The Changing Approach to Telling Your Story

We have seen over the last twenty years of building PowerPoints for major brands; more dramatic change in how information is presented in just the last few years.   We can reliably state that with the early bloggers, like Copyblogger: that the format for conveying company messaging was changed permanently by the invention of content marketing.  Along with the change in messaging formats, the sales strategies of old were also changed.  A sales guy with a chair, desk and phone were to be replaced with succinct and creative copy that; allowed buyers to find those organizations that knew what to do with the model: providing information in an informative, interesting and non-disruptive method: letting the buyer buy when they are ready to buy.

Power Point: A Mature Technology and Still Viable Today

In the good old days, we filled Power Points with tons of words, very few visuals and often: these presentations were forty or more pages.  That was the norm and it went against proven knowledge; that all humans suffer from attention deficit disorder; and that ten to fifteen minutes is optimal amount of time we can focus and remember:  anything!  Our thought is that Power Point is still an effective way to present; provided that you know how to compose a narrative.

Distillation is Good for Whiskey and Information

There are lots of concepts these days on how to present information; and one is the idea of information triage: “distilling” information down to its essential ingredients.  We pay attention when information is given in a story format. A short story if you will. We all have friends or acquaintances that assure us, that this story will be quick: and it isn’t.  As a result, we stop listening and we don’t care.  So whether we use an old favorite like PowerPoint, or a new favorite like Prezi; how the content is presented is what is important.

The New Methods That Work

Another proven human concept: we remember more when the information is presented visually.  Jeff Bezos calls his presentation style: “picture superiority.” We combine these concepts along with some new technologies like Prezi; affordable animated videos; deploying Power Point with these condensed information principles: to get your message engaged with your audience.

New Methods—Right Combination

There is a defined methodology for creating and presenting your content to your audience; that will engaged them and keep them interested.  Presentations need to tell a story—a narrative; people want to know how something got to be what it is now.  When you meet someone at a party, the first question asked is: what do you do for a living; where are you from; are you married; we need as listeners: context.  But we want just enough information to create an understanding of the context; then we decide if we are interested enough to continue listening.  In our world today, because of the internet and access to information, we will go out and do our own confirmations of what you are saying.  So New Methods—Right Combinations: the goal of presentations today; is to create enough interest in your offering: to move them into the proof of content stage.  That’s how all of us buy things that we want.  We will decide from there.

 As  Marshall McLuhan, who famously coined the phrase: ”The medium is the message,”—it means that the form of the medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.  Keep McLuhan in mind when picking your medium: it might influence your results.