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.