As I was reading my way through the rabbit hole (which is when you’re reading a blog post and you link through to another, then another, then another, and now you’re reading a post from 2008) I came across a post by Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media about “The Power of the Unexpected.”
Her post was introducing the “Wedding Entrance” video where the wedding party enters the church to the soothing sounds of Chris Brown’s Forever. By now, everyone and their brother has seen it (over 6 million views), and it’s been spoofed in a variety of places, including NBC’s The Office at Jim and Pam’s wedding.
I’m not here to talk about the video, but how reading about how powerful the unexpected can really be. Lisa writes:
Your customers will probably expect you to act a certain way today. The same old greetings, the same service, the same old promises, etc. Maybe today you should surprise them. Answer the phone differently. Offer them something extra. Show them another side of you. Let yourself get carried away and swept up.
I imediately thought about presentations. One of the reasons I’m so damn passionate about this “new” way of presenting (simple, vivid, clean, + images, – text) is because we live in a culture where a great PowerPoint is UNEXPECTED!
99.9% Presentations today are:
- Boring
- Text heavy
- Image light
- Lack creativity
- Lack sensitivity (for the audience)
- Copy the standard format
- Rarely entertaining
- Hardly interesting
- Underwhelming
- Did I say boring?
Creating a truly effective presentation can be SO POWERFUL for you, as a brand, as a business owner, as a job seeker, as an educator, or whatever you may be. If you put in the effort to master your content and use vivid imagery to enhance and support your message, then you can be WILDLY successful because audiences have been subjected to bad presentations for as long as PowerPoint has been around.
I’m not blowing smoke. I truly believe this because I see it happen every day. Give your audience something of value, something entertaining, something they don’t expect, and you will have an audience that can’t stop thanking you, calling for your business, referring you to others…you get the point.
From Presentation Advisors Blog