ON POINT COMMUNICATIONS: OUR CORE VALUES Curious to know what On Point Communications is all about? Look no further. Find out in 60 seconds or less by reading below.  1: The “I Nailed it!” Feeling. This is the feeling I seek for every client I coach. Our coaching is theory-based. That’s right, Aristotelean Rhetorical Theory (Cindy’s graduate degree), is our foundation and centers on Speaker-Audience-Message. It’s the recipe for achieving the “I Nailed It!” feeling. When you finish an investor pitch, when you find out the Executive Summary you sent to a VC group was exactly what they were looking for,…

I am lucky to have extended family in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. That means that during our visits, we don’t have to explore the jewels of this Civil War town in one fell swoop. We get to discover it piece by piece, one visit at a time. Each year, the week before we travel, I watch Martin Sheen and Jeff Daniels in the film Gettysburg, to refresh my memory about the pivotal events that took place here more than 150 years ago. It makes my visit mean more. There is absolutely a sacred and hallowed ground here in Gettysburg. As you know,…

I recently finished Steven King’s masterpiece, The Green Mile. He did an interesting experiment when writing it – releasing it as 6 “novelettes,” one at a time. After all 6 parts were in circulation, he sold it as a box set. Reading it became an unexpectedly fun experience at my house; my daughter got started on it first. She was halfway through book 3 before I started. I flew through books 1 and 2, staying just a book behind for about a week. Then my husband started book 1. Much to her dismay, while Elizabeth was at an overnight, I passed her…

  For as long as I can remember, I have been passionate about all aspects of communication and message construction. Whether I was watching a commercial for “Air Jordan”, reading Cady Stanton’s famous “Seneca Falls” address (c. 1848), or dissecting nationally televised talks like the State of the Union, I have always been able to look at messages from multiple perspectives. To me, they are puzzles made up of pieces that were selected with great care and deliberation. In college, I’d work cheerfully in the dank, dark basement library for hours on end, analyzing speeches and identifying message strategies the…

This 3-part blog post series digs into the “Speaker-Audience-Message” of that triangle as it relates to persuasive speaking. You are reading part 3. In today’s post, we end with “M for Message.” “M FOR MESSAGE”   Freytag’s Pyramid is an excellent tool for crafting a pitch deck, sales deck, keynote or TED talk. But what is it? Generated by 19th century novelist Gustav Freytag at the height of the American Civil War, Freytag’s pyramid emerged in 1863. This “how to tell a story” tool was widely used centuries earlier in Shakespeare’s 5 act plays, it just hadn’t been put to paper…