Lessons From The Fly: 3 Ways Your Story Loses To A Distraction

Today I was inspired by an article written by Neil Gordon, an innovative marketer I follow. Neil in turn was inspired by the infamous fly in the US vice-presidential debate. The fly, not respecting political conventions, landed on the vice president’s hair. Most stories about the debate focused on the fly — drawing attention away from the content of the presenters.

Neil wrote about audience distractions during a live talk. That got my brain churning about how a story can send your audience to a place you don’t want them to go.

Nobody’s perfect and anybody can make these 3 mistakes (I have and no doubt will again.) But just a few tweaks to your story will turn things around.

(1) “I have no idea what she’s talking about.”

You may have heard me tell the story about the time I used a football analogy in a live talk to a group of techies. “The copywriter is like a quarterback,” I said, “and the design team fill the role of the offensive line.”

The audience stared back at me. Missing were the usual head-nods I get from this metaphor.

So I stopped and said, “I guess you don’t follow football.” They all laughed and I made the point another way. (To be fair, Philadelphia had just won the…