For Great Presentations, Use Your DNA

All together now. Let’s cast our minds back – way back – to those days before time, when we first crawled out of the primordial ooze.

We had no words, yet we were able to learn. We had no instructional videos, but we could pass our primitive skills to others. What we had was a natural ability to learn by watching. And that circuitry is still in our DNA.

Eighty-five percent of the things you know first entered your mind through the wide, hungry maws of your eyes. We’re visual animals. That’s why TV is more effective than radio, and why all-type ads don’t sell.

It only follows then, that any effective presentation requires lots of stuff to see. So, if you support everything you want them to remember with a sight, you’ll never go wrong. Even if you’re playing a radio spot for a client, make sure to put something in front of their eyes that will reinforce its idea.

A presentation without demos, expressive gestures, chalk-talk diagrams, handouts or graphics is doomed to be boring and quickly forgotten. And worse than that, it probably won’t convince anybody of anything.

One of the best and simplest visual aids is a hand-out deck, which charts your course by outline (bullet-points, no prose). You can make a deck on any photo copier, and everybody knows how to use it. In advertising we all know and honor the principle of building a case toward a revealed solution, so only a clod will be rude enough to read ahead.

I like a hand-out deck better than a PowerPoint presentation because PowerPoint requires equipment, and equipment robs you of intimacy.

Who/what/what?
The second essential is a sense of mission. Too many presentations are merely reports. And make no mistake: a report is not a presentation. A report really says, “I’ve got the facts and here they are.” A presentation says, “You have a problem, and I have the solution”. Night and day.

If you want to insure your sense of purpose, use the Who/What/What? before you plan your show. Here’s the drill.

• Who are you talking to? (What do they know, fear, want? Talk directly to these questions)
• What do they think now? (Do they have any idea of the trouble they’re in? Describe it and you set the stage for your solution.)
• What do you want them to think? (You not only have a plan, but they really need to follow it.)

Keep their eyes on the prize
This pointer is so simple, it’s amazing that people forget it. When you show an exhibit that has some body copy or other text, don’t stand between it and your audience. The most effective way to present the words is to hold the piece up in front of your face, while you read it to them from a Xerox that you have mounted on the back. That way their eyes stay on the jewels you’re presenting, and everything else becomes invisible.

All the right answers
But even after doing everything right, I’ve seen a lot of presentations go to the dumper because the Q was badly handled. We had a great trick at Y that saved the day many times. If the presenter was asked a question he couldn’t answer, he simply repeated it. That sent an SOS to the other members of the team, and someone else took it. In the rare case when no one knew, the leader simply said, “We don’t have that with us right now, but you can bet that it’ll be on your desk at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Dennis Altman is an advertising consultant and a UK Professor of Advertising and Public Relations

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