Comic Sarah Cooper became famous by miming Donald Trump. She said a contextual shift helps us focus on what he says rather than how he says it.
In effect, by separating the words from the person we separate the signal from the noise.
The challenge is that in most business communications, the messenger and the message arrive as a single package.
We can’t just “separate them out” for our audience.
In fact, behavioural science tells us that people rarely process the message in isolation. Our brains are wired to use who is speaking as a shortcut for what to believe. Authority bias, halo effects, and messenger effects can all shape the way the same words are received.
Furthermore, the visual, vocal, and contextual cues hit our brains first; the actual words take longer and more effort to process.
By the time we process the message, we’ve already formed an impression of whether it’s worth believing.
Sarah Cooper’s trick worked because she inverted that equation: the mismatch between her appearance, delivery, and the words forced people to engage with the message differently.
If you want your audience to truly hear your message, think hard about who delivers it and how. Choosing your words is important, but choosing how those words are heard is even more so.
See Sarah in action on her YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/sarahcooper
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