Turning a phrase

Speechwriting is too important to be left to the person giving the speech.

Read on to learn why:

① All leaders need a speechwriter on their team.

② A good speechwriter will question your thinking as well as your style.

③ Brexit continues to be an unmitigated disaster.

④ Blockchain is bigger and better than crypto.

⑤ You don’t need to be a start-up to be a challenger.

⑥ You should use any damn emoji colour you like.

⑦ Measuring what matters is how you create meaningful change.

What's new

The halfwit in charge of Fifa gave a press conference Friday. It was a car crash.

Fifa president Gianni Infantino. Source: The Guardian, 19 November 2022

“In an 57-minute diatribe which frequently drew gasps of astonishment, the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, has accused critics of Qatar’s human rights record of staggering hypocrisy and racism in a bizarre and incendiary attack on the eve of the 2022 World Cup finals.”
“The speech began with Infantino appearing to suggest that his own experiences as a son of Italian immigrants in Switzerland gave him a deep understanding of migrant workers and other minorities in Qatar.
‘Today I feel Qatari,’ he said. ‘Today I feel Arabic. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel [like] a migrant worker’.”
“He added: ‘Of course I am not Qatari, I am not an Arab, I am not African, I am not gay, I am not disabled. But I feel like it, because I know what it means to be discriminated [against], to be bullied, as a foreigner in a foreign country. As a child I was bullied – because I had red hair and freckles, plus I was Italian, so imagine’.”

Why it matters

I don’t care for football, I don’t care for the people who run it, and I don’t care for the Qatari regime. But I bring Infantino’s press conference to your attention not to comment on sport or politics but because it shows how important it is for leaders of all stripes to have decent speechwriters on their team.

① Oratory is a rare and precious skill. Most leaders are proficient at best. Very few are truly great. All could help themselves immeasurably by having a speechwriter to work with. Otherwise…well, otherwise your speech will succumb to what, from now on, I’ll be calling ‘Infanti-cide’…

Presumably the effete boss of world football was aiming for ‘I have a dream’ with his clumsy opening alliteration. Sadly what he hit was closer to ‘I have a scheme’. The language was clumsy; the meaning preposterous and apologist.

What to do about it

Take action

② Hire a speechwriter. At the very least, make sure you have someone you trust in your marketing and comms team who can 1) turn a phrase and 2) have the confidence to question the meaning behind your phrases.

Get help

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Top stories

The other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

Warning of Brexit damage to economy as Paris overtakes London’s stock exchange

③ Brexit continues to be a self-inflicted, unmitigated disaster for the UK.

Source: The Evening Standard, 15 November 2022

“Brexit has ‘permanently damaged’ the UK economy, former Bank of England policymaker Michael Saunders warned as London was deposed as Europe’s biggest stock market.”
“The French stock market now has a combined value of 2.823 trillion US dollars, marginally above the UK stock market which is worth 2.821 trillion US dollars altogether, according to figures from Bloomberg.”
“‘If we hadn’t had Brexit, we probably wouldn’t be talking about an austerity budget this week – the need for tax rises, spending cuts wouldn’t be there, if Brexit hadn’t reduced the economy’s potential output so much,’ added Saunders.”

TECHNOLOGY

Bank of America: Don’t tarnish blockchain technology with speculative crypto trading

④ Blockchain is bigger and so much better than crypto.

“It is important to separate speculative crypto trading and token prices from the underlying blockchain technology, Bank of America said in a research report Thursday after a group of major banks and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York started testing the use of digital tokens representing dollars. Citigroup, HSBC, BNY Mellon and Wells Fargo are among those taking part, as is payments giant Mastercard.”
“The benefits of a wholesale central bank digital currency include faster settlement time, which could allow financial institutions to reallocate funds that had been otherwise held as collateral into yield-bearing investments, the bank said. Other positives include reduced costs, lower credit risk and increased transparency.”
“Central banks and governments are expected to drive digital asset innovation by leveraging the private sector, the note said, and this will create new revenue streams. Governments may give contracts to payments and consulting firms for their expertise, but the larger revenue opportunity likely exists for ‘infrastructure providers that offer distributed ledger platforms, cloud storage, cybersecurity, digital asset custody/wallets and telecom for offline access’.”

MARKETING & MEDIA

Rival launches fintech marketing playbook

⑤ You don’t need to be a start-up to be a challenger.

There are four main principles that help differentiate challenger financial services brands from incumbents:

Relevant: Connecting directly to customer needs on a human (not corporate) level
Differentiated: Owning a distinct position in the market
Analytical: Finding any and all opportunities for increased effectiveness and efficiency
Dynamic: Build to move fast evolve with the world around it

WILDCARD

Why the emoji skin tone you choose matters

⑥ It doesn’t. Be respectful, always, but use any damn emoji colour you like.

“While it might seem intuitive to choose the skin tone that most resembles your own, some white users worry that calling attention to their race by texting a pale high five (or worse, a raised fist) might be construed as celebrating or flaunting it.”
“Darker skin tones are a more obviously egregious choice for white users and are generally interpreted as grossly appropriative or, at best, misguided attempts at allyship.”
“That leaves yellow, the Esperanto of emoji skin tones, which seems to offer an all-purpose or neutral form of pictographic expression, one that does not require an acknowledgment of race—or, for that matter, embodiment. While this logic may strike you as sound enough, sufficient to put the question out of mind while you dash off a yellow thumbs-up, I can sense you're aware on some level that it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.”

Off cuts

The stories that almost made this week’s newsletter.

The last word

⑦ Chris Turner of B Lab UK, on the news that London is now the B Corp capital of the world, with a record 1,000 B corporations:

Chris Turner. Source: LinkedIn, 19 November 2022

“It is our privilege to be working with such a passionate community of businesses, who have been the loudest and proudest advocates for the way in which certification has helped them to ‘measure what matters’ and change the way their companies behave.”

Don’t settle for marketing.

Strive for InMarketing: innovate, interact, influence.

Wishing you a productive week,

P.S. I’ve long admired Graydon Carter’s great taste and have been an Air Mail subscriber since he founded it. This week he guest edits My Favorite Things and may as well have written my Christmas list for me.