The Rowan Report

Words that Work -- The Book

2008-03-03T18:48:00.000-08:00

I’m not as voracious a reader as I should be, so I’m usually reluctant to recommend books to people (“Thanks, I read that three years ago.”)

But if you’re in the communication business, you should read Frank Luntz’s Words that Work.

Yes, it pains me to agree with the man who helped Congress mislead America about global warming for the last 10 years (an anecdote that’s suspiciously absent from this book).

Yes, it hurts to admit that the inventor of “the death tax” (as opposed to “the estate tax”) understands words and communication better than almost anyone in America.

But he’s the best there is.

As with most books that claim to teach you everything you need to know, about 2/3 of the book is Luntz explaining how the first 1/3 is true by dropping famous names and bashing the morons on the left who “just don’t get it.” But the first 1/3 is worth the price. And to be honest, he’s got a point about most lefties.

Since most of you won’t give this guy your money (I understand), here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of the most instructive section: what he calls the Ten Rules of Successful Communication.

The basic theme of the book, and one that’s hammered home over and over, is “It doesn’t matter what you say, it matters what they hear.” These 10 rules, he says, will get you there.

1. Simplicity - Use small words. You’re trying to connect with your audiences, not impress them with your vocabulary. If you use a word they don’t understand, they will stop listening AND think that you’re pretentious.

2. Brevity - Use short sentences. If you can’t say it in a breath, folks won’t understand it. You may be willing to re-read your sentences to make sure you get the point, but your audience won’t.

3. Credibility Matters – as much as if not more than philosophy. I call this believability. Stephen Colbert calls it “truthiness.” It doesn’t matter if your message is true. If it sounds “unbelievable,” it won’t be believed.

4. Repetition – Consistency Matters. You will have to hammer home your message over and over before it sticks. So it better roll off your tongue (see #1 and #2).

5. Novelty – Offer something new. In product marketing, we call this “differentiation.” In politics, it’s the reason to NOT vote for the other guy. Within the non-profit world, it’s the reason someone should bother listening to you.

6. Sound – Good words sound good. I often tell clients to read their messages aloud. If they sound boring, they are. Luntz cites a lot of tag lines and product ad copy to prove his point (M&Ms melt in your mouth, quicker picker upper, etc.) But I think this makes sense for all messages. Use alliteration. Create an appealing cadence for your messages. Treat your OpEds like they are speeches.

7. Speak Aspirationally. (For the record, "Aspirationally" is his word, not mine, and seems to break rule #1, no?) No one likes a downer. (Read that again.) Aspiration is more attractive and memorable. It inspires. Focus on the promise of what could be, not how bad things are. In fact, check out a few Obama speeches. He clearly rips the current state of things, but he offers hope, promise, etc.

8. Visualize – Make them see it. Use language that conjures up mental images. One of Luntz’s favorite words is “imagine.” Tell a person to imagine something, and he will – using his favorite images and his favorite memories.

9. Ask a question. Sounds corny, but it works. It immediately engages people in a conversation whether they want to be included or not. State a fact and they look at you with a blank stare. Ask a question and people answer it.

10. Provide Context and Explain Relevance. Finally, a point I can argue with Luntz. “Relevance” is one of my Top 5 message rules, and I think that if you have to explain it, you’ve already lost the audience. The best messages are INSTANTLY relevant to audiences. If you have to explain a punch line, the joke isn’t funny. If you have to explain a message, it’s not as strong as it needs to be.

If you don’t want to give the guy any of your money (I understand), check it out at the library. Or buy a used copy here at Amazon. It really is one of those books (like Strunk & White) that should be on your office bookshelf.

For the record, progressives have a similar sage in our corner – George Lakoff, author of Don’t Think of an Elephant. Good book, but, ironically, too wordy and long.

Rowan Report Goes Back to School

2008-02-01T11:46:00.000-08:00

I’m sure you don’t read my postings to hear about my kids, but a colleague suggested that a recent story about my daughter’s science fair project was proof that the advice I push on this blog doesn’t just apply at the workplace.

First, some background. PowerPoint is so ubiquitous that it’s permeating our education system. Now, I’m a huge fan of technology, but this scares the hell out of me. You may remember this post about business schools now asking applicants to use PowerPoint instead of admission essays. And I recently read a story about PowerPoint in high schools. A teacher implied it is useful in teaching kids how to “walk an audience through” an argument. I imagined students staring at a list of bullets and reading them one-by-one to the class or admission board.

Back to my second grader’s science fair. At this age, the project is all about getting the kids interested in research and science. Lots of web surfing, lots of pictures, lots of facts. You get the idea.

Back when I was in school, each kid had to supply his/her own display board. But these days, the school supplies the cardboard displays; all the students have to do is pick blue, red, white, yellow or black.

Guess which color I recommended. (hint)

The science fair is the elementary school equivalent of the workplace PowerPoint presentation. And just like us adults who pick bright, distracting templates for our presentations, her schoolmates picked yellow and red and blue. Hers was the only black display.

Now, I can’t say that color had any impact on the judges’ marks. We weren’t too concerned about winning anyway. I won’t tell you it was the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen. And I won’t tell you it was the most brilliant project (one genius kid simulated a complicated “prime number generator” and mocked me when I asked him about it). But I can say that it stood out from every other project. I even heard a kid say it looked “looked cool.”

If I were a scientist, my daughter’s project might have been more scientifically impressive (and she’d have a better shot at Ivy League colleges). But I’m not a scientist.

Neither are most of you. You work with important issues, but your facts and figures are not enough to compete with all the other facts and figures out there. If you want to stand out, delivery matters. And “looking cool” doesn’t hurt, whether you’re displaying a school project or your organization’s materials.

Starting the Year Green

2008-01-25T13:20:00.000-08:00

Every time I see the GM commercial bragging about its upcoming hybrid Tahoe, I roll my eyes. Or Exxon's ads about finding cleaner energy. Or the ads about the wonders of clean coal.

Being green is hot this year. Actually, having people THINK you're green is hot. But there's been no way for regular folks like us to weigh in on whether these ads are the real deal or what the environmental community calls "greenwashing."

Until now.

Developed by Enviromedia, the Greenwashing Index is only in its infancy, but has already attracted the attention of BrandWeek and U.S. News & World Report.

Not only can you browse so-called green ads and rate their “greenwashy-ness,” you can submit your own favorite and let the online community rip it to shreds.

Time will tell whether this site will be more than a short-term blip. But it’s nice to see my friends at Enviromedia try to give the rest of us a voice amid the green advertising wave.

More posts coming soon.

The Story of Stuff

2007-12-14T08:15:00.000-08:00

I wanted to pass along an excellent example of how a group is turning a very complex issue into a simple and understandable one using clever visuals and – you guessed it – the power of storytelling.

I’ve been working with a group called the California Product Stewardship Council, which is urging leaders in California to change how waste is managed – from mining and manufacturing to disposal.

They altered me to a new website called “The Story of Stuff” that’s been getting great reviews (and a whole lot of traffic) in its first few weeks online.

A full tour of the feature video and website will take a while, but you don’t need to spend much time to see how this video has turned what could be an important but painfully boring and tedious issue into one that’s – dare I say – entertaining.

How’d they do it? You’ll have your own ideas. But here are mine.

1. It inserts people into a complex issue that’s usually explained with charts, diagrams and stats. The on-screen presenter delivers an important message, but she’s not angry or preachy. Even the animation behind her inserts people into the story, so we can see how each of us plays a role in the issue. Storytelling is among the best ways for causes to connect with audiences. And stories require people.

2. It’s simple. If you’ve ever sat through a presentation about a global problem, you know that it only takes about 3 minutes to be bored into a coma. This video takes a VERY large and complicated problem and reduces it to an understandable storyline. Certainly, this group spent days arguing which details should be left in or left out of the presentation. And there are probably people who would say this explanation is too simple. But no presentation will ever include every possible detail of every issue. I tell clients to base their presentations on “What do I HAVE to show my audience to get it to do, feel or think what I want it to?” as opposed to “What are ALL the facts I know that I could tell?” This presentation does a good job of deciphering between those two questions.

3. It’s clever. Who thought cartoons could be so effective? So often, less is more. This video accomplished a lot with very simple visuals. Now, that simplicity doesn’t come cheap. The folks at Free Range Studios spent plenty of time and money creating the animation – a luxury that not all causes have. But not having the budget for this kind of production shouldn’t be an excuse to revert to a boring “fact-dump.”

4. Its message is multi-platform. This group created a communication tool that can be viewed on home DVD players, in large groups at events, on individual computers, etc. And they chopped it into chapters and put it on YouTube. More and more applications allow us to cross platforms with our marketing material. Most of us know how to turn printed brochures into PDF files. I recently added a voice-track to a PowerPoint presentation for CPSC and converted it into Quicktime and Windows Media Player files. It’s not as fancy as The Story of Stuff, but it’s been an effective way for CPSC to promote its presentation and message to groups throughout California when they can’t be there in person.

That’s it for now. Let me know if you have other examples of clever and effective message tools.

Dec. 14 Presentation Workshop Postponed

2007-12-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

Alas, it appears that the holiday chaos has doomed my efforts to hold this workshop in December. I've been getting good feedback, but many, many "December is just to busy" responses.

So I'm going to postpone the Dec 14 workshop. When the holidays pass, I'll scan January for good dates and let you know when a new date emerges.

As always, I'll post updates here. If you sign up for the auto-feed (look to the right), you'll get the updates as they are posted.

Stand by.

Presentation Workshop, December 14 in Austin

2007-11-09T13:14:00.001-08:00

Since launching the Rowan Report, I’ve avoided overt sales pitches about my company. But you’re getting one today.

On December 14, I will be conducting a 3-hour workshop on presentations at LifeWorks (3700 South First Street in Austin). The workshop will be open to anyone who wants to learn about improving presentation skills and materials.

I conducted a short one-hour version of this workshop (without the hands-on and tutorial sections) at the Crossroads Conference in October (hosted by Greenlights for Non Profit Success), and the response has been remarkable. For those of you in Austin who did not attend the October conference, the December workshop will provide a longer, more interactive agenda and more opportunity for Q&A, group interaction and “learning by doing.”

The workshop will include three parts.

1. A plenary session, including research findings and recommendations from the book “Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes,” as well as before-and-after case studies of presentation best practices. A copy of the book will be provided.

2. A group review of “real world” presentations (yes, that could include yours if you want it to)

3. A hands-on tutorial of common presentation software, including PowerPoint and Keynote.

The cost of the workshop will be $159 per person.

Here are the details. If you have any questions, email rsvp@rowcom.com.

What: “Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes” plenary and workshop
When: Friday, December 14, 9 am to noon
Where: LifeWorks, 3700 South First Street, Austin, 78704 (map)

More Details
Cost for the workshop is $159 per person. The fee covers the work session and a copy of the book “Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes.” Group rates are available for organizations sending more than two employees.

Attendance will be limited by space constraints. If you’d like to reserve a seat, please email rsvp@rowcom.com. Please state your name, organization, the number of people who will attend and your employer’s non-profit status. Employees of non-profit organizations will be given priority if the session fills up.

Payment will be accepted at the workshop. Please make checks payable to Rowan Communication, Inc. Receipts will be provided.

Attendees are encouraged to bring laptop computers for the hands-on session.

We will review presentations submitted by the audience. If you would like to volunteer to share a draft presentation, please note that in your reservation email (don’t worry, everyone will be very nice when we watch it).

More details will be distributed to attendees as December 14 approaches.

Killer ads

2007-10-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

I usually try to use non-political issues to demonstrate good communication practices – there’s no point turning off people who disagree politically. They just stop listening.

But the new ads from Save Darfur are too good to not mention.

I was working yesterday with CNN on in the background when I heard what I thought was just another of those “prepare for your retirement” commercials. It was actually an ad about divesting from mutual funds that do business in Darfur…and the “payoff line” is heartbreaking and powerful and undeniable. Almost perfect for an advocacy ad, I think.

Check them out on YouTube here and here.

I’m not asking you to divest from Darfur. (Though, I must admit, I emailed my financial adviser and asked him to review all my funds to make sure they’re “genocide-free” and “terror-free.” He hasn’t called back yet.)

Whether you agree with the issue or not, the ads are great examples of how to fit a message into a package that will strike a chord with people. This group found something that connects Americans to the genocide happening on the other side of the globe -- their money. That’s the kind of clarity and simplicity we should all be shooting for.

Final thoughts (for now) on PowerPoint

2007-09-25T21:49:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently pointed out to me that if I keep going on and on about PowerPoint, then I won’t have much insight left to charge clients for. Good point.

So I’ll wrap up the PowerPoint sermon with a quick “Top 10 Things I Haven’t Mentioned Yet.”

10. Learn the hidden tricks. Pressing the “B” key during a slide show turns the slide black. “W” turns it white. Pressing any number key and return from within a slideshow will take you to that slide number, so you can hide “extra slides” that you’re not sure you’ll need. Learn to use PowerPoint’s “Presenter’s Tools,” which displays the upcoming slide on your laptop while the audience sees the current slide. You can find all of these in PowerPoint manuals, but you have to dig around a bit.

9. Come prepared. Buy a $50 remote clicker (I use Kensington’s) so you don’t get tethered to your computer. Arrive early to set up. Know the room layout and feel confident about asking about moving things around to “fit” the presentation. If you use sound, bring your own speakers. Bring your own power strip and keep an extension cord in your car if you present often.

8. Kill your logo. If you need to, include it on the intro slide. But including it on every slide is not only branding overkill, it takes up lots of room and distracts from the message. As one friend told me, if you need to show your logo on every slide for the audience to remember who gave the presentation, you have a branding problem that your logo won’t fix.

7. Use video. Use it wisely, but use it. It breaks up the monotony of a lecture and attracts attention. I often use it for comic relief, but it also serves a very functional role. PowerPoint is pretty picky about which format you have to use, so stick with .WMV files. Keynote will play just about anything.

6. Ease up on the animations. My personal goal for animations is “gracefulness.” I want them to look smooth and almost unnoticed. Dancing bullets and swirly photos don’t usually do the trick for me.

5. Look them in the eye. Eye contact makes the audience pay attention and puts you in charge. It helps the audience empathize with your message. And it just plain looks good. Presentations should be rehearsed enough that the script doesn’t have to be “read,” so this takes time and practice. But you will notice immediately the renewed impact your presentations have when you look up.

4. Ask the audience to do something – during the presentation and after. This is really two ideas. First, I mean that the audience should have some type of participatory role in the presentation. Ask questions. Invite questions. Secondly, all good presentations are a transfer of an idea, not just a transfer of information. What do you want the audience to do when it leaves? Tell them.

3. Don’t use bad cheap photos. Use good cheap photos. Google Images offers scores and scores of public domain photos (check for photo rights unless you don’t fear copyright lawyers). Istockphoto.com is a cheap place to find professional quality graphics and photos for a few bucks. And please, please, don’t use Microsoft’s clip art. Your cause is better than that.

2. Don’t end with Q&A. Just as the first thing you say when you begin should be prepared and memorized, the last idea you leave the audience with should be a message from the heart. Look them in their eyes and leave them with a parting thought or call to action. If you end with Q&A, your inevitable last line will be “No more questions? Well, thank you for having me.” And everyone will leave sad.

1. Tell them stories. As a friend of mine says “No one ever marched on Washington because of a pie chart.” Telling stories – above all other PowerPoint tips you will ever learn – is the single most impactful change you can make to your presentations. Everyone has seen bullet point slides. Everyone can read your website or brochure to learn about your budget or mission or “success metrics.” But stories have the ability to get people to CARE ENOUGH to hear your message. If you want to move people, tell them your stories.

And with that, my summer-long series on PowerPoint comes to a close. If you want to review the series, click here.

Breaking the Rules – With Style

2007-08-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

So much for all my pious advice about what makes a good presentation.

If you’re a technophile, you may have already seen the Identity 2.0 presentation by Dick Hardt. If you haven’t, click here (you'll only need to watch a few minutes to "get it," but I bet you'll watch most of it).

Hardt’s presentation breaks so many of the “rules” I’ve preached about here.
He reads his slides.
He uses a glaring white background.
It’s long.
He uses distracting text animations.
And so on.

But the presentation is pretty damned cool. Why? How?

Here’s my take:

1. He knows his audience well – they are tech experts. This allows him to present at a breathtaking pace without slowing down to explain some concepts that might confuse you and me. He doesn’t care about you and me -- we’re accidental audience members.

2. It’s funny. Part of this is his personality, and part of this is the presentation he created. But he did a great job of mixing up instruction, opinion and humor.

3. It is INCREDIBLY rehearsed and choreographed. I can’t imagine the number of hours he spent making then scripting then rehearsing this thing, but it is as smoothly presented as it is chaotic.

4. It’s simple. Despite its length and technical complexity, each image (screen) is painfully simple, as is his narration. He never tries to prove his brilliance by demonstrating complexity. He proves his brilliance by demonstrating simplicity.

5. He uses images well. The same images are used several times to “call back” points he made earlier.

6. Maybe most importantly, it’s different. It’s more like performance art (Spalding Gray, maybe?) than a presentation. You’ve never seen something like this at the office. And you’ll remember it.

So I forgive him for breaking all my rules.

Give Us a Hand(out)

2007-08-06T20:08:00.000-07:00

In his book “Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes,” my friend Andy Goodman outlines one simple rule about handouts: Don’t distribute them until you're done or until they are needed for a specific part of the presentation.

Passing out a stack of material before your performance will ensure only one thing: a large percentage of the crowd will NOT be paying attention to you. They will read ahead. They will find all of your well-planned jokes. They’ll use the handout to gauge how much longer you’re going to talk. None of this helps you.

Alas, even Microsoft’s PowerPoint web page recommends post-show distribution.

Building on Andy’s sage advice, I’ll offer a few more thoughts about how to use handouts.

First, I think it’s useful to think about handouts as reinforcement of your presentation, not a reproduction of it. For this reason alone, I think Microsoft should eliminate the “print handout” option or at the very least, rename it “print boring, ineffective handouts.”

Because slides are supposed to “reinforce” your verbal presentation, a print out of them shouldn’t be very helpful to an audience who hasn’t seen you present it. (If it were, why did you bother showing up? You could have just sent a memo.)

Unless a thorough recap is necessary, I encourage clients and colleagues to identify the one or two things that the audience HAS TO LEARN OR REMEMBER in order to consider the presentation a success and then design a simple handout that reinforces those points.

Consider these simple examples.

1. My colleagues at Environmental Defense have a rather robust presentation about energy consumption in Texas. Lots of charts and data. But there’s one chart that sums up the organization’s opinion about Texas energy. So we created a simple one page handout that explains that chart in great detail.

2. If you’ve seen Al Gore’s 300-slide “An Inconvenient Truth” presentation, you know it’s heavy on science about the global warming problem and light on solutions. So when I began giving the presentation in my community, I figured that people didn't need a handout that recaps the presentation (they can rent the movie). A simple one-page handout about “what you can do” seemed to be the most helpful leave behind (I print four on a page and cut them into small leaflets). I also hand out copies of a longer report that details the role Texas plays in global warming. But I didn’t create it for the presentation. It’s just a fortunate coincidence that I worked at a place that produces such reports.

3. Sometimes, however, a more robust recap is necessary. When I present Andy Goodman’s “Storytelling as Best Practice” workshop, I often leave behind a front-and-back synopsis of what we discussed (see a portion of the first page here ... sorry for the low-resolution). It’s not a word-for-word recap, and you have to have “been there” to remember most of the examples the handout mentions. But it serves as a good reminder for folks who attend the workshop.

None of these examples is the perfect, most beautiful piece. I work on a budget. But all of them provide the audience what it needs or what I want it to have (memory triggers for later, what you can do, more info about a complicated concept) without interrupting the presentation itself.

Amazingly, this approach barely adds any prep time. Here is your chance to give in to your addiction to bullets. Remind the reader what you said, and give him a few bullets that will help him recall your points. Handouts are also a great place to detail source material (New York Times, July 25, 2005 or Science, June 2005) for audiences who require that kind of specificity.

So give it a try with your next presentation. Think about what your viewers really need when they leave the room (or what you want them to have) and give it to them.

Admissions Bored

2007-07-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, you see something that reminds you how steep the hill really is. I was about to upload a post about handouts last night when I came across a story that took the wind out of my PowerPoint sails (the handout post is coming).

You can read the AP story here…but I’ll give you the short version and why you should be careful about listening to any of my PowerPoint advice.

The school of business at the University of Chicago now requires applicants to submit, with their applications, four “PowerPoint-like” slides. They can cover any topic and must follow only two rules: no hyperlinks (let’s not encourage interactivity) and no video (God forbid). Surprisingly, pictures are allowed.

Not only does the story illustrate that the world has accepted that presentations are awful but necessary, it is now clear that I could never get accepted to graduate school today.

So be careful. If you’re planning to apply to a top-notch b-school, you might want to ignore all of my crazy posts about stories, pictures, simple design and verbal narrative. All that crap wouldn’t be understandable much less compelling if a stranger double-clicked on my .ppt file and ran through my slide show. He’d see four pictures and maybe a word or two. My presentations would get the boot in the first round. I never thought I’d say this, but I’d recommend the Template Wizard. After all, you should give the audience what it wants, right?

Fun With Fonts

2007-07-22T21:07:00.000-07:00

Admit it. You’ve been holding your breath for a week to read what I have to say about PowerPoint fonts.

Truth is, I know this topic….although important…isn’t very interesting. So I’ll start with some PowerPoint comedy. Check out this video of stand-up comic Don McMillan making fun of bad PowerPoint presentations. It’s kind of scary that there is enough universal PowerPoint badness to fill a comedy routine, no?

Now, on to fonts.

Back in the old days, they used the term “typeface,” not “font.” (I vaguely remember a college professor shaming me in front of the class for using the wrong term). In the printing world, they still care about the difference, but for most of us, font is the word used to describe the “look” or “design” of the text we use in documents or presentations. You know them….Times, Arial, Tahoma, etc.

My general approach to fonts is that they should go unnoticed by the audience. No one will (or should) say “Wow. That guy’s fonts were excellent.” But if I make bad font choices, they will (and should) make fun of me.

There are a couple of websites worth checking out…Microsoft’s “Which Font to Use” page and MasterViews’ tip sheet. They’re pretty similar.

Unlike some of my tips on PowerPoint design, I tend to fall inline with most “expert opinions” about font usage. My suggestions on fonts fall into three categories: font choice, size and consistency. I didn’t mention color because my opinion is so simple. If you use a dark slide, use white text. If you use a light slide, use black.

Font Choice
The general rule is that serif fonts, like Times, are best for large blocks of text that the audience will have to read. Sanserif fonts, like Arial, are best for small text blocks, headlines, labels, etc.

I tend to agree with that general rule, but you know what I think about large blocks of text…I try to not use them unless I have to. And if your 25 slide presentation only has one long block of text, a different font will look out of place.

I’ve been using Arial (or you can use Tahoma or Verdana) in most of my recent presentations. Even for blocks of text. It’s clean, simple, looks good in charts, looks good over black and, just as importantly, is found on every computer known to man. So my preference is to keep it simple and compatible.

One last word on font choice…if you are trying to convey professionalism, I strongly recommend avoiding any font that your grandmother or children would consider “cute.” Handwriting fonts, marker felt fonts and “party” fonts should be saved for family reunion or birthday party invitations.

Size Does Matter
Take two steps away from your computer. If you have to squint to read, so will your audience.

Not every slide needs a title. But for those that do, I go big (50 pt), especially if I have other text on the slide. If the title stands alone or with a photo and no other text, I go a bit smaller (as low as 32 pt). A lot of this has to do with your font choice (sanserif can go smaller) and color choice (white text on black can go smaller than black text on white).

If I have to use bullets, I try to never go smaller than 30 pt. If I can’t fit my whole bullet at that size, my bullet is probably too long. PowerPoint is no help here. If I keep typing, PowerPoint automatically makes the font smaller as if to say “Keep typing, the audience isn’t asleep yet.”

Headline writers at the NY Times have a minimum size limit and a defined amount of space. And they work within those parameters every day. We can, too.

Consistency
Whatever choices you make, stick with them. All charts should have the same font choice, size, color, etc. All titles should be the same. All photo captions should be the same. Inconsistency draws attention to your font choice and away from your message.

Again, PowerPoint doesn’t help here. Though it allows for standard formatting throughout a whole presentation, its tendency to automatically downsize the text to make it fit is pretty annoying.

So that’s it on fonts. In the next post, we’ll look at audience handouts as effective leave-behind material.

Welcome Back to PowerPoint World

2007-07-17T21:48:00.000-07:00

Based on (1) feedback from friends and readers and (2) the fact that I’ve been creating a lot of presentations for clients, I’ve decided to spend the next several posts on some more PowerPoint tips. Some will seem familiar (my hatred of bullets, for example). But even the familiar ones will have new examples of dos and don’ts.

And if you have any other suggested PowerPoint topics, please send them my way.

First up, Back in Black.

I’ve mentioned this briefly in a couple of previous posts, but I have found that nearly every presentation that I create from scratch is based on a black background. Why? Maybe it’s personal taste. My car is black. My phone. My computer. My t-shirts. My dog.

But there’s more to it, I think.

1. Microsoft template colors are painfully ugly. So anything is better than what PowerPoint serves up. And no matter how much you like your organization’s pre-approved template, chances are your audience would rather see a black slide. Look at these examples…all the same slide but with a white, blue and black background. Which one looks the best?

2. Black doesn’t get old. Most colors age and fall in and out of fashion. Black will always be the new black.

3. Black is consistent across computers. PowerPoint colors look slightly different on different computers, whether they’re PCs or Macs. Black looks black. So you won’t open your slides on another computer and say “that looks different.”

4. White is blinding. And distracting. When you display a blank white slide in front of a group, everyone stares at it (and not you) waiting for you to fill it with content. White also creates an unmistakable square on the wall. So if you don’t fill it up with graphics, you feel like the slide is incomplete.

The borders of a black slide blend smoothly with the color of the screen you display your presentation on. So when a slide is blank, it simply looks like the projector is off, and the eyes in the room focus on you, not a blank screen. This allows you, the savvy presenter, to insert a few blank slides into your presentation when you want the audience to stop looking and start listening…like at the beginning and end of your presentation, or when you are about to make an important point.

5. Black is an easy color to match. I like to delete the backgrounds of my photos and graphics so not all of my graphics are rectangles and so they appear to “hover” above my slides. To do that, I use PowerPoint’s “transparent color” feature which works pretty well but always leaves a few traces of color around the edges. These “traces” can stand out on color slides, but blend right into a black background. See examples here and here.

6. Simplicity speaks volumes.

7. Black makes other colors look more vibrant and vivid. You’ll be amazed at how the same colors look so different when suspended over a black background. Use the same shading effect as before, but use white as the shade color instead of black and the shapes or line charts seem to jump off the screen. Check out this example in white and black, and this one in white and black. Both versions look pretty good, but I think the black slide gives the colors more impact.

8. At least for the time being, it’s different. I assure you, your presentation will stand out. People will ask you what software you’re using, because they’ve been inundated with the template wizard’s rainbow of bad colors. I posted this before, but look at this QuickTime version of a recent presentation and see how the simplicity of the black background stands out.

Next up is fonts. Doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but if you’ve tried to be fancy with clever fonts, you know that using the wrong ones can be a big headache.

Get Me Some Press

2007-07-09T13:02:00.001-07:00

Of all the communication activities I’ve been asked to dream up or pull off for a client, the most common is “get me some press.”

And after doing this for a while, I can say that the single best question to ask a client (or boss…or yourself) who clamors for press is: ‘Why?”

Press is alluring. We love seeing our name – or even better, our face – in the paper or on local TV. And it seems that there is universal acceptance that any press (except maybe for indictments or bankruptcies) is good press.

But there are several unpleasant truths about media relations that PR pros hate to admit.

1. Unless you’re releasing the iPhone and have a multi-million dollar ad campaign backing you up, earned media alone won’t create the kind of sustainable public penetration that will “change the market’s mind” about an issue or cause. One story in the local paper will change very little for your organization and will change even less for the rest of the world.

2. Impressions (viewership or circulation of the press you got) and ad values (the cost of getting equal exposure by buying an ad) are convenient ways for PR people like me to convince our clients and bosses that our effort was worthwhile. But impressions and ad value don’t tell you ANYTHING about impact. Did your message get though? Did you change anyone’s mind?

3. One time press hits are almost completely disposable. Even with online news archives, most of the press you see today will be gone tomorrow. Especially with TV. So even if impressions and circulation numbers were valid measures of effectiveness, they only measure how many people MIGHT have seen your story.

So always ask “Why do we want press?” Pretty quickly, you can determine if there is a real benefit to spending time and money trying to get it. If you want to “educate” a segment of the market, I recommend another tactic to supplement your press effort. If you’re trying to apply pressure on an elected official or legitimize your group to donors ….now there’s something that press can help with.

In short, focus back on your goals and audiences. Who do you care about and what do you want them to do? If press will help accomplish that…then go get some press. If not, perhaps there’s another way to get you what you need.

FOR THE RECORD: There are some completely valid reasons to go after one-time press hits – even if they take a lot of time and effort. Next time, I’ll show some examples of how groups have re-marketed their press coverage to their target audiences.

Good News for Endangered Species Efforts

2007-06-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

I'll be back after the 4th of July with regular posts.

Today I wanted to spread some good news that's worth celebrating.

If you missed the news this week, the US Department of Interior announced that the bald eagle will be removed from the list of endangered and threatened species - marking the single greatest conservation victory in American history.

Back in the 1960s, there were fewer than 500 breeding pairs of eagles in the lower 48 states. Today there are nearly 10,000. They live in every state in the union. And for the first time in our lifetimes, we have a new reason to celebrate our national symbol on the 4th of July.

My former organization, Environmental Defense, played a significant roll in the eagle's recovery. In the late 60's, a group of men who would later form Environmental Defense demonstrated that the pesticide DDT was entering the food chain and thinning the egg shells of fish-eating raptors like eagles and ospreys. They took the government to court and won, which eventually led to a domestic ban of widespread DDT spraying.

So a special thank you to all the folks at Environmental Defense who got this started and to those that created and defended the law - the Endangered Species Act - that has helped protect the eagle during its comeback.

If you want to read some press about the delisting, here are the Washington Post and AP stories. And check out Environmental Defense's feature page on the eagle's recovery.

See you next week.

Selling a Story to the Press

2007-06-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

One more post on stories, then I’ll move on to another topic.

A few of you have asked for practical examples of how the story approach has worked when marketing complicated issues. At a recent storytelling workshop at the World Resources Institute, I presented the following example of how illustrating an issue through compelling characters turned a rather dry environmental issue into a colorful (and press-worthy) story.

The story is so engrained at Environmental Defense, where we developed it, that it’s simply known as “The Preacher and the Toad.”

First, the non-story version. In the 1990s, Environmental Defense invented a regulatory tool called Safe Harbor that works within the Endangered Species Act (ESA). It allows landowners to make changes to their land that would help endangered species without locking them into a lifetime of species management. For those of you not involved in species restoration, that’s a big deal. But it’s a pretty arcane subject, despite the program’s success. We wanted to get the program some media attention so that landowners (and members of Congress) knew how successful it has been.

Enter The Preacher. In 2002, a Baptist preacher and conservative rancher in Bastrop, Texas named Bob Long was poised to sign a Safe Harbor agreement with the federal government and Environmental Defense. Instead of pitching the facts and figures of the program, we pitched Bob’s story. And it took off.

First came this feature in the Houston Chronicle.

The Chronicle story spurred other similar stories in other media, including this NBC Nightly News story and this human interest story on Austin’s local NBC affiliate.

Then, when Congress started to gear up for an ESA debate, Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin came to Austin to interview Long and his Environmental Defense counterpart for this national story.

This simple story turned into a fundraising, lobbying and media relations tool for Environmental Defense (not to mention presentation material for me) and it’s still being used four years after we simply changed the storyline.

Why did it work?
1. The story is not about Environmental Defense. Stories are about people, and the more colorful the people, the more colorful the story. As the storyteller, you or your organization will be associated with the moral or lesson the story delivers. You don’t have to shoehorn your organization into the plot. There’s no I in “story.”

2. It contains the unexpected. A conservative rancher working with treehuggers? I’ve found that the only thing more newsworthy than a fight is when people who are supposed to fight find common ground.

3. It makes you feel good. There are plenty of endangered species stories that will make you cry. This one is an upper, not a downer. And people (donors, members of Congress, reporters) like uppers.

4. We rode this horse hard (and are still riding it). Good stories last. If you have an aging story about your organization that perfectly captures what you want your audience to know, don’t be afraid to use it.

Another Story: You'll Laugh, You'll Cry, You Might Toss Your Cookies

2007-05-21T21:11:00.000-07:00

The snazzy DVD I received in my monthly Wired Magazine was produced long before last week’s post (Tell Me A Story), but the timing’s good enough to provide a continuation of the “storytelling” theme.

The DVD fell out of my Wired Magazine when I tore open the polybag. It looked like a sneak peek at a new short film called "Eureka: The Best Ideas Come From the Most Unlikely Places.” The only hint that this was not your ordinary Hollywood marketing promo was a small Shell logo on the bottom of the DVD jacket.

The sucker I am, I popped the DVD in my Mac and was treated to a beautifully produced 9-minute commercial touting the brilliance, humility, family values and humanity of the engineers at Shell that are trying to secure the last drops of oil in near-empty wells without harming the environment. No kidding.

You can watch the infomercial below. But be warned….if you’re not inclined to feel good about oil companies, the 9-minute film might leave you a bit queasy.

Most non-profits don’t have the budget to dump a few million bucks into a DVD drop to every Wired subscriber. So why the heck am I writing about the film here?

Partly because I’m confused. The company is getting hammered on You Tube and on blogs across the country. The film is being called propaganda…trash…nauseating. At this early stage of the game, the public response to this PR tactic can’t be what Shell intended, can it?

Which leads me to the importance of the relationship between your story and your audience. True, stories are the best way to deliver information to your audience. But the only thing worse than proving your point by inundating your audience with dry statistics and bullet points is by concocting a story that makes people laugh in disbelief or throw up in disgust. So test your stories before you broadcast them and make sure you’re not setting yourself up for ridicule by the very people you’re trying to win over.

Tell Me a Story

2007-05-10T12:33:00.000-07:00

Thanks to NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for providing me a timely hook to the concept of communication via stories. His column today ponders why the American public (and White House) has been so slow to act on the genocide taking place in Darfur. I’ll pass on the political issue and instead focus on a less contentious angle.

(You have to pay to read Kristof’s piece online, so I’ve posted the text here.)

He cites a study that found that people tend to connect less (and therefore care less) about large faraway issues no matter how terrible or important they are. Unless the issue is tied to a compelling and personal story.

I’ve cited this research myself….here’s the basic premise of the study, conducted by the Wharton School and Carnegie Mellon in 2004.

Students were asked to complete a short survey on technological products and were given five one-dollar bills upon completion. They could donate some, none or all of it to Save the Children.

Half the participants were given a solicitation letter full of powerful statistics asking for help to address hunger in Africa. The other half of participants were given a solicitation letter that focused on how the donation would help a single girl named Rokia. The letter told the story of a 7-year old in Mali facing starvation unless outside help came soon.

Participants left money in sealed envelopes without researchers present. Those who read the “statistic letter” donated, on average, $1.14. Those who read the “story letter” donated an average of $2.38.

Kristof’s piece is about the Darfur tragedy and America’s response to it. But it is an excellent illustration of the power of narrative. Study after study shows that despite our addiction to stats and facts, stories “perform better.”

In the cause or issue community, you cannot get someone to think about something they don’t first care about. And stories are how humans have gotten other humans to listen and care for thousands of years. It’s hardwired into our DNA. Before PowerPoint and the invention of the bullet point, we told stories to share information.

So if you’re trying to get people to listen to your cause, tell them a story first that will get them to care.

And now, a shameless plug.

I conduct a workshop called “Storytelling as Best Practice,” that was developed by my good friend Andy Goodman. Andy is known within the national “cause community” as Mr. Story, and his storytelling seminar is a hit everywhere I’ve seen or conducted it. You can read more about the workshop and process at Andy’s website.

Writing OpEds -- Part Two

2007-05-03T13:45:00.000-07:00

My apologies. I got distracted with that last post. But it was too good (and timely) to ignore.

Let me get back to OpEds (and there’s a free gift at the end).

First, a quick review from part one:
1. OpEds should hammer home one idea
2. They should be confident and opinionated
3. They should point the reader to think or do one thing
4. They should be relevant (newsworthy) to readers

On we go to suggestions 5-8, and the exercise you should try before writing your next OpEd.

5. Be clear and simple. Part of this – but only part - is clarity of the idea. But clarity of language is equally important. Do not show off your Ivy League education with five-syllable words. I often tell clients that the best way to appear brilliant is to break down complicated issues to concepts the audience can easily understand. If you make them feel smart, they'll think you're smart. If you make them feel stupid, they'll think you're pretentious and they’ll stop reading.

6. They sound good when read aloud. Good OpEds have the cadence of a speech, not an essay. They have short sentences and long ones. They reach out and connect with readers not just with the words that are written, but with the way they are presented. If your piece sounds smart but boring, it probably is.

7. Be brief. Good OpEds are short, and the better they are, the shorter they seem. Written poorly, the standard-length 750 word OpEd can drag on and on. Written well, the words whiz by, leaving the reader with one idea and either agreement or disagreement. If a casual bystander seems bored by your OpEd, chances are that you've missed the mark. If a co-worker is bored by it, you've written a real snoozer.

8. Most importantly, OpEds need to be organized counter to the way most people tend to lay out their arguments. Most of us were taught in school to lay out our position like a lawyer in a courtroom. Point A leads to Point B, which leads to Point C. Therefore….conclusion. The court of public opinion works differently, and OpEds are a tool of public opinion. Lead with your conclusion. Convince the reader to care. Then convince him to agree. Leave out anything that is not critical, even if it is interesting.

There’s a simple exercise you can try the next time you have an OpEd to write. Before you begin drafting your piece, you should be able to clearly state:
• Your thesis, in one sentence.
• The relevance (timeliness, importance, etc.) of your thesis.
• Three contextual "proof points" that help illustrate why your thesis is right.

If you struggle with that exercise, spend your time and effort here. Once you get those down and you follow these eight tips, the OpEd will flow from your fingertips. If you simply begin typing, you could end up with 800 words that will be very hard to edit and even harder for readers to absorb.

And now the free gift. I put these tips/guidelines into a mock-OpEd that you can download, print and refer to the next time you have to start writing. Enjoy. I hope it helps.

Hoisted by Their Own Petard?

2007-05-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, you’re handed a gift.

This morning, a colleague turned me onto something that not only teaches a valuable lesson about communication campaigns, but also happens to debunk the critics of an issue about which I care a great deal: global warming.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is an industry front group funded by the main players fighting any action on global warming at the Texas Capitol. The group asked the Competitive Enterprise Institute to write a “policy paper” addressing the “truth” about global warming. CEI is the same group that a while back ran ads that touted the virtues of carbon dioxide, the most voluminous man-made greenhouse gas. Their ads stated “Carbon dioxide…they call it pollution, we call it life.” The world laughed at them. The Houston Chronicle (below) said it was the kind of spoof ad you’d see on Saturday Night Live.

“A growing consensus among scientists and political leaders has embraced the conclusion that human activity is fueling potentially catastrophic climate change. To attack this consensus, a think tank partly funded by industry has released several TV spots so over the top that they could be mistaken for "Saturday Night Live "parodies.

One of the ads produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, "Energy," features a young girl in an idyllic park setting holding a dandelion, while a narrator makes the argument that carbon dioxide emissions are a good thing, since plants absorb CO2 and people exhale it."

– Houston Chronicle Editorial, 6/2/2006

Nevertheless, TPPF has been peddling the report at the Texas Capitol. Amazingly, the CEI found that not only are we unsure whether global warming is real, but IF IT is real, it we should carefully examine the upside; maybe we’ll like it. So you can see where this group is coming from.

But here’s the communication lesson: check your facts before sharing them with the world.

On page 9 of the report (you’ll have to go to the group’s website to get the whole report), the author calls into question the global scientific consensus that global warming is real and that we should do something about it.

“Finally,” he writes, “as this graphic shows, we should always be wary of scientists’ confident predictions about the future.”

The graphic appears to be a 1950s photo of a man standing in front of a huge mainframe computer. The caption says that the photo was RAND Corporation’s 1950s prediction of what a home computer would look like in 2004. He even cites Popular Mechanics. Funny. Impressive. Those crazy scientists are always wrong, right?

Not really. If you go to snopes.com, the web’s go-to urban legend site – you’ll find that this photo is the first hoax that comes up if you type “RAND” in the search window.

You can also read about the hoax here, here and here.

Turns out that the photo is a submarine maneuvering room that now sits on display at the Smithsonian. The “RAND” photo was one of several entries in a FARK.com Photoshop contest. You’ll see others, too. My favorite is the Love Boat entry.

I have to admit it brings me quite a bit of joy to point out the scientific integrity of groups like CEI and TPPF. But it’s also quite maddening that our elected officials so easily buy into such outrageous claims (CO2 is life, global warming is fake...but it could be good if it’s real) instead of get angered by such stunts. Or maybe the scientific experts at CEI fell for the hoax themselves. You’ll have to be the judge of that.

Nevertheless, I believe the truth catches up with folks like these. And regardless of your intentions, the truth will catch up with your campaigns if you rely on sketchy sources to make your points. Check your facts. Bookmark Snopes.com. And never underestimate the power of Photoshop.

Until next time...

Writing OpEds -- Part One

2007-04-29T19:35:00.000-07:00

Don’t fret…there will be more posts about PowerPoint. But I’m finishing a few writing assignments (OpEds) for clients, so I thought I’d write about something fresh on my mind. In the advocacy world, getting an OpEd published in a paper-of-record is often more important than a good news story. But space is limited and editors are picky. Drafting a piece that will appeal to your audience AND interest editors is sometimes tricky.

Most people think a good OpEd is one that gets published. To a certain extent, that’s true. If an editor thought it was good enough to run, then it can’t have been all that bad. But we can all agree that not everything that runs in the paper is good writing. And who’s to say that the readers liked it or, more importantly, agreed with it?

In consulting clients about writing OpEds, I urge them to consider eight guidelines and perform one simple exercise before they even start typing. Today you get four of them.

1. An OpEd should hammer home one idea, and one idea only. Sure, you'll have to make several points along the way to show the reader you know your stuff and that you should be believed. But they should all support the one idea, the one opinion, that you want the reader to share with you when she's done reading your piece.

2. Be confident and opinionated. If they were supposed to be objective, OpEds would run in the news section. This is not a license for arrogance, flippant comments or overgeneralizations. Rather, it is a call to stick to the purpose of this medium: to express a clear opinion and convince others you are correct. Pieces that inform or educate generally make very boring OpEds. Some experts are asked to write OpEds on very specific (boring) topics. I would argue that turning that assignment from one of education to one of advocacy will not only help your cause more, it will make a more compelling piece of writing.

3. Point the reader to do or think something specific. Again, information is important, but an OpEd without a "call to action" – be it mental or physical – will usually fall flat on readers. People read the OpEd page because they want to know what you think, not what you know.

4. Be relevant to readers' lives. Getting the government to address cross-border water policy: important. Getting Washington to address the potential terrorist threat posed by municipal wastewater treatment facilities that use chlorine gas: important and relevant. One of the best – but not perfect – barometers for relevance is timeliness and newsworthiness. If it's happening this week and everyone is reporting on it, chances are people will want to read about it. Telling an OpEd editor that he should run your piece because no one is covering that issue is almost admitting that no one wants to read your piece.

For the sake of brevity, I’ll end there. Tips 5-8 will come shortly.

In the meantime, check out some example OpEds that have run in regional and national papers. None is perfect, and I’m never able to follow ALL of my own advice every time. But you’ll see that there’s a consistency (and a certain level of success) that makes them good examples.

Presenting Tips - The Data Challenge

2007-04-20T13:09:00.001-07:00

Next stop on the PowerPoint train is data.

The cliché goes this way: “My content is so complicated that I simply cannot communicate it in a creative way" or "my audience and I are so smart, my slides don't have to look good."

The complaint from the audience is “that was the ugliest, most complicated slide I’ve ever seen. It made me feel stupid.”

I tend to side with the audience.

I’ve worked with a lot of scientists in the last few years, and I tell them that when they present complex information, they can choose to sound brainy and brilliant (and turn off the audience) or they can focus on making sure the audience understands the issue. Not only does the audience appreciate the latter approach more, but it is, after all, the reason you’re presenting the data, isn’t it?

Edward Tufte is the guru of presenting data. So if you’re into hard-core data presentations, you should consider his books and training. But you don’t have to read all his books to improve.

I think there are simpler ways to improve data presentations using PowerPoint’s built-in features.

Like the last post, I have two examples to watch.

The first example shows a before-and-after approach presenting 650,000 years of data illustrating a connection between atmospheric carbon concentration and temperature. In this clip, the first slide (white background and red and blue lines) is often shot up on the wall while the presenter talks about each intricate detail of the chart. It’s used statically. It just sits there. Compare that to the last part of the clip (black background and white and blue lines). This slide is from Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth slideshow. It not only fades in various parts of the data – giving the presenter a chance to explain each of them. But it also brings in two new variables – today’s concentration level and the projected level in 45 years. These two new data points make the slide more relevant to the audience: Not only do carbon and temperature rise and fall together, but we’re in trouble if we don’t change our emission trends.

The second example illustrates the flaws of Microsoft’s default graphing feature compared to a cleaner, more attractive graph.

You’ve seen charts like the first one (made in Excel). The colors are ugly. The lines are faint. The legend is choppy. And all of the data is tossed up on the screen at once. Like the previous example, the only way for a presenter to explain each line is to whip out the dreaded laser pointer, turn his back to the audience and talk to the screen (so the guys in the back of the room can check his BlackBerry).

Contrast that with the second half of the clip. The chart is presented in phases. The colors match and legend looks clean and neat. The difference between the two slides is a 10-minute formatting fix in PowerPoint or Keynote. Sure, Keynote has more “pretty” features than Microsoft products. But PowerPoint can get the job done.

So make data easier on your audience. Space it out and think about how the audience needs to digest each piece. And resist ugly. An attractive slide (even if it contains the same information) will beat an ugly one every time.

Presentation example, the good and the bad

2007-04-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

In the last post, I went on for a few hundred words about bullets and PowerPoint templates. Too much typing and not enough showing. So I thought I'd show you a quick example of what I meant.

A UT group asked me to give a presentation about the TXU fight: what it entailed, what Environmental Defense did, how we won, etc. So I have two movie files for you to watch. The first is what you'd normally expect for a quick 30 minute presentation about something. It goes by fast, so you might want to pause and restart a couple of times.

Click here to watch the video (Quicktime file)...then come back and read the rest.

Pretty boring. All the facts are there, but you could probably hear me reading the bullets in your ear.

Now look at another movie file. It's a bit longer, but I think it's worth the 3 minutes. And there's no sound...so don't adjust your speakers.

Click here to watch the next video.

It doesn't look like a PowerPoint, does it?

Of course, there's some narrative that you miss out on. And you might wonder what I mean by some of the text on the screen. But that's OK. That's why you have a speaker. If the slides were perfect stand-ins for speakers, we wouldn't need speakers. This is an attractive and descriptive visual aid that supports a speaker who will inject anecdotes, factoids and commentary throughout the presentation. You want to see the next slide, and you want to hear what the speaker has to say about it.

Let me know if that helps show that the "no bullets" approach actually works.

Until next time...

Presenting Tips -- Part One

2007-04-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve recently been in a presentation groove. I’ve been giving various presentations – most of them related to global warming or the TXU power plant fight – for the last six months. And I’ve been through some interesting training on how to create and perform (yes, perform…not read) effective presentations. So I figured that I’d spend a few posts on presentation skills…from the basic tasks of outlining and organizing your presentation to platform and audience management skills.

One of the presentations I’ve been giving is the one Al Gore turned into “An Inconvenient Truth.” And after almost every performance the conversation turns from global warming to the presentation tool itself. People say they’ve never seen such a beautiful presentation. And they’ve never sat through a 75 minute presentation without yawning or checking their BlackBerries. Gore’s slide deck is an excellent example of what does and doesn’t work in front of a crowd.

And it shows what can happen when we resist PowerPoint's two most tempting and powerful tools of boredom: bullets and the template wizard.

Remember this: bullets kill. They kill enthusiasm and they kill creativity. They kill audiences. And worst of all, they kill any sense of responsibility speakers used to feel – long ago, before PowerPoint – to develop a speech that they had to rehearse or even understand. People now click to the next slide. They read that slide. They click to the next slide. Bang! Another dead presentation.

The global warming presentation I’ve been using has 300 slides. I think two of them have bullets. Part of why the presentation is so powerful is that each presenter actually has to know, understand and practice it. It’s a performance. No reading allowed. It takes A LOT of rehearsal. But, holy cow, it makes such a difference.

If bullets are what kill presentations, the template wizard is the AK-47 that makes killing presentations so easy. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT use the template wizard – no matter how enthusiastically your IT guy promotes it. He’s an IT guy, not a communicator. The most compelling presentations I have ever seen, including Al Gore’s slide deck and Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote addresses, are templateless. They have a picture and a word. Or a chart and a word. The slides enhance what the speaker is saying. They are not a visual crutch at which the speaker can simply stare and mumble.

The antidote to leaning on the template crutch is simple. I advise colleagues and clients to turn off their computers and think about the days before PowerPoint when we had to actually think through and write down what we wanted to say. Develop a snapshot of your main message, the key points you have to deliver and a few anecdotes, studies or facts you’ll need to prove your point.

Then, and only then, think about whether PowerPoint can help you make your case. You might realize that you’ve been leaning on a PowerPoint crutch you never even needed.

Stay tuned for more presentation tips. Due up next week: why reading your slides is not only terribly boring, but actually inhibits learning.

Know where you're going before you start

2007-04-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

All this pressure. The first post better be good, right?

Well, let me start where I’ve started with every client or employer I’ve ever had. If you don’t have a clear idea where you want your communication effort to take you, you’re going to waste a lot of time and money.

To make this point with clients, I've used a rather trite analogy, provided by our friends at Disney in the clip below:

Any communication professional that does not provide a client or employer a clear audience-based goal for a scope of work is implying that productivity equals success. Lots of press clips is success. A pretty video is success. A fancy website is success. You get the idea. You’ve probably seen it in action.

So my most basic tip to non-profit communicators is to resist the urge to produce without consequence. Have the courage and patience to demand of your organization a true communication objective each year. And then let that objective serve as a filter for the tactical opportunities that arise throughout the year.

You’ll not only have done your organization a real service, you’ll also free yourself from time-consuming projects that provide little benefit to your cause other than a stack of press clips that you'll end up recycling in January or using to get your next job.