Dropping three Es at a festival and being bored to tears
I heard the worst speaker in the history of the world
This might surprise anyone who sat through my 32 minute rant about John Lewis ads at the DMA in 2019, but I’m not the worst public speaker in this industry.
I’ve heard the worst speaker though. Wow.
It was at a festival, well, more of an expo, mere days before lockdown. We had the misfortune of setting up the HNW booth next to the stage. Every time one of us lunged at a passer-by with wild eyes and flailing arms, screeching “WORDS!” into their baffled faces, they could just shrug and pretend they were here for the speaker, not to speak to us.
Like I said. Not a great spot. But we did get front row seats to the talks.
When you’re at an event, you want a public speaker to do three things. Let’s call ‘em the three E’s.
Engage you. Doesn’t matter how important, or useful, or indispensible the words they say are, if you switch off bored, they’ve failed. I’ve seen Nick Parker do the same talk three times, hooks me every time. He’s a good speaker.
Educate you. Being entertained is key, but if it’s hollow, you’ll eventually feel live you’ve been had. Nobody drops hundreds of pounds on event tickets to feel mildly entertained. They want useful, usable takeaways. Ones that can be turned into newsletters.
Exhort you. You’re hooked, you’ve got important new information, now you’ve got to be inspired to go out and use it. Otherwise, what was the point of it all?
I didn’t get any of that at this festival. I just got bored by some self-obsessed bro chewing my ear off.
Just before lunch, our “hero” took to that stage, and told the worst, most boring fucking story I’ve heard in my life.
Forty straight minutes of congratulatory back-slapping from a guy who’d become sort of Twitter famous by mooching off other people’s work. It’d only engage you if you were madly in love with him. Which, judging by his groupies at the front, some people were.
Educating? Pfft. All you’d learn here is a few names. I’ve heard some luvvies in my time, but this guy would’ve made Simon Mayo blush. “And then Cadbury emailed me.” “And then Birdseye rang.” “And then Greenpeace simply insisted it had to be me.”
Without a word of a lie, the pinnacle of his self-aggrandising gobshittery was this line that’s been burned into my brain for years.
“And I said you’ll never guess who’s on the phone mum, it’s only the UN.”
Pause for applause. To be fair, two of his groupies actually whooped, while a guy stood at the back nearly choked holding back the laughter.
I’ll give him one bit of credit, he made the rest of the day amusing because he’d inspired half the listeners there. He exhorted us to make our own fun.
As someone who’d later become a client remarked after chatting to us, “I’ll have to go now, the Pope’s on the other line.”
Turns out those anti-drug campaigns were right. If you drop three Es at a festival, everyone’ll laugh about the boring shit spilling out of your mouth.
Something mint - this classic ad that’s nothing at all to do with the speaker in question at all…
I’ll keep this one brief. After all, I’m gearing up to break down a dozen Christmas ads next month.
Here’s a very simple bit of visual messaging shorthand. If you’re talking about waste, drop a Womble in.
After all, nothing bothers a Womble more than waste. That’s why they’re well into recycling the same old crap time after time…