Early in my on-air career, I had a Program Director who was a great mentor and talent coach. The late Paul Franklin, then of Z103 in Beaufort/Atlantic Beach, NC made his mark on me early on, and when I began my own programming career a few years later, I passed on a lot of the wisdom he shared with me about effectively communicating and generating a
repoire with your listener - essentially the difference between being a disc jockey and a personality.
Oh, there were extensive lessons on show prep - not just telling me to do it (which all programmers do) but actual
ly teaching me how to do it (a novel approach that should be obvious but somehow isn't). Concepts like working in top-of-mind and local references became staples of my approach (and the dread of every young air talent I would later critique). But another concept he stressed was talking in "word pictures".
Word Pictures, quite simply, are visual phrases. It's the difference between saying "I got in my car and drove down the road" and "I crouched down behind the wheel of my lime green '74 Pinto and bravely pulled out into afternoon rush hour on Sunset Boulevard." Get the picture?
Now, the theory behind word pictures came from someone Paul had worked with at 94Z in Raleigh. I forget the gentleman's name but he was a deep thinker, the kind who ponders things and comes to realizations. He had concluded that people think in pictures and, therefore, related to pictures in a way that they didn't relate to words. So if you spoke in word pictures, people could visualize what you were saying - helping you cut through the clutter of a subconscious medium.
For years, I repeated this theory as fact. But I'm kind of a thinker, too. And I started to realize something. I can't speak for everyone, but I most definitely do not think in pictures. I think in words - then I create the pictures to illuminate my words. I suspect everyone does, but I don't know. But that didn't damage my belief in word pictures. Far from it.
See, I still realized that the word pictures definitely cut through and stuck with you. They did stimulate another sense. Instead of just being words that you heard, these phrases encouraged you to create a very specific accompanying visual. (By the way, radio friends, this is the power of the spoken word, not of pictures and video - so it's our strength! Imagine the images we can create on a budget of zero!).
Well, since I realized we were just using words to stimulate the memory of another sense (yeah, the memory - I know what a lime green pinto looks like and I've seen afternoon traffic on Sunset Blvd., but we weren't actually seeing either when I used that phrase earlier) it dawned on me that we have five senses! I can hear things, I can see things, I can feel things, I can taste things, and I can smell things. But if the spoken word is powerful enough to conjure up vivid images (from your past experiences) then words could probably be used to fire up the sensation of the other senses, as well.
Hmmm, as I sit here writing this an hour from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, my mind drifts to the sandy beaches and hot, summer afternoons navigated between the beach umbrellas and bikini-clad sunbathers, and I can smell the salt air coming off the ocean. Don't you feel the hot sand between your toes, scalding, actually, until you make your way into the cool, frothing Atlantic surf? And when we meet up at the cottage afterwards and fire up the charcoal grill, throw some fresh, succulent jumbo shrimp over the coals until they're hot, with just a trace of grill marks, then dip them in melted butter before popping them in your mouth, well...
Get the picture? With a little effort and some planning, you can become an on-air communicator that taps into the full sensual repertoire of your listener. Let your competitors continue to be a music-dispensing commodity dwelling in the background. Burst through the subconcious, connect with your listener on an emotional level, stir their senses, and learn that you can, indeed, talk in technicolor!
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