Episode #226: Why Do We Have To Put Up With Substandard Presentations

This global company is a household name in Japan. They have spent a fortune getting the brand name known here. They had some tough times early on too and got a hammering from the media about aspects of their business model. A lot of negative publicity was generated, so the name is well known, but not in a helpful way. The President is giving his talk about the company and the industry to a mixed audience here in Tokyo. It was sadly underwhelming. Sitting there was a form of torture for me, who teaches this stuff. Well what made this an under performing presentation and what can we learn from it?

The meltdown in the media from a few years ago is a common memory. But what a great “return from the dead story” lies therein. There must have been amazing characters involved. Even the foreign head office President had to get involved and apologise. There was drama aplenty and lessons numerous falling out from the catastrophe. We all love to learn by hearing about the errors of others. We gobble that stuff right up, because we have that Schadenfreude thing going in the background.

Instead, we got a very one dimensional, flat talk about the business model and not much on the lessons learnt. It was delivered with a very passionless effort, that failed to ignite anyone in the audience. The speaker looked tired and sounded only slightly interested to be there talking to us. His facial expression was single throughout. There were no highs and lows of the journey reflected in his expression. He seemed to make sure to match his voice to his wooden face and spoke throughout in a deathly, dull monotone. This means he gave up the chance to punch out specific words for emphasis, to bring phrases to life by turbo injecting them with power or alternatively, dropping the strength out for contrast. It was bland.

In fact, this was a major brand damaging exercise from go to woe. By that, I count both his personal, professional brand and also the corporate brand. He mentioned that he had given a couple of these talks to various audiences already and I was thinking that is pretty sad. Why sad?

I was reminded of that story about Campbell’s tomato soup. I can’t remember who was the ad guy in charge of the advertising account for Campbells, but the owner complained that the advertising agency was promoting all of the other soups, except tomato. The ad guy’s reply is very informative for speakers. He said the reason was that their tomato soup was orange in colour and not all that good. If he promoted it vigorously, more people would try it, become unimpressed and Campbells would suffer severe brand damage.

This is what happens to speakers like this one. They nefariously roam around destroying their personal and company brands, by exposing more and more people to their zombie presentation performance. He needed to be a lot more energised in his talk. This was potential high drama, full of powerful stories that would stick with us, long after the talk was over. Here we had a great redemption story of how they came back from the brink of expiration in Japan, to recover, regroup and re-conquer the market.

The delivery had one gear and that unfortunately was stuck in low gear. We never had spurts of speed or energy. We just dawdled along at three kilometres an hour until it ended. We all need to become passionate about our story, telling it with a lot of voice strength and using our body language to good effect.

We take the audience with us on a trip to Space Mountain at Disneyland. We are strapped in, and then we whiz into the blackness of their downfall, curving at high speed around the media assault, dropping precipitously into a deep dive of lost business from which it looked there was no return. Next, we soar skyward as we get over the disaster and rebound the company, people and the brand.

We needed that passionate retelling of the journey, the highs and lows, the lessons, the characters involved. All we got was a slide deck with lots of data on it. What a lost opportunity. We all have many stories, good, bad and educational. We need to use these to engage our audience, so that they feel like they have been with us through that hair raising ride and have touched back down with us, exhausted but elated at having survived the ride.

Remember, people won’t recall the detail of your talk. They will forget all the statistics. Even if they wrote them down, they won’t consult them ever again. They will not remember all those groovy slides you crafted and assembled so meticulously. They will remember the stories though. They will remember you and how you came across. They won’t forget how much you excited them or didn’t excite them. Treat every chance to talk as a great brand building or exploding opportunity. As the speaker definitely be passionate, tell energising stories and be memorable in a good way. This is how you build both your personal and company brands to good effect. The negative alternative is not a very pleasant contemplation.