{"id":10293,"date":"2012-02-03T16:14:12","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T16:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publicityhound.com\/blog\/?p=10293"},"modified":"2012-02-03T16:14:12","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T16:14:12","slug":"publicity-lessons-from-a-first-place-speech-on-farts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/publicity\/publicity-lessons-from-a-first-place-speech-on-farts\/","title":{"rendered":"Publicity lessons from a first-place speech on farts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When sixth-grader Sophie Paterson of New Zealand announced that farting was the topic of her speech during a speech competition last fall, the audience snapped to attention.<\/p>\n

With her younger brother, Ben, nearby, ready to hold up diagrams that further explained her topic, Sophie launched into her speech:<\/p>\n

\"sophie<\/p>\n

Hi. Today I’m going to talk to you about farts.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Some people think farts are rude and some people think farts are funny, like me.
\u00a0 \u00a0
Farting is a fact of life. Everybody farts. I think farts are hilarious.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The Queen farts, superstars fart and I fart. We will fart until the day we die. \u00a0And apparently a person can still fart after death!
\u00a0 \u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
You can\u00a0read the entire fart speech,<\/a>\u00a0which was printed in her local newspaper, along with a story under the headline, “Ripper of a speech blasts competition.”<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n

Most of the time, when friends email me things like this, I try to ignore them. But I couldn’t resist looking at this one. As I read Sophie’s speech, I struck by how many lessons it offers for authors, speakers, writers and others who want publicity. Here are the lessons I found buried in her winning speech on farting:\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

1. Get outside your comfort zone.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Write about, speak about, and be passionate about topics that are controversial, prickly or yucky. A sixth-grader can certainly muster a lot more enthusiasm for the topic of farting than you and I could, but she not only loves the topic, she embraces it.\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0
2. Use visuals.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whether you’re speaking from the platform, writing ebooks, hosting webinars, or writing press releases, visuals make words come alive. I don’t know what the diagrams looked like on the cards that Sophie’s little brother held up in front of the audience, but I’ll bet they were a scream. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0
3. \u00a0Use lists.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sophie’s Top 10 list of animals that fart was educational. And priceless. I love how she included “Zebras and my pony Free” in the Number 3 spot.
\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a04. Use statistics.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who knew that the average person farts 14 times a day, expels a half liter of gas, or that hydrogern sulphide is the compound that makes them stink?<\/p>\n

Statistics give your topic perspective. The Internet makes it easy to obtain statistics on any topic, within seconds.\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0
5. \u00a0End with a funny poem:<\/strong><\/p>\n

A fart can be useful
It gives the body ease,
It warms the bed in winter
And suffocates the fleas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Did you see any other lessons in her first-place speech about farts? \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  When sixth-grader Sophie Paterson of New Zealand announced that farting was the topic of her speech during a speech competition last fall, the audience snapped to attention. With her younger brother, Ben, nearby, ready to hold up diagrams that further explained her topic, Sophie launched into her speech: Hi. Today I’m going to talk\u2026 Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":6,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[691],"tags":[604],"class_list":{"0":"post-10293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-publicity","7":"tag-writing-articles","8":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}