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Corporate Presentation - Image is Everything

A white board is nice, but your listeners expect more when you make a presentation. They want to see stuff. That's particularly important when you need to engage large groups for employee training  or for shareholder meetings.  Graphs and visuals will help, but video is even better. A video embedded in your Powerpoint or a takeaway DVD will make everyone remember your presentation.
 
Powerpoint and Keynote are the weapons of choice in presentation land, with Slideshare also popular online.  But sometimes even the the word "Powerpoint" will elicit a groan.  The New York Times ran a story recently about how Powerpoint presentations may have frozen creative thinking in the US military.

But that's even more proof that people take presentations very seriously. Check this out from Slideshare - it's a contest they ran for best corporate presentation. The winner, called "Thirst," is notable for mixing words and pictures.

Consultants like Carmine Gallo acknowledge Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki as presentation gods.  Not only do Jobs and Kawasaki adhere to a fewer-words, more-pictures practice, they also believe the pictures should be really big, and the type, too.  Kawasaki has what he calls the 10/20/30 Rule. No more than 10 slides in the presentation, make it last 20 minutes - leaving time for questions and discussion at the end - and no font sizes smaller than 30 points.  Kawasaki mentions Powerpoint's fancy animation effects - and  dismisses them as distractions.

If you want movement in your presentation, think about embedding a short video. Videos are surprisingly easy to embed in a Powerpoint - just dragging and dropping a .mov file works great. A couple of minutes of location shots, a how to, or a great on-camera storyteller will bring things home for your audience. Leaving them with a DVD literally lets them take  your message home with them.  If you have questions about corporate  videos or creating a DVD, get in touch and we'll talk. 

For more tips on how to wow your audience, here's an article by Carmine Gallo written for Bloomberg Businessweek.  Thanks for giving us a read and check back soon for more tips and how-tos.
 
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Photo Credit: Chirag Rathod via Creative Commons License.