TOUCHDOWN: BANK GOVERNOR KNOWS POWER OF ANALOGY

Just yesterday I was leading a Veritas Media Coaching session and we spent some time on the power of analogies in illustrating a message and how that can amplify its impact. Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney gets this, as evidenced by the colourful parallel he drew between anticipation of an economic recovery and that of crop yields on the prairie. Stock markets have been on a roll for the last three months, and Carney used an analogy to call for caution against unbridled enthusiasm. “Some now refer to green shoots as if the global recovery is a foregone conclusion or even as if sustainable growth had already begun. Would that it were so easy. Saskatchewanians know that it is a long, anxious time between the appearance of seedlings and the harvest.” Now, it helped that he was in Regina at the time, but still, the quote got very high placement in the Globe & Mail’s coverage, and it offered the rest of us in the communications realm a timely and colourful example.