Episode #142: Visual Elements In Presentations

There is no question visuals are super powerful in presentations. This can range from your eye contact, body language, gestures all the way up to actual live fireworks. Think about sporting presentations where they make heavy use of visuals to stir emotions. The half time show is full of music, fireworks, action. The team scores a goal and the big screens are zeroing in on the action that just occurred. The boxers are introduced as they enter the arena and fireworks are exploding behind them, like they are modern messiahs here to save the masses. You might not think of it this way, but this is what you are competing with today, as the lines get blurred between how events are presented.

There you stand, with just your slide deck advancer in your hand. You are facing an audience fully tooled up on the most realistic computer games, viral videos, light show events and quick cut video action. You are thinking your information quality will carry the day, because you speak in a monotone, are deadly boring most of the time and embolden us with the passion of road kill. Sad to say, but none of this ever worked well and it certainly doesn’t work today.

The quality of your information has zero significance if no one is paying attention to what you are saying. In this Age of Distraction, audiences are leaping on to their phones at the first sign of tedium. Even when binge watching their favourite television series, they have the implement of destruction - their phone - at the ready to take up and multi task.

The question today is how to integrate all of this cool stuff into our presentations without it overwhelming us, the presenter. Slide shows are an ever present danger, as the audience loses their connection with us and are absorbed by what is up on the screen. The worst thing you can do is hand out the slide deck beforehand, because you are on slide two and they are on page eighteen. The disconnect with what you are saying becomes close to total at this point.

Videos can be very good for presenting things in an attractive manner. I was watching a video at a presentation recently and the supporting video was very slick. It managed to capture the action, the drama, the excitement in a way that formed a positive impression. This is the key word though – impression. It doesn’t last. We have our attention monopolised for a short period of time and then we are back to distraction HQ.

What I notice with most presenters who are using video is they let the video run wild and they don’t attempt to control it. By this I mean, they just play the video. We should have an intro for the video and an outro for after. We shouldn’t just let our audience watch the video as if every aspect has the same value. We want to be hitting key messages in that video, in the same way that we hit key words in our sentences to create greater emphasis for our messages.

The video will have one scene or a couple of scenes which help us with our messaging and rather than just running the video, we want to focus our audience’s attention right there. We need to set that up. For example, “In this video please look for the scene with the interview with our Chief Scientist. What she has to say is fascinating and may change your perspective entirely”. When we hear a set up like that, we are now in a heightened state of anticipation. We are wondering what is she going to say that will change my perspective?

Once the video is over, we need to wrap a bow around the key messages and refer back to the evidence we presented in the video to back up our point of view on the subject. For example, “What I like about the message in that video is that we can control our future, if we choose to take that route”. This sentence would be referring back to your key message from your talk, so that the whole thing is congruent. This is how we control the video, rather than what has become the norm – the video controls the speaker or it is just fluff, that has no lasting impact and everyone has forgotten it within the next thirty seconds.

As presenters, we have to ensure the focus is fully on us and that the audience is completely riveted to what we are saying. The Age of Distraction is also the Age of Destruction for Presenters. We need to control the visual elements, so that they are always our servant and never our master.