How do you communicate important information so that people will instantly understand it, and remember it for a long time? Do something visual. That insight comes from Sam Horn, author, CEO of the Intrigue Agency, three-time TEDx speaker, and communications guru. In an interview with Inc., she used a visit by NASA’s Moon mission crew to the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to perfectly illustrate her point.
At one point in their 11-minute interview, Fallon asks the crew about the size of their capsule. “I heard it’s like the size of maybe two minivans?” Actually, the astronauts tell him, that’s an overestimate. More like one minivan. That sounds tight when you consider that four adults spent nine days working, eating, and sleeping in this spacecraft.
“Work for the next 12 hours”
But he and his audience got a much better idea what the experience was actually like when the four astronauts did a demonstration. They stood up, formed a small circle holding hands, and then invited Fallon into the middle of it. “So just go ahead and work for the next 12 hours. You’re going to be very busy,” mission specialist Christina Koch instructed him. And then the astronauts mimed handing each other tools and water bottles and reaching around and underneath Fallon as they went about their own work. Everyone watching got an immediate and very clear sense of just how cramped that workspace was and how much teamwork it took to function there. It got the point across much better than even the comparison to a single minivan. The whole demonstration took about half a minute. No one who watched is likely to forget it any time soon.
Of course, it’s easy to make something memorable when you’re talking about a trip to the Moon. But Horn insists that the same principles can help you communicate nearly anything to your audience and make it stick. Here’s how.
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1. Make it visual.
“Years ago, Aflac was trying to compete with Allstate and Nationwide and all the big guys,” Horn says. “But what is an ‘Aflac’?” The company used to be the American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus, before switching to its acronym. Its new name conveyed little to the insurance buying public.
Then one of its ad agency’s art directors took a walk near the lake in Central Park and realized how similar the name sounded to a duck quacking. “In my book Pop, one of the things I ask is, ‘What does this look like? Or sound like?,” Horn says. “Now they’ve made literally billions of dollars. By having lovable, relatable, seeable mascots, they warmed up an impersonal, unrelatable brand.”
2. Make it surprising
The night before she judged a pitch competition, Horn reviewed some of the contestants’ business plans, including one for a hook that attached to a car seat for hanging your pocketbook on. Horn was unimpressed.