www.fastcompany.com: At its best, an elevator pitch is a pithy, memorable answer to the dreaded, “Tell me about yourself.” At its worst, it’s cheesy, jargon-filled nonsense. (e.g., I’m not a writer. I’m a “word crafter on a mission to eradicate sentence-ending prepositions from the planet.”)
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This article attracted me immediately because when I was in elementary school, I was part of a group called UNICEF Young Ambassadors to help promote UNICEF, and part of what we learned about was how to do UNICEF elevator pitches. Unfortunately, I was always pretty confused about them. I never knew which part of UNICEF I should talk about or how to make the listener interested. This article really helped clarify what an elevator pitch should look like. First of all, I find it interesting that it is important to both be relatable but also to make it unique and interesting. That must mean that there is some in between line in which the listener both feels like they understand and recognize what you are talking about, but also that they haven’t heard it said that way before. I think that the way to do this is probably to identify a concept that applies to a lot of people but then to come up with wording that is personal and from your own mind. However, according to the article, this must be done using simplified language too. So I guess that leaves it to the syntax and phrasing. The other thing I found interesting was that you ideally should have multiple different speeches prepared for different types of people. That makes sense though because then the listener will feel as if they are individually being spoken to. Anyway, I hope to get a chance to try out an elevator speech soon to see how helpful these tips are in practice.
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