I am gratified by the 249 comments to this post I wrote for Harvard Business Review and seek your specific tips on quotability, the first step to connecting in this increasingly complex, information-flooded, and connected world:

You can feel the tension in the compressed smiles, quick nods and pointed questions at the annual Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare conference. Schedules are packed as the high-stakes finance crowd gathers to hear 20-minute rapid-fire talks by CEOs of start-ups and public companies who seek funding or favorable stock analysts’ reports.

Presenters speak fast, using complex medical and financial terms.

In contrast, my client, the CEO of a new biotech company walks on stage, rolls up his shirt sleeve, and stops at the center of the stage. As he turns to the audience, he pauses briefly to smile. He raises his bare forearm, pointing at a patch. “When patients put on our medical patch they will feel the pain-relieving effects faster than the latest Porsche can go from zero to 90.”

By linking the speed of the medication’s effect to a Porsche’s acceleration, he evoked the “Compared to what?” conversational cue. We are wired to draw connections between things, even where there aren’t any.

This makes the world seem more understandable, familiar, even safe.

If your “Compared to what?” connection grabs people’s attention, you have set the context in which people will view it and decide upon it, just as a general chooses terrain favorable to winning a battle.

Here are some examples of different ways to craft such a message:

Use a familiar slogan in a fresh way: After a company has spent millions to make a slogan familiar, skew it in a new direction for your intended meaning. Piggybacking on the famous “Got milk?” slogan, the Redwood Hospital in Northern California launched a billboard campaign to seek blood donations with this appeal: “Got blood?”

My friend, Paul Geffner, once owned a chicken take-out joint in San Francisco called Poultry in Motion.

Startle with specifics: “Ten times as much funding is devoted to research on the prevention of male baldness as malaria, a disease that kills more than 1 million people each year,” said Bill Gates on the need for creative capitalism to serve more people.

And venture capitalist John Doerr, who has invested in green technology, likes to say, “We can bail out the economy — we cannot bail out the environment.”

In a TV commercial for outdoor gear maker REI, we see the backs of two women who are sitting atop a peak, taking in the scenery at night, when the announcer intones, “October 28th. Jenny Kruger finds out that even the finest four-star restaurant is no match for one with 4 million stars.”

Add a dash of dry humor: A Cuban, after apologizing because he could not offer his guests anything to eat, explained the consequences of Castro’s Revolution: “The three successes were education, healthcare and sports. Three failures were breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

Now, more than ever, your capacity to create indelible messages is vital. More than money, smarts, social standing, or attractiveness, in this increasingly complex yet connected world, being most frequently quoted can keep you or your brand top-of-mind.

Whoever most vividly characterizes a situation determines how others see it, talk about it, and act on it.

When asked how he managed to write such gripping horror novels, Stephen King once responded, “I cut out the boring stuff,” and so can you. As a journalist, I slogged through more interviews than I care to recall, in which smart newsmakers would often drown in their own generalizations and jargon, despite being desperate to make a point across.

Don’t make that mistake.

The stories that grab us are those with the most vividly apt illustrations.

Interestingness, like a cork, always bobs up to the top of our attention.

What’s one of meeting planners’ biggest fears? A frowning audience – or worse. They need speakers who energize their audience.

They love speakers who motivate attendees to practice what they learn and eagerly share their successes with each other all year long – and at the next conference.

In this wobbly economy any organization needs their people to be performing well and sharing with each other.

As a speaker, here’s one way to partner with the meeting planner to get more audience members actively involved in adopting your ideas, telling others and buying more from you.

Evoke the Similarity Effect

Use it when hired to speak – as a reason to bring you back for a return engagement. It benefits meeting planners in several ways. Attendees become higher-performing because they actually put your tips into practice, motivate each other to improve and to rave about the conference.

First, here are the three steps of involvement, evoking the Similarity Effect

1. Attendees are more likely to believe a recommendation when people who are similar to them made it. Being in the same organization and/or audience evokes that feeling.
2. They are even more inclined to believe it when they know the people who made the recommendation.
3. People are most likely to act on a recommendation when the people they know refer to problems or opportunities that are familiar and important to them.

The side benefit is people feel more familiar and closer to each other after exchanging helpful recommendations. When such sharing happens in a group, the group becomes more close-knit and eager to help each other and to collaborate. That’s a bunch of good news for any meeting planner.

When a meeting planner hires me to speak I suggest, for a return engagement, these steps and benefits for making both my sessions more interactive and meaningful. I speak on connective conversation and collaboration but this approach can work for any speaker or topic.

When I speak to the group the first time I invite attendees to write to me about a successful way they use one of my methods, saying I will, with input from the organization, pick three lucky people to share their success with their colleagues the next year.

As well I will give a free eBook to everyone who emails me about how they were successful, using a tip.

Two months before the next year’s conference I meet by phone with the conference committee to choose the three finalists. Then I contact those three individuals, invite them to speak and review with them what they would like to say.

At the beginning of my return engagement session I will open by saying, “It’s so good to be back and to seemany familiar faces. Now you love to hear news-you-can-use from each other while you’re here at the conference, right?

Then please listen closely to three of your peers here in the audience who successfully adopted one of the methods they heard me suggest when I spoke to you last year.”

“After they speak you get to vote for your favorite example by circling that person’s name on the form that you found on your seat. Then pass it to the aisle where volunteers will collect them. Votes will be counted by volunteers while I’m speaking.

“That winner will receive a $400 package of my products plus a gift from our sponsor, an exhibitor here at the conference – (I say the name of the firm.) The runners up will get a $200 package of my products and a gift from our sponsor.”

Everyone here in the audience who, within three days, sends an email to (name of meeting planner) with a tip from this talk – and the way they will put it to use – will get a gift eBook of all the submissions sent to me from last year’s attendees – and oh are they good. Congratulations to these contributors! This eBook gift is underwritten by another generous partner – (name of sponsoring exhibitor).”

The three presenters are prepared, standing back stage, so they can quickly walk over to the floor mike on the stage near me.

With this set up, the three who will speak in front of their peers are motivated to be their articulate best.  When they are done speaking I ask for applause in appreciation of their success and use the last tip as the segue into my keynote.

When I am done presenting, the meeting planner comes up on the stage to thank me and to then announce the winner. All three come up to accept their gifts from me that the meeting planner gives to them. They are invited to get the sponsor’s gift at their tradeshow booth.

Then the meeting planner announces that we have one more gift for the audience. At the upcoming break to visit the tradeshow floor, attendees who drop by the booth of the sponsor of this contest will get a special gift, a booklet with tips from the speaker, Kare and from the sponsor.

Shared Benefits From Evoking the Similarity Effect

By presenting to their peers about their successful experience the three individuals gained bragging rights for themselves in front of their colleagues, reinforced my visibility and credibility with the audience – and motivated more of those colleagues to hire me and/or buy products from my web site.

By providing a layered set of ways for attendees to learn from each other and from me the meeting planner generated more value for her meeting.  The meeting planner can charge the exhibitor for the opportunity to be a named sponsor with a reason to pull attendees to their booth and to be visible for a longer time with their company name on the gifts from them and from the speaker.

How Similarity Can Spark Credible Testimonials

•  The more actions one observes in support of someone or something the more credible and compelling the effect.

• If someone hears something from someone who is similar to them the more quickly and deeply they believe it and act on that belief.  This effect is stronger if they witness the testimonial in the company of their peers.

• The more actions people takes on behalf of a belief the more deeply they believe it and the more prone they are to tell others.

Even if you are not speaking to a group you can gain customer-attracting benefits by evoking the Similarity Effect.

Benefit from evoking the Similarity Effect by providing multiple ways that your happy customers get recognized and rewarded for telling you and others about why they like your products or services. Each time they share their view they become more deeply believing and articulate fans – thus increasing their desire to tell others about you and your organization.

For more ideas about how to make conferences and other meetings more involving and memorable visit these experts:

Association Jam

Principle Innovation

Association2020

Ben Martin

Social Fish

Velvet Chainsaw’s Mid-Course Corrections

National Speakers Association

SpeakerNet

Last year VW launched “The Fun Theory” contest for best ideas to evoke better behavior in us. My favorite experiment, with more than a million views,  is “Piano Stairs.”

Does turning a set of subway stairs into a real-life piano encourage people to use them? Yes, 66% more.

My second favorite :  Does making a trash can sound like a 50 foot-deep well cause more people pick up their trash? Yes.

What a clever Me2We way to change others’ behavior – by making the new alternative more fun – and to attract avid followers to the contest.  Each new entry was a fresh media hook.

Another:  Will a pinball machine at a bus stop  (that involves  moving your feet) be sufficiently fun that you’ll be enticed to play it, thus getting exercise?

Other entries include Handwashing Art, One-armed Vending Machine, Bottle Bank Arcade, Container Disco, Gun Trash, Give and Change, Cheerleaders and The AAASHTRAY. (Enticing titles are vital). 

“The Speed Camera Lottery” won.

Seven takeaways for when you create your viral contest, sweeping your organization out into many conversations

1. Evoke Curiosity and an Upbeat Feeling

How smart of VW to inspire smiles and gain the “halo” for encouraging the creation of ideas that inspire “us” to make smarter choices.

2. Make a Relevant Connection to Your Brand

When you create your contest, with a theme that reinforces your brand personality (VW – simple, fun and reliable), make sure that the online design also embraces that image.  Note, for example the elegantly simple design of The Fun Theory’s contest site.  Reinforcing “reliable”, VW didn’t “just” spotlight the videos but included the backstory of how the experiment was created.

3. Make it Easy for Participants to Join the Conversation and Gain Bragging Rights

VW incorporated the use of FaceBook and YouTube – and a chance for fans to view, vote, comment and to share.

4. Visibly reward best entries with something they want.

5. Bring valuable allies closer by inviting them to be judges. 

6. Encourage applicants to seek votes. 

Applicants made the contest more sticky by asking for votes, showing people what they would do (create an Anywhere Organ) if they won a “grant.”

7. Don’t “Shout” Your Greatness, Let Fans Do it for You

Then there’s the classy, understated way VW sponsored the contest, by simply inserting their logo, not as an “ad” but as “An initiative of Volkswagen.”  By keeping the logo in the background, underwriting “an initiative” appointing a “jury” to judge, providing  - not “prizes” – but “grants” to winners the contest seems less like advertising and more like a service of VW. In so doing it may have polishes its halo in our minds, and so you can you, by adding your version of these elements to your contest.

 As Arnold Toynbee wrote, “The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.”

In our increasingly connected world, everyone must manage “the brand called you” announced Tom Peters years ago. Reluctant to see yourself this way? Your impetus can be to protect your reputation. 

The upside motivation to think of self-branding, however, is to attract the people and opportunities that help make your life the kind of adventure story you want it to become.  That’s my takeaway from the message of two popular authors, Dan Schawbel in Me 2.0 and Rohit Bhargava in Personality Not Included. Why am I talking about this today? Because PR maven Rohit asked women how they came to recognize a distinctive part of their personality and what it has meant in their life.  Get these insights in a gift eBooklet you can download today.  (Confession:

 I am one of the 20 women). 

Diversely distinctive women benefit from honing their brand. Consider Michelle, Heather, Jhumpa, Sarah, Peggy, Doris and Angela.

Or Penelope, Anita, Andrea and Angelina. What warms my heart is when I see someone vividly describe the smart, thoughtful action of another. Naturally, such behavior burnishes the brand of both people. 

“Presidential candidate George Bush will be active in making pronouncements in the coming weeks… He wants to define himself before his opponents do it for him,” intoned a radio commentator when the previous Bush became president. Yes, nicknames stick. “To name a thing is not the same as to know a thing,” Richard Feynman wrote, yet naming is a potent persuasion tool.

In fact, your ability to successfully label a person, product or political campaign is probably the most powerful way to influence others’ perceptions of their choices.  (Too many choices frustrate us.) Consequently, be armed to argue well. As hot opinions swirl around our presidential campaign and economic troubles, here are some nuggets from Anthony Weston’s pithy  Rulebook for Arguments:

1. “If you can’t imagine how anyone could hold the view you are attacking, you just don’t understand it yet.”In seeking possible explanations, solutions or causes, Weston suggests that we keep looking for more options, rather than immediately narrowing them. That way, we can state our case more fairly, and possibly head off objections more effectively.

2. Find out what other sides consider the strongest arguments for their position.   Also, I suggest that you find the best evidence and most vivid examples they use or could use to support their positions.

3. Preemptively raise possible counter-arguments. Develop them in sufficient detail that your readers will fully appreciate the position you are disarming.

4. Avoid using two “great fallacies”:

- Generalizing from incomplete information.

- Overlooking alternative explanations.

5. In writing your view:

• Use definite, specific, concrete language.

• Develop one idea per paragraph. Don’t “fence more land than you can plow. One argument well-developed is better than three only sketched.” Attempting otherwise is akin to offering “ten very leaky buckets to one well-sealed one.”

• Get to the point quickly. Avoid redundancy and unnecessary details. (See, also the Heaths’ warning regarding “semantic stretch”).

• State your conclusion clearly, directly and briefly.

6. Emotionally loaded or prejudicial language “preaches only to the converted.”

• Careful presentation of the facts can itself convert.” Moreover,

• “It is not a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else.”

7. Stay open to changing your mind or improving your approach by incorporating others’ ideas, giving them fulsome credit for their insights.  (Lincoln would be proud of you.)

Here’s an extraordinary, recent example of two ambitious leaders arguing agreeably about a BIG issue.

Ready for more on decisionmaking traps? T o better understand yourself in relationship to others – and for more ideas to move from me to we – read about Nudge, Sway, Multiplicity, On Being Certain, The Starfish and the Spider and Here Comes Everybody.

In the study I dub “Are you powerful or not?” I’d be in a third category. Why? Because I felt insulted when instructed to do what researchers asked of students. At Northwestern and Stanford, no less. Here’s what happened. Two professors, Adam Galinsky and Joe Magee divided undergrads into two groups.

One group was primed to feel powerful. They were asked to write about a situation in which they had authority over another individual. The members of the second group were set up to feel subordinate. They were asked to write about a situation in which they had little power.

All participants were then asked to act quickly. Using their dominant hand they were to:
1. Snap their fingers five times, then
2. Pick up a non-toxic marker and write a capital E on their foreheads. This is the part I resisted. (Must be an authority thing.)

They were told that the “E” would be washed off after the experiment. (Further down you’ll read about what happened when some presumably powerful people at a fancy gathering were asked to do something similar.)

Here’s what researchers wanted to watch. There are two ways to draw the “E”. One is to draw the prongs of the letter so that the person drawing it can read it. The researchers believe people who write it this way are “self-oriented.” Conversely, if you wrote the “E” the other way, with the prongs pointing in the opposite direction you must be “other-oriented.” You are helping others to read the “E” you scrawled on your forehead.

The researchers discovered that the group primed to feel powerful was “ almost three times as likely as the low-power group to draw an “E” that would be illegible to anyone but them.”

Their key research conclusion:
The more power a person has, the less capacity he has to take another person’s perspective. In fact, Magee found that as some people secure more power they become “disinhibited.” That may have been what happened to Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton, for instance.

I must confess that I was a participant when this study was conducted again later. Unfortunately, there’s another sign of my being in a third, perhaps deviant category. After I was finally persuaded to write that “E” the researchers were discomforted to find that no one – not even me – could read my “writing.” One other participant drew a letter that no one could identify. He’s a self-described “extreme introvert.”

Later I learned of two other resisters. Kristen Wiig and Amy Poehler from “Saturday Night Live” were the only ones who refused to participate when this experiment was conducted by a persuasive “amateur” the New Yorker’s Lauren Collins. She went to the Time 100 banquet, held at Lincoln Center celebrating “the most influential people in the world.” In the middle of this social gathering they “just” had to mark a yellow Post-it and put it on their forehead.

Guess which one of these three wrote the powerful “E”: the gossip columnist, Liz Smith; former Deputy Secretary of Defense and deposed World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz or chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein?

Sardonic suggestion:
Now if you do NOT want to build unity at your conference or other group meeting, try this. Tout the “E” experiment as a team-building exercise. Afterwards, point out the individuals in the group who appear powerful (thus less thoughtful of others) and those who do not. Then ask them to talk about how they feel abut their label, relative to others. That’s a non – Me2We experience.

Who knows? Some of us women might feel guilty for being powerful yet not empathetic. And some men might feel uncomfortable when placed in the less powerful category, even if they are also labeled as thoughtful of others.

Here’s a more upbeat finding. Do “self-centered”, ruthless people really rise in power? Not always. Social and emotional intelligence can trump ruthless manipulation suggests Washington Post’s Shankar Vedantam who points to The Power Paradox, research led by Dacher Keltner. From the moral angle, Steven Pinker seems to agree.

Want to learn more by participating in a study?

If this kind of research interests you, then become a participant in a study that, examines, “how people view ideas such as altruism, heroism, and other helping behaviors” led by Dr. Philip Zimbardo. Simply fill out a survey that takes 15-30 minutes to complete.

• “Bank fees are like financial wedgies.”• “One of the founding fathers of rock and roll has left the building he helped construct.”• “Eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables.”Guess which of those colorful one-liners you’re most likely to remember – and repeat to others? Here’s hints for honing your quotability, but first a few more pithy examples.”Darlings, make blogs, not war.” That’s Adrianna Huffington’s 2007 acceptance speech at the Webby awards. Winners are limited to five words.Asked to write a six-word short story, Ernest Hemingway gave us, “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” Recently, Wired asked sci-fi writers for stories. Life’s too short for long speeches, quickly forgotten, J.K. Rowling told Harvard. In a time-starved world, brevity becomes popular. Here’s some six-word autobiographies, from the conversation-starter of a book, Not Quite What I Was Planning:“Changing mind postponed demise by decades.“Asked to quiet down; spoke louder.”- Wendy Lee“Well, I thought it was funny.”- Stephen ColbertDan Pink asked for six-word memoirs for the career advisor, his comic hero, Johnny Bunko. Here’s two:”Life isn’t a multiple choice test.”"Followed the rules; wish I hadn’t.”Some of my favorite, brief classics: “No great thing is created suddenly” (Epictetus), “Love makes the world go round”, “You can’t direct the wind but you can adjust your sails.”Now, to be more frequently-quoted, here’s five tips, starting with brevity.1. Be brief“Bidding starts at 99 cents” announced Meg Whitman when accepting a Webby for eBay.Calvin Coolidge ( “Silent Cal”), was confronted by a woman at a White House dinner who exclaimed, “I bet my husband five dollars that I could get you to say more than three words.” He replied, “You lost.”Brevity forces you to choose your main point. The fewer the words the more clear and compelling your meaning can become. Skip the distracting underbrush of opening qualifiers and boring background. Offer your best upfront. Then, as Renée Zellweger’s character famously interrupted the courting Tom Cruise, (in the movie, Jerry Maguire) to say, “Shut up … just shut up. You had me at hello.”Yes, brevity can be tender or blunt, but never boring. “Silent Cal” – Calvin Coolidge, was confronted by a woman at a White House dinner who exclaimed, “I bet my husband five dollars that I could get you to say more than three words.” He replied, “You lost.”2. Get specificSpecificity demonstrates accountability and thus create credibility. Which statement would you remember?• We put our members first.• For your convenience, we’re staying open on Saturdays.The specific detail proves a general conclusion, not the reverse.3. Provide mental pictures from the physical world.“I still make coffee for two.”- Zak NelsonIf you knew nothing about either company, it is likely that you’d find Apple easier to recall than Intel, for example.In descending order of memorability, notice this:• blue• ocean blue• Mediterranean blue4. Make unexpected comparisonsBank fees are like financial wedgies.5. Evoke humorAccepting his 2007 Webby award, Al Gore said, “Please don’t recount this vote.”Use Brevity to Make Life More Meaningful and Memorable, Two Tips1. Start a one-sentence diary, as Gretchen Rubin suggests. No matter how overwhelmed you get, you can take the time to capture a moment. Akin to noticing more when you carry a camera on an outing, knowing you will be writing about “my day” makes you more present during it. Less chance, perhaps, that your days will be forgotten, carved in sand.2. From billboards to retorts and headlines, notice the one-liners that stick in your mind, as you go about your day. Why did you remember them? Probably for one or both of these reasons:• Innately vivid, perhaps evoking one of the five elements above.• Relates to something that matters to you, either an upsetting or uplifting.Through this exercise you’ll become aware of the power inherent in vivid brevity – and what’s on your mind as certain messages you see stick out.For more ideas on becoming top-of-mind, drop in and say hello at the international conference of IABC where I am speaking this month.

This news is sad, yet not surprising. As women, we are more concerned about our weight (56%) and eating right (36%) than we are worried about getting one of three big killers for women: cancer (23%), heart problems (20%) or diabetes (18%). That’s what Meredith and NBC Universal discovered in their study, “What do Women Want?”“Many women are skipping important medical examinations, annual physicals and screenings:• Less than two-thirds (59%) of all women get an annual physical, even fewer Gen Y women (44%).• Nearly one-third of Boomer women are not getting their annual mammograms, cholesterol checks or physicals.• 62% of women regularly give themselves a breast self-examination, while only 14% of all women get a skin cancer screening at least once a year.Read more at Meredith. Ironically, Women’s Check-Up Day was earlier this month. Love yourself? Take care of yourself.Between self-image and staying alive, this may be our biggest Procrastination Error, as women. Perhaps Hilda L. Solis, Arianna Huffington, Anna Deavere Smith and Ann Curry can spearhead a “Love Yourself” campaign to inspire more women to get vital health check-ups. From Me2We, let’s recruit apt allies, including BlogHer, The Women’s Ad Network, WIMN, Our Bodies Our Blog, AMWA and the Downtown Women’s Club. (Have you gotten your check-ups?)

This persusion technique probably won’t work on hormonally-hit teenagers (sorry weary parents) yet you could try it on spouses, co-workers or customers. Suppose, for example, you’re tired of the dirty cups in the office coffee nook. Try spraying the air with a lemony scent reminiscent of a cleaning agent. When those sloppy colleagues smell it they are more likely to tidy up. That’s what several psychologists have discovered, including Jonathan Haidt, Henk Aarts, Aaron Kay and John A. Bargh.

It’s called priming. We are unaware of it happening to us. It affects your attention, memories, performance and relationships. It is prompting one towards something, for example taking a certain action, such as cleaning up the nook, or holding a certain opinion. As Yale students who’d volunteered to be part of a study were sent, one-by-one, down a hallway to the study they passed a lab assistant in the hallway.

As the assistant’s hands were full, holding a clipboard, textbooks, papers and a cup of either hot or iced coffee, he asked each student for a hand with the cup. A few minutes later the students read about a fictional person then ranked that individual on a range from warm, thoughtful and social to cold, selfish and less social. You guessed it. Those who’d held the cup of hot coffee were more likely to rank that individual more positively than the students who’d held the iced java. They were “primed” to do so. Bargh and Robert Wyer relate this effect to “the automaticity of everyday life.” As you’ve anticipated, priming can prompt “good” and “bad” behavior.

In other priming experiences those who briefly saw words like “support” or “dependable” acted more cooperatively. Those who saw a briefcase during the experiment became more competitive. From what we touch, smell or see, it takes only small sensory cues, it seems to influence our behavior.

Priming is most effective when it is done in the same sensory mode as the original experience. For example, along the back of the yard of my grandmother’s modest home ran an abandoned railway track. The wood that supported the iron tracks was soaked with creosote. Even today, whenever I get even a faint whift of that acrid smell I smile with the memory of many happy times sitting in the kitchen, talking with Grandma.

How are you being primed to feel, act or buy? I have a Las Vegas hotel client that increased per-guest spending and positive views of the hotel’s quality, staff service – even staff attractiveness – all evoked by one sensory change. From check-in to gaming areas and hallways, the hotelier wafts the scent of sunscreen lotion. (“Hey honey, we’re on vacation, the world looks good and we’re going to play.”)

• What’s on your walls at home to prime your family to feel secure, happy and, well, at home? Or behind you as you sit at your office? What do others repeatedly touch, smell or hear when around you? Do you like to effect those sensory cues evoke?

• What do you share, give away or show others with whom you want to feel closer?

• How can you cultivate closeness and positive memories by special, repeated rituals, foods or ceremonies?

• Just before friends or clients meet with you, what are they likely to smell, see, hear or touch and how will those experiences affect how they feel about you and what you talk about? Relatedly, see how to storyboard the sequence of sensory moments others have at your conference or people-serving place.