One of the most motivational speeches of all time is General Patton’s speech to the Third Army before D-day.
It isn’t a pretty speech.
It was meant for soldiers.
Hard men whose dirty business was to kill or be killed.
The effective way to talk to people is always in their own language.
So he started like this:
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.
You win a war by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
That got their attention.
This wasn’t going to be the usual list of corny, patriotic clichés.
In short order he got down to the actual business of surviving in simple, impactful, soldier’s language:
“I don’t give a fuck for a man who is not always on his toes.
There are four hundred neatly marked graves in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job.
But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before his officer did.”
This turned the usual fear-based threat on its head.
War is simple: kill, or be killed.
And this is powerful grownup advice on how to survive and do just that.
He acknowledges that these men didn’t come here to be heroes.
They just want to get it all over with.
He acknowledges that and turns it on its head:
“Sure, we all want to go home.
And the shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo.
I don’t want any messages saying ‘I’m holding my position.’
We’re advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding anything except the enemy’s balls.
We’re not just going to shoot the bastards.
We’re going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.”
Finally, he accepts his reputation for driving the men beyond what’s reasonable to expect.
He turns that on its head also, to show how it will save their lives:
“There will be some complaints that we’re pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a damn about such complaints. I believe that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood.The harder we push, the more Germans we kill.
The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing harder means fewer casualties.
I want you all to remember that.”
After that speech, Patton’s Third Army went through Europe like a whirlwind.
They destroyed nearly a thousand German tanks.
They killed over half a million enemy soldiers, and captured nearly a million more.
They built 2,500 bridges, captured 80,000 square miles of enemy held territory and liberated over a thousand cities and towns.
In an off-the-record interview, Patton explained to a journalist why he’d used the language he’d used.
“When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them dirty.
It may not sound nice to a bunch of little old ladies at a tea party, but it helps my soldiers remember it.
You can’t run an army without profanity, but it has to be eloquent profanity.
An army without profanity couldn’t fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag.”
What we can learn from Patton is in order to truly motivate people we need to talk to them in their own language.
Not in the language of the boardroom.
Not in the polite language we would prefer to use.
Whether we’re talking to schoolteachers, pole dancers, grandmas, construction workers, Oxbridge dons, children, or soldiers.
All communication, is about what’s heard, not what’s said.
i see you’ve had a site make over. Much better.
Thanks Yann.
This one isn’t the agency site, I still post on that one.
But this means I can put stuff up here that may not be appropriate there.
Stuff that may offend clients.
Dave,
Didn’t he say what needed to be said too?
80% Style 80% Substance.
John,
As Bernbach said “Execution becomes content in a work of genius”
ALSO worked because it’s General Patton
Too often these days, we get guys out of Sandhurst, West Point, art school making such speeches and it usually falls flat ‘cos the guy what’s making it has no cred
Not the rank but the experience, I reckon
I am reading now “Guns at Last Light” (it might have a different title in the UK). It’s Part 3 of Rick Atkinson’s “Liberation Trilogy.”
I think you’d like it. Particularly Gen’l Macauliffe’s response to the German surrender ultimatum at Bastogne: “Nuts.”
You are quite right, Dave.
I need to swat up on my Bill Bernbach instead of Burt Bacharach.
http://styled-comments.blogspot.ro/2013/06/362.html
George,
Only an American could make that reply.
It wouldn’t work from anyone else.
My Yiddish locution?
Dave,
“All communication is about what’s heard not what’s said”
if Patten had said nothing to his troops,
things may have turned out very different.
I don’t get it.
PS
I like the speech bubble on this new site.
That’s a very very sharp move.
Dave,
Only you could provide the answer an hour before George has asked the question.
I think General Patton would be impressed.
Hi Dave. I’ve just been looking through all the ad’s on your “videos” section.
Most of these came out when I was a kid – so it was a massive blast from the past.
The Holston Pills ones caught me a bit off guard though.
What was the thinking behind “the sugar turns to alcohol”?
Where did that strategy come from, and how was it relevant?
I can totally see why the style would have seemed really different at the time, and the executions are pretty cool.
I can’t for the life of me however figure out why telling people that Holston’s sugar turns to alcohol would sell any more product.
Ben,
Most beers don’t have anything other than image to differentiate them.
Holsten Pils had that fact.
David Abbott wrote that line in a time when you weren’t allowed to mention strength.
This had the joint benefit of repositioning other beers as full of sugar and at the same time alluding to strength.
So David cleverly got round the rules.
That’s why we kept that line when we got the account.
Great speech by Patton. But I also loved Tim Collins’ speech to his troops about to enter Iraq. No swearing, but eloquent, simple and moving. Great end line. ‘Our business now is north’.
I don’t think you mean, ‘Don’t use polite language’; rather, don’t use language that doesn’t communicate, that is sloppy, slipshod, all the things that Orwell warned against.
I have a postcard on my wall, written by the poet Basil Bunting (an amazing man, who had the most extraordinary life; check out his biography, ‘The Poet as Spy).
The card gives some of his suggestions for writing:
I suggest
Compose aloud.
Vary rhythm enough to stir the emotion you want, but not so as to lose impetus.
Use spoken words and syntax.
Fear adjectives; they bleed nouns. Hate the passive.
Jettison ornament gaily but keep shape.
Put your writing aside till you forget it, then:
Cut out every word you dare.
Do it again a week later, and again.
Never explain – your reader is as smart as you.
Hi Tom,
This is the part I like best:
“Put your writing aside till you forget it, then:
Cut out every word you dare.”
I forget who said it, but one of the truest things I ever heard was “Creating is editing”.
Dave, Tom,
That is interesting.
Sometimes I’ve read Dave’s blogs again much later
and it seemed to read differently
but I could never put my finger on why it seemed different.
Does anyone think every writer has a different maximum writing length?