Episode #249: Omnichannel Presenting

We normally think of omnichannel in relation to the medium being used to contact buyers. We can also use this idea when thinking about planning our talk. We automatically revert to the brain when we start this exercise. Our logical, rational, analytical mode is needed but that is not enough for audiences. We need heart, value and sex appeal for our messages to resonate. We tend however to get stuck on the first rung of the planning ladder, the intellectual angle. We all know though that we are emotional creatures, running around justifying our emotional choices with a veneer of logic. Our talk need to access all of our human instincts.

We need our brain to be working well. Logic is required to make the argument make sense to our audience. It means we need to be piling on the evidence, proof, data, statistics and testimonials etc. The navigation of the talk should be logical, so that it flows like a good novel, making it easy for the audience to follow where we are going with this content. I have mentioned before a talk I attended, where the visiting VIP just rambled through this maze and mist of an esoteric discussion, peppered with his vague musings, which was totally impenetrable. It lacked structure, logical flow and clear, concise communication. It was totally self-indulgent. To this day, I still have no idea what he was on about, but his personal reputation and his organisation’s reputation were both shredded that day.

Some members in the audience will be analytical types who love the logic, the detail, the nitty gritty, the evidence and they will be happy to see it. They will be calibrating everything we say and running it through their mind looking for inconsistencies, gaps, flaws and mistakes of fact. We will win this group over if we are well organised, however they are not the only personality type in the audience. We have to go omnichannel to appeal to other personality types.

Some will be more swayed by their hearts. We need to get them in touch with their emotions and feelings during our talk. Novels and movies are emotional engagement masterpieces in many cases. We are drawn into the characters in the story and what happens to them. I am a pretty logical guy, but I remember being captured by the heroine in the Japanese television drama Oshin. Her rise from crushing poverty to running a massive retail empire was a true story, which appealed to my logical brain, but her travails were all pulling at the heartstrings.

We do not have multiple weeks like a television show or three hours like a movie or hundreds of pages in a novel to emotionally engage our audience. We can have some elements of the human drama of what we are talking about. Because we are in business there is absolutely no shortage of drama which we can relate. There are the full spectrum of characters to draw upon as well, from amongst our colleagues, subordinates, superiors, suppliers and clients. Everyone loves a gory tale of corporate value destruction, factional bloodletting spitting out winners and losers and the dirty deeds done dirt cheap by business nasties.

Another instinct is the gut and this is where we are appealing to value for money. Is what we are talking about bringing concrete value to the audience. Have we proffered some information or insight, which was previously unknown to them? Are we making their business or personal life substantially better? Are we tuning into the conversation going on in in the minds of the audience and suggesting questions which they want answers to and then magically unveiling the solutions? The “what is in it for me” question is always the uppermost thought in an audience’s mind, when they sit there listening to us pontificate about a subject. I attended a talk by a big shot executive from one of the largest companies in the world. She was talking about personal branding, so she pulled a good crowd. However, it instantly became apparent that she was talking about how to brand yourself within a mega monster of a company like hers, when the audience was full of punters from small to medium sized enterprises. There were zero take-aways and zero value on offer that day.

The last omnichannel is sex appeal. Is your topic sexy, will it fill the seats? The title is always a key. A lot of thought needs to go into the best shorthand description which will grab attention. Sometimes we need a provocative title to break through the daily detritus filling the minds of our potential audience members. “How to” titles also work because we are flagging you will learn something if you attend. The delivery is another aspect of sex appeal. We have to be excellent in giving the talk, looking for every opportunity to engage with our audience. We want them thinking, writing down our stuff and often we have to branch into edutainment. I am not good at snappy repartee, quick wit, zinger one liners or being a skilled raconteur. I can tell stories though, which are interesting and insightful, which seems to get me by.

When we sit down to design the talk, we need to be asking ourselves, “have I got all of the omnichannel touchpoints covered for this talk?”. We know people are quite various in how they absorb information and in their interests. We have to do our best to appeal to as many people as we can in the one sitting. In the end, it is the planning starting point which matters most. If we plan to incorporate these four omnichannel elements of brain, heart, gut and sex appeal, then we will be more successful.