I guess all of you have heard at least a bit about the iPad, right? Yes, all snickering about the name aside – remember, they laughed at the Wii too – the Apple guys have got product launches down to a fine art. You wanna talk about pre-launches, building hype and generating buzz – these guys are at the top of their game. And Steve Jobs is at the top of HIS presentation game.
The following link dissects what Steve Jobs does that makes his product launches so memorable. A huge part of them, of course, is the product itself. Steve Jobs could go on stage holding the product and not say one word, and the product would still sell well. But when he talks about the product, it probably pushes more sales, because he is persuasive, and more importantly, because he is passionate about his product. Passion comes across as energy, and that’s an essential part of presentations.
Anyway, here is the link. Scroll down past the YouTube video for a slideshow view of the pertinent points made in the video. Basically, they are:
1. Presentations are a story that you tell your audience, so you have to know what the story is.
2. There is always a hero and villain in the story. This helps the audience to empathise with your hero (you, your product or your service).
3. The rule of Three: Apparently scientists have found that humans can’t take more than 3 or 4 chunks of information at one shot. Don’t overwhelm your audience.
4. Describe your product like a Twitter post: One-liners that capture a main feature of your product. Simple and impactful.
5. Dreams, not products: Probably the part where most of us will go “OMG we think just like this guy!”. You, your product or your service is going to change the world. You have to possess an evangelistic zeal about it.
6. Deliver an EXPERIENCE. Emotion is one of the strongest selling tools, and emotionally-charged content results in better retention of information.
7. Steve Jobs’ presentations don’t use bullet points. Then again, all his slides have only ONE line of text each. Bullet points would be overkill.
8. 1 picture = 1 piece of information => knowledge. Many words = many pieces of information => knowledge. Which is easier for your audience to digest?
9. Reveal an OMG moment. The brain doesn’t pay attention to boring things. This ties in to #6.
10. Master stage presence. Own the stage.
11. Body language of an open posture, eye contact, hand gestures.
12. Rehearse like mad. Also, when you know that you know your script well, this frees up your brain’s processing power to focus on other aspects of your performance, such as delivery.
12. Have fun! Having fun is energy-building.
10/02/2010 at 11:30 pm Permalink
Insightful indeed…. in our routine, your article definitely presents great ideas how we can better add value to people that we meet in sharing our AdvoDreams with them! Thank you! Looking forward to you sharing a new evaluation presentation!