[Rewritten on May 27, 2017]
Here are some recent examples of highly effective
communicators using a vivid, evocative expression while emphasizing something
and thus making their assertion
indelible--examples which, I hope, will inspire the rest of us into
similarly imaginative use of the language, especially when we are trying to
break through the clutter.
- (From
a BBC TV news report earlier this year) Commenting on the Geneva Freeport--one
of the largest such fortified storage facilities in the world and which
houses in secrecy over a million works of art (including hundreds of Picassos), most of which are destined
not to be seen by the public
for decades--a curator lamenting: “Great art has been put into a coma.”
A quick 101 on “free ports”: Described by some as “the greatest
museums no one can see,” free ports are tax-free facilities for goods in
transit and, according to the BBC, these are places “where the super-rich can
secretly store their priceless art works that often include smuggled, even
Nazi-looted, paintings. (As a result) great masterpieces can be incarcerated
here for decades!” Thus, these free ports are a serious impediment to stamping
out the illegal art trade.
- With reference to the fast declining fortunes of Sears (stock price plummeting over 40% in the past year and 70% in the most recent three years; sales down from $41b in 2012 to $22b in 2016), Mark Cohen, former CEO of Sears Canada and now a marketing professor at Columbia Business School, telling PBS’s “Nightly Business Report” this past winter: “Sears Holding is like the mythical headless horseman wandering aimlessly in the night looking for its lost, never-to-be-found head.”
© Copyright 2017
V. J. Singal
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