The Hook

This is not just any hook. It’s not the fishing hook, the kind that entices the fish into trouble when it opens its big month. Neither is it the shape of an earthly gigantic hook one sees from the air, a shoreline feature that is carved out of the land-sea margin anchored by a rocky headland, the aftermath of the incessant battle for supremacy between oceanic forces and man-backed land masses. That hook shape, which takes ages to form, is variously termed, what else, a hook-shaped bay, a crescent-shaped bay, or a zeta-shaped bay. And no, it’s not the Captain Hook who got beat by that darling of Disney cartoon characters, Peter Pan.

This hook is the mental hook, the kind that grabs your attention from the very first go. The opening line that captivates your undivided attention in a public speech. The headline that glues your eyes to the newspaper, and the one-liner that captures your spending dollar in a commercial.

In any training workshop on public speaking, closing sales, or tele-marketing, the trainer will invariably emphasize the importance of developing a hook. It could be a quote, even a cliché, but with a twist. It could be an example. Regardless, it must be able to jolt the audience into attention.

The same applies to blog titles and post titles too. It has been said that a blog is born every second. So in the span of time for me to type this line, 10 blogs would have made their debut, all contending for the netizens’ attention. And so they become a reflection of a blogger’s creativity, ingenuity, and grasp of vocabulary as well.

“Going Global”, my blog title, is definitely not a chart topper in that respect. But notice that it does not read “Go Global”, which will then sound like a-broken-record-kind of admonition. Neither is it “Gone Global”, signifying that an end state has been reached and then it’s time perhaps to go somewhere else. However, “Going Global” is action-oriented, is a journey, like success. It takes care of the present, the now. Of course in the time I’ve taken to elucidate the rationale behind my blog title, netizens have already moved on. Oh well, you can’t win them all.

Since you’ve come this far, let me share with you a quote that could perhaps be the hook for motivating a team toward a shared vision:

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." Henry Ford