How the Best Communicators Make You Think an Idea Was Yours

You have an idea. A great one.

You explain it to a colleague. A week later, they bring it up again. Except now, they think they came up with it themselves.

Annoying? Maybe. But also proof of something powerful: The most effective persuasion doesn’t feel like persuasion.

When an idea sticks so well that people believe it was theirs all along, and that’s when they act on it.

So how do you make that happen?

🏺The Ancient Greek Who Mastered This Trick

Long before Aristotle became the gold standard for rhetoric, another thinker was shaping the way Athenians spoke and thought. Isocrates.

Isocrates’ rhetoric demonstrated a keen understanding of psychological principles. By aligning his messages with the audience's shared cultural values and common sense, he influenced them subtly, avoiding any sense of coercion.

Isocrates skillfully crafted his speeches to ensure his audience felt they had arrived at the conclusion independently.

This avoided the appearance of manipulation while still steering their thoughts in the desired direction.

🔧The Hidden Persuasion Tool You Already Use

A century later, Aristotle formalised this idea with a technique called the enthymeme.

Sounds complicated. But it’s something you already do.

An enthymeme is an argument where you leave out the obvious part - forcing your audience to complete the thought on their own.

Example:

Instead of saying…
This product is high quality, so you should buy it.

You say…
This product has been trusted by experts for years.

What’s left unsaid? That means it must be high quality… so I should buy it.

The brain connects the dots - and because your audience completes the logic themselves, they believe it more deeply.

📣How Modern Communicators Use This

Today, the best marketers and storytellers use this technique constantly, whether they realise it or not.

Take, for example, a tech company launching a new smartphone. Instead of bluntly stating, this phone has the best camera, they might say:

This phone’s camera has been praised by professional photographers for its clarity and detail.

What’s left unsaid? The obvious implication is that, because the camera is highly praised, it must be top tier.

The audience fills in the blanks, believing the camera is the best without being directly told. This subtle approach creates a stronger connection, allowing the audience to convince themselves of the camera’s superiority.

📣How to Make your Ideas Stick

Want to make your words more persuasive in a media interview? Here are a few tips:

• Frame your idea as a reminder: People resist being told what to do, but they embrace what feels like something they already knew. In the media, this means framing your key message as something that reinforces existing beliefs.

• Use enthymemes and let your audience complete the thought. If people fill in the blanks themselves, they’ll believe the idea more strongly. When communicating, leave enough unsaid so that the journalist and the audience fill in the connection on their own. The story sticks because they’re actively engaged in putting it together.

• Make your message linger. A pause can work wonders. Sometimes, what you don’t say is more powerful than what you do. In media interviews, silence can be pretty persuasive and make your message resonate longer.

🥜In a Nutshell🥜

The best persuasion in the media isn’t about making people agree with you.

It’s about making them feel like they discovered the idea themselves.

In media communications, the key to making an impact is not to force your point, but to craft it in such a way that the audience believe they arrived at the conclusion independently.

When you use subtle persuasion, you don’t just influence a decision. You guide people to it, allowing them to feel like the idea was always there. This is an effective way to get them to fully absorb your message.

Until next time,

Hannah