"You are all rock stars... literally!" Speech lessons from Oscar winners.

Today I want to give a shout out to Robert Lopez and his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, for their fun and engaging Oscar speech last night.

The pair won the Best Song Oscar for "Let it Go," the hit single from the animated film "Frozen."

Here's why this was one of my favorite acceptance speeches.

Teamwork:

Most pairs or groups who take the stage to accept their awards aren't prepared. One person does all the talking and then someone else, if they're lucky, gets to blurt out a few words before the orchestra plays them off.

The Lopezes had their acceptance speech prepared in loosely rhyming structure and recited it together, alternating the names of people they wished to thank. It both saved time and made the speech more entertaining. They had clearly practiced!

Humor:

They started off, "To our fellow nominees, you are all rock stars... literally." (Best Song, remember?)

Most of the humor was in the rhyming of the names, but the Lopezes also threw in a little ditty to the tune of "Happy Birthday:" "Happy Oscars to you. Let's do Frozen 2," directed at Pixar executive John Lasseter.

Their comic timing was perfect, and they knew exactly when to shout out together for extra emphasis ("Mom and Dad!")

Emotion:

At the very end, the couple stopped rhyming, and Kristen said a few heartfelt words to their daughters. It was a touching moment as Kristen's voice broke and she appeared to tear up.

When winners bring a list of names to the stage, I tend to want to tune out. After all, I don't know who any of those people are. I couldn't care less which executives the recipient feels the need to flatter and fawn over.

In this case, however, the Lopezes kept their speech short (under a minute), and incorporated humor, singing, rhyming and sentiment in a way that kept my attention, kept me smiling the whole time, and didn't feel like the gratuitous butt-kissing that so many speeches are.

Here's the speech if you didn't see it:




Watch here if it's not showing up...

What was your favorite speech of the night?



____________________________________________________
On The Everything Page you'll find everything you need to build visibility, credibility and influence through engaging presentations that move your participants into action: freebies, low-cost products and courses, and 1:1 coaching!