How to pitch your research so that everyone listens

Did you know that every movie, book, or story  that you will see, read or hear follows the same structure? It consists of three little words: "but",   "therefore" and "so that" and good news: as a researcher you can use this structure to create a pitch that everybody listens to. A clear structure is important during your presentation, but even more so during your pitch.

After all, such a short pitch is over before you know it and if you lose your audience for one moment, you lose them for the rest of your talk. But it gets even harder: your audience is watching your video on the internet. That means that emails, tweets, funny videos are all vying for their attention.

That means you have to work harder to keep them with you and that's not easy. But we will help you do that! A good structure tells a story going from a problem to a solution.

So first you will have to explain what the problem is you're working on and then you will need to tell us how you want to solve it. For example, you first explain the problem that patients with neck cancer often develop swallowing problems after treatment. Then you explain your solution, namely that you want to research if you can help those patients by training their mouth, tongue, and, throat muscles.

No. There are two extra elements you need to add. First, you have to provide a little bit  of context.

Second, at the end of your pitch you have to provide an advantage for your audience. If you take all those elements together and use the words 'but', 'therefore', 'so that', you get a pitch that looks a bit like this: Thanks to new radiation therapies more and  more patients with head and neck cancer survive. But in 70 percent of all cases those patients  develop swallowing problems, making it harder for them to eat or drink.

Therefore, I am researching how we can help those patients by training their mouth, tongue, and, throat muscles so that in the end, these patients can enjoy their meal again. The approach where you first sketch a context, then raise a problem and provide a solution, and then end with an advantage for your audience, works very well. The words 'but', 'therefore', 'so that' help to glue everything together.

Be sure to try it out for your own research. No, not quite. Your basic pitch is ready.

The key elements are in place. But just like with a movie, you need more to captivate your audience. How you form this basic pitch into a pitch that everyone listens to, or how you use this pitch to craft longer presentations is something you will learn at the SciComm Academy!

Hope to see you soon!