Presenting to Win
You may have heard the phrase ‘death by PowerPoint’, induced by information overload during visual presentations that are too long, too complex and quite frankly, boring.
The shocking truth is, that companies who employ this approach, spend hundreds
of millions of dollars annually on brand positioning, advertising and marketing and then trust some uninformed individual to do their own thing at the sharp end of the business – all that hard work unravelled in a short time by someone incorrectly briefed.
The problem with linear presentations
Your company’s sales or credentials presentation isn’t just going to be viewed by
one type of individual. One day it may be a purchasing manager, another a marketing director and sometimes even a CEO. These people will want to see different things, in
varying depths of detail. So the key to a good presentation is that it can adapt to the presenter’s requirements to give the audience the information they need with
the minimum of fuss. All the information a presenter needs should be included and available in just a few clicks. The days of running a linear presentation starting with the agenda of 12 points and running through each painful slide in linear order are truly over.
The problem with corporate videos
Corporate film certainly has its place but not as a core presentation tool: they are too inflexible. In this rapidly changing world of ours it is challenging to get more than
18 months out of a cleverly constructed film before the information and style show their age. A short corporate video is great to have on an exhibition stand or playing in the reception of your office, but not as a tool to win business.
The great thing about digital media presentations
Digital media or multimedia presentations are generally far more dynamic and flexible than their standard PowerPoint counterparts. Here, content is no longer bound to a specific form or context. They help you to make your audience sit up and listen; no more dozing through yet another boring slide show. This format will allow your presentation to work in different situations including one-to-one or group presentations; conferences, trade shows and exhibitions; kiosks, online, reception areas or as giveaways on DVD or memory stick.
Here’s a typical structure of well-put together digital media presentation:
Movie intro: a looping 1- to 2-minute Flash movie combining video, images, typography, sound and animation into a top-level overview of the organisation, products and projects.
Landing page: the movie breaks out into a landing page the design of which could
be anything including a map, master plan
or product selector. Topics: selecting links from the landing page will guide the audience down a topic stream which can be highly graphical with video and animated elements. The landing page is accessible at any point – this is not a linear structure.
Other great benefits
Easily managed content: content management module can be included which is designed to enable you to add, delete or move topics about as well as changing content and images within the topic streams.
Always up-to-date with minimal effort: with an auto-update feature the presentation can link up via an internet connection to a master file stored online. It will compare version numbers and give an option to download an update.
Keeping content dynamic: it’s also possible to update data on the fly such as share price and other variable information.
Stand-alone presenting (no presenter): the presentation can be set to run automatically or to loop individual topic streams.
Tracking page views: trackers can run in the background, which records clicks to report the page views on the presentation.
Easy integration and navigation: principally a design consideration but the presentation can be adapted early on to allow for touch screen navigation.
Content is secure: certain content amendments can be restricted, for example the financial information can be set to allow updates only from the accounts department.
A well-designed presentation as outlined here will yield fluidity and excitement.
It will demonstrate to your audience that you care and take pride in what you present and therefore will provide additional confidence to the audience as well as the presenters – and hopefully win you lots of new business.
The shocking truth is, that companies who employ this approach, spend hundreds
of millions of dollars annually on brand positioning, advertising and marketing and then trust some uninformed individual to do their own thing at the sharp end of the business – all that hard work unravelled in a short time by someone incorrectly briefed.
The problem with linear presentations
Your company’s sales or credentials presentation isn’t just going to be viewed by
one type of individual. One day it may be a purchasing manager, another a marketing director and sometimes even a CEO. These people will want to see different things, in
varying depths of detail. So the key to a good presentation is that it can adapt to the presenter’s requirements to give the audience the information they need with
the minimum of fuss. All the information a presenter needs should be included and available in just a few clicks. The days of running a linear presentation starting with the agenda of 12 points and running through each painful slide in linear order are truly over.
The problem with corporate videos
Corporate film certainly has its place but not as a core presentation tool: they are too inflexible. In this rapidly changing world of ours it is challenging to get more than
18 months out of a cleverly constructed film before the information and style show their age. A short corporate video is great to have on an exhibition stand or playing in the reception of your office, but not as a tool to win business.
The great thing about digital media presentations
Digital media or multimedia presentations are generally far more dynamic and flexible than their standard PowerPoint counterparts. Here, content is no longer bound to a specific form or context. They help you to make your audience sit up and listen; no more dozing through yet another boring slide show. This format will allow your presentation to work in different situations including one-to-one or group presentations; conferences, trade shows and exhibitions; kiosks, online, reception areas or as giveaways on DVD or memory stick.
Here’s a typical structure of well-put together digital media presentation:
Movie intro: a looping 1- to 2-minute Flash movie combining video, images, typography, sound and animation into a top-level overview of the organisation, products and projects.
Landing page: the movie breaks out into a landing page the design of which could
be anything including a map, master plan
or product selector. Topics: selecting links from the landing page will guide the audience down a topic stream which can be highly graphical with video and animated elements. The landing page is accessible at any point – this is not a linear structure.
Other great benefits
Easily managed content: content management module can be included which is designed to enable you to add, delete or move topics about as well as changing content and images within the topic streams.
Always up-to-date with minimal effort: with an auto-update feature the presentation can link up via an internet connection to a master file stored online. It will compare version numbers and give an option to download an update.
Keeping content dynamic: it’s also possible to update data on the fly such as share price and other variable information.
Stand-alone presenting (no presenter): the presentation can be set to run automatically or to loop individual topic streams.
Tracking page views: trackers can run in the background, which records clicks to report the page views on the presentation.
Easy integration and navigation: principally a design consideration but the presentation can be adapted early on to allow for touch screen navigation.
Content is secure: certain content amendments can be restricted, for example the financial information can be set to allow updates only from the accounts department.
A well-designed presentation as outlined here will yield fluidity and excitement.
It will demonstrate to your audience that you care and take pride in what you present and therefore will provide additional confidence to the audience as well as the presenters – and hopefully win you lots of new business.
