Orange Envelopes | Small Business Optimized Marketing > By Design

I was invited yesterday to attend a couple of high-level presentations at an enormous Cleveland-based health care concern that intends to pursue web-based fundraising initiatives.

Two groups were invited to compete for a seven figure campaign to test the efficacy and potential of web-based fundraising and each sent high-powered teams to deliver their extraordinarily mediocre messages through their numbingly ineffective PowerPoint presentations.

At the end of the day, after our private recap of both presentations, we were all in agreement that neither company did themselves any favors with their presentations, although each had the potential to blow the other out of the water with an exemplary, creative, memorable and distinctive presentation.

What went wrong? Both were wedded to the PowerPoint presentation template that insists on delivering text based information in a visual environment. With bullets. Endless bullets. Each one read to us. Just in case we had become suddenly stricken illiterate.

So, let’s review. Each presenter brings a laptop to connect with a high-resolution LCD projector capable of displaying brilliant video, and each decides to present…. (wait for it)… TEXT. Brilliant.

Here’s the rub. Both competitors had amazing, compelling and memorable stories to tell. Huge, nationally recognized clients with exciting success stories. Creative campaigns that generated lasting results. And neither elected to tell any of these stories.

However, we were graced with annoyingly derivative methodology diagrams, dense process flow charts and unnecessary recitations of dry stats and figures that contributed nothing to our attempt to determine one thing: are you the guys we want to execute this campaign?

Let’s revisit the irony here… two firms send teams to demonstrate how wonderfully creative and capable they are and both center their presentations not around story, emotion, community, engagement or connections (words not even mentioned for the first 90 minutes), but around bullet points. I’m sold.

I know it’s been said before, but let’s say it again:

1. tell a story. first. foremost. If you don’t know how, read Beyond Bullet Points and learn. Before your next presentation. I’ll remember a story. I won’t remember that 4.8% of direct mail recipients will elect to give their contact information if presented with a free premium option. Or is that 8.4%? Or 6.9%? Oh hell, I forgot.
2. use visuals. See the slide deck embedded above. Simple graphics aren’t so simple, but they are devastatingly effective. And they support your story. (see how this all ties together?)
3. edit ruthlessly. Don’t use eight words when five will do. Or two. This is a presentation, not a shared group reading session. If you pick the right visual, you won’t need a single word on the slide.
4. learn your presentation. I believe that most presenters fill their slides with bullet points as a crutch. They’re afraid that they’ll forget to mention something, so they make sure that every single talking point is included in their slides. The solution: practice. Learn what you want to say with each visual. Use the slide notes feature if you need to have a visual reminder visible only to you. Just get rid of the lists of text that detract from you and your story.

Want to separate yourself from your competitors? Learn how to tell a visually compelling story. Your clients will be eternally grateful that they never have to sit through another miserable PowerPoint bullet point recitation and you’ll be their hero. Win win.

The blogosphere and Twittersphere have been buzzing this past week over a series of blog posts by Oliver Blanchard on his blog, The BrandBuilder, discussing how to communicate social media ROI to skeptical executives.

The posts sparked dozens of comments and hundreds of Tweets from social media aficionados that split between those who castigated Olivier for daring to introduce crass mercantile interests into the pristine world of social media and those who recognize the business realities involved with securing investment and executive support and need practical guidance to pitch their social media plans.

Olivier was precisely correct when he wrote that executives need to hear how any social media plan will generate a tangible and measurable return on their investment. These executives are responsible for dispensing a finite amount of corporate resources among departments. It is practical, desirable and reasonable that they dispense investment dollars to those projects that will advance the company’s financial position the farthest. That’s reality. Now how do you deal with it?

Once you understand their agenda – maximizing the return on their finite investment dollars – you can frame your social media plans effectively, in language that is compelling and convincing.

Rule #1: do not talk about Twitter followers, the number of retweets last month or the number of times a Fan Page was shared on Facebook. They don’t understand and they don’t care. Zip it until next month’s local SMC meeting.

Rule #2: Speak in language that they understand: Process, Plan, Cost and Return. CEO’s will want to understand the SM process and know that you have a precise plan to execute. By the way, it must be written, or it’s not really a plan.

Rule #3: Do not tell the CEO that the cost of your social media plan is zero or you’ll lose all credibility. Although Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WordPress do not charge their users, their cost is not zero. Their actual cost must include the human costs of participation, engagement, content development and management. How many employees will be involved? At what level? How many hours per day? Per week? Although the company doesn’t write a separate check for social media costs, they are paying for participation, and the total cost may be significant.

Rule #4: Focus on Quantitative, not Qualitative returns. Qualitative returns include the impact of your participation on your company’s reputation and the value of extended online conversations in relationship building. The CEO doesn’t care. I know you do, and I know your CEO should, but that’s not how he measures success. He wants Quantitative metrics. How many new customers did your efforts generate? How many new sales? How much did the average sale increase? What impact did your efforts have on gross margin?

Rule #5: Understand how the F.R.Y. metrics explain and support your social media goals. As Olivier described in his blog post, a compelling social media strategy should improve:

Frequency Increasing sales revenue by shortening the interval between transactions.

Reach (breadth) Increasing sales revenue by increasing net new customer count.

Reach (Depth) Increasing sales revenue by helping customers buy deeper into the product line.

Yield Increasing sales revenue by driving customers to want to increase their average per transaction spending.

Rule #6: Be prepared to detail how you intend to track sales that emerge from the social media channels. You must be able to track results to prove that your SM participation justified the company’s investment.

There. That wasn’t so hard. Now head up to the CEO’s office and tell him how you’re going to improve the company’s bottom line. And you can blog about it later.

This is it. I’m putting my foot down. Or, more accurately, putting both feet down, one after the other and hurriedly walking out. I can’t take it. I won’t take it. I will never (one more time for emphasis), never sit through another tortuous PowerPoint presentation.

Starting with today’s luncheon speaker, and extending into perpetuity, I vow to get up and leave the room when confronted with the equivalent of  presentation waterboarding, which includes:

1) A recitation of how wonderful and accomplished the speaker is – delivered by the speaker. If you want a glowing into, write one and have the moderator use it to introduce you. The fact that you’re on the stage conducting the presentation carries some impact with the audience. We expect you to be expert at something, and to share some of that knowledge goodness with us. You don’t have to toot your own horn with a series of slides detailing your accolades, accomplishments and awards. When in doubt, adhere to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s motto: Less is more.

2) Masses of bullet points. I get it. You have a lot to say. Do you need to write it all out? Can’t you sum up your genius in one concise, pithy headline? Contrary to your assumptions, writing out masses of bullet points is actually the lazy way of creating a presentation. It’s a brain dump. Throw in everything you know to make sure you don’t miss a single thing, and inundate your nearly comatose audience with the breadth of your knowledge. Who needs to be interesting when you can be overwhelming?

3) Text, text, text, text, text, text. You’re employing a visual medium. So use some visuals. Big, bold graphics that complement your topic. Videos that enhance your narrative. Charts and graphs that reinforce your major points. How about some color? Liven things up for us. We just ate a big lunch, and if we hear you read one more seven line bullet point, we’re dozing.

4) Everything, all at once. Once in a while, you’ve got to introduce a list to your audience. Dreaded bullet points that simply can’t be avoided. A list of features. A list of ingredients. A set of directions. If you were simply speaking to us, you’d introduce them one at a time. Go one mile. Turn right. Then take the first left. You wouldn’t say goonemileturnrightthentakethefirstleft. PowerPoint lets you introduce one bullet item at a time. So we stay with you. You make more sense and are easier to understand. One bullet at a time. Learn how.

5) A interminable display of the presenter’s reading ability. Bullet by seemingly endless bullet. A dry and embellishment-free recitation of the exact words displayed en masse on the screen before us. I can read. We can all read. If that’s all you’ve got, put it in an e-mail. It’s more humane.

6) Lack of any narrative or story. Come on, these are the basics. Who are you, why are you on stage, and why should I care? What’s in it for me? I don’t want to hear you recite a list, I want to hear you tell a persuasive story that establishes a problem or issue, involves the audience in the conflict and recommends a solution. Sure, it’s tougher than writing out a series of bullet points, but that’s why you’re up there and we’re down here. Too much effort for you? Then let someone else speak.

7) Slide overload. You have 30 minutes to talk. You’ve prepared 55 slides. And you’re committed to reading every one. At 26 minutes, you realize that you’ve only read 6 slides, but you remain steadfast in your resolve to read the remaining 49 slides over the next four minutes. What a lucky audience we are.

If you don’t know how to create a compelling, thoughtful and engaging presentation, it’s time to learn. It’s not hard and you’ll appreciate the adoration after delivering a knockout presentation. The groupies alone are worth the effort.

Check out the following resources:

• Beyond Bullet Points, Cliff Atkinson
• slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, Nancy Duarte
• Presentation Zen
• Really Bad Powerpoint, Seth Godin

Fidel Castro is notorious for delivering exhaustively long, pedagogic speeches to his captive Cuban masses. But Fidel's 4 hour speeches can't hold a candle to San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom's 7 1/2 hour (update: recently reduced due to national ridicule to just under 3 hours) state of the city presentation he recently uploaded to YouTube that reinforced the nation's perception of San Francisco as home of the leftist lunatic fringe.

It's understandable why Newsom presented his speech to the YouTube netizens instead of a live audience like Fidel does. After all, San Francisco doesn't have the advantage of available gulags for political dissidents. And believe me, only someone under the threat of imprisonment and possible torture would dare brave the full 7 1/2 hour miasma of PowerPoint horror that Newsom inflicts.

The concept is admirable. Present to a wide audience a summation of the state of the city that is available to any citizen at any time. But the presentation is so poorly designed and executed that the whole effort serves only as a case study in political embarrassment.

San Francisco is just down the road from Cupertino. Couldn't someone from the mayor's office have popped on down to crib some notes from Steve Jobs on how to use PowerPoint to support a presentation?

Newsom stands next to a wide screen tv that is rarely in frame, and contains so many bullet points and text that nothing is legible. Like most politicians, he seems to love to hear himself talk, and nothing will stand in the way of his enthralling, bullet-point supported description of composting initiatives in the city's schools (and no, I'm not making this up).

Newsom's pedantic, insufferable and interminable approach may work for dictators and leftist mayors, but the rest of the world should view his presentation as a cautionary tale and follow some simple rules to engage, not enrage, the audience:

1. use PowerPoint to display only bold, short phrases that introduce or support a topic
2. focus on large themes, not minutiae 
3. tell a story, don't relate series of facts
4. don't ever forget that our time is valuable. Keep it short.