available space. This must be even more so when talking against the clock. Only Clegg resisted. He took his time, saying less and pausing more. He looked confident.

 Theatre of likeability

 In any pitch the deciding factor is so often down to making an emotional connection. “Do I like these people?” Clegg came across as more likeable. This did not influence polling but if he had not been ‘liked’, forming the Coalition would have been much harder.

 He and Cameron played the likeability card when it really mattered at their first appearance together. “The extraordinary press conference in Downing Street’s rose garden could have been directed by Richard Curtis, a light romantic comedy with male leads played by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.”(Sunday Times)

These lessons were developed as an article for www.gorkanapr.com

The exaggerated outpourings of national fervour that are the World Cup are captured by the television cameras  through the teams, predictable shots of delirious fans and the ubiquitous managers. Their every facial expression and gesture framed on our screens.  

 For Argentinians, for whom football is a deep part of the national pschye, it must have been some consolation to know that their manager, the almost magical Maradonna, felt the pain as deeply as they did. An Argentinian crying for Argentina.

 Now try sharing a  national sense of grief with this pair. One a cool undemonstrative Swede, the other a hot demonstrative Italian. One already moving on from the unlucky (to have chosen him) Ivory Coast, the other, lucky for him not us, to continue in his post, too expensive to fire.

How much better if we felt the manager cared, really cared, as we do, and that he was motivated more by patriotism  than money.  Whether we fail  next time or, who knows, succeed, it will be so much more satisfying with a Harry Redknapp or a Roy Hodgson.

When the pressure is really on body language is usually an accurate indicator of who is really up for it and who is not.  We saw this last week!

Winners include  David Cameron  and George Osborne. Both have visibly grown into their new roles. Cameron already looks and acts the part on the world stage, exuding confidence. Osborne handled the toughest of budgets, the speech and the interviews, with genuine poise and control. Impressive.

Two relatively unknown tennis players, Iszner and Mahut, handled eleven hours of unbelievable competitive pressure, one with a deliberate high energy demonstration, the other in energy conservation mode.  But both, as the close-ups showed, were  in their own  zones of focused unyielding determination. Unreal!

Compare this with the week’s (very big) losers.

Capello a few short weeka ago looked like a winner. Strong, silent, standing tall with arms folded, a man in command. Since arriving in South Africa he has been a changed man. Angry words, increasingly manic, and mystified, body language. He no longer looked a winner.

Much the same happened to the team. They never looked as if they were thrilled or delighted to be taking part and that was before they went on the pitch. The words spoken were either unpleasant petulance, Terry, or subdued mumbles, Lampard. The only one who looked positive was James once reinstated!

On the pitch you did not need to know the score to tell they were losers.