Some ads, campaigns and branding ideas are pretty bad.
So much so that an old “Saturday Night Live” sketch — featuring Jerry Seinfeld playing the host of a “Jeopardy”-like show with stand-up comedians guessing the punch line — included the frequent answer from Adam Sandler’s character, “Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one!?”
Cold comfort, though, when your own advertising and marketing ideas don’t see the light of day: “How is that dreck getting made, while my brilliant ideas are being overlooked?”
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When I first started at MarketingSherpa, I was hired under the title of “Visual Storyteller.” Although that title is ambiguous, I learned that I was hired to address a pain point that many professionals face: using PowerPoint efficiently.
My title has since changed, but I remain an advocate for fluent visual expression in the same way that editors are keen on using words efficiently.
As part of my position, I’ve consulted with many speakers over the past few years on creating effective presentations.
Time and time again, I find that confusion lies in how to treat PowerPoint. Many think of PowerPoint as a presentation buddy — that content is on the slides and coming out of the speaker’s mouth and bullet points are simply needed to reinforce the speaker’s message.
This is not true. A person can only process about 1.6 conversations at a time. He can choose to either listen to you or read your slides. The other .6 gets split between emails, texts and interior monologue, to name just a few other channels.
The dictators of any presentation include: audience, context, purpose and design.
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