How to give a great presentation: advice from a legendary adman (2012)
brainpickings.org
brainpickings.org
The only thing I agree with is the end:
"The most effective speeches and presentations sound as if they have been spoken, ad-lib, and not written down at all. Great presenters and speakers make it all sound so easy and so natural that one assumes it just pours out of them. It almost never does."
You'll never see an amazing talk/brief/speech like described above, follow the formula outlined in the "How to organize a presentation."
The "How to organize a presentation" is great for someone who has never given a presentation to be able to give a tolerable presentation.
However going from tolerable to good takes a completely different pathway and most people never get there.
I suggest if you're serious about being influential as a presenter you try an open mic for poetry, improv or standup comedy. You'll bomb probably, but the exercise is really important.
Practice storytelling. Write more. Understand your audience before you even start building your presentation. There's so much to do that is never ending but at the end of the day you're trying to build a relationship with your audience so that they trust you and what you are trying to convince them of.
I strongly disagree, and I think the "How to Speak" lecture by Professor Patrick Winston of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrates this very well:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9F536001A3C605FC
This is an example of a very structured presentation, but at no point did I feel bored or out of touch with the presenter because of it.
I saw a person capture the audience's attention with an anecdote about the Military and then used that as a metaphor to empathize with the audience about why they should care. Then he immediately gave a compelling and comedic anecdote with some improvisation demonstrating that it's a skill you can learn, also empathizing with the audience to address fears.
That he wrote an outline on the board is almost immaterial.
Also, notable that this is an academic lecture, which would be expected to be more structured and the power dynamic of the speaker and the audience are already clear, the students are there to learn from the speaker in a somewhat subordinate way. Very different than a TED-style talk, VC pitch, company all call, PR event etc... where that format falls apart unless used very creatively like Dimitri Martin does in his comedy
This reminds me of a Boris Johnson speech story https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/06/my-boris-story/ which is kind of ammusing. A slightly more extreme version.
I think the exact inverse example is probably Donald Trump. He has little relevant expertise to his job and hasn't really bothered to learn much along the way. Instead, he speaks at length without a script and without breaking tempo unburdened by facts, experience or even coherence. Just a lot of confidence and a lot of emotion. And it evidently works really well for a lot of people.
Everything else you say sounds great, though :)
I'm not sure how to categorize Trump's lying. He just says whatever he wants, completely made up.
My charitable view of Trump's lying is this:
He is one of the first high level public officials to take Scalia's opinion in Republican Party of Minnesota v White seriously
> Campaign promises are, by long democratic tradition, the least binding form of human commitment.
His speech is in essence poetry rather than prose; he focuses almost exclusively on evocative imagery and emotional impact and disregards facts as largely irrelevant to his audience. To my dismay, this is much more effective than I would like it to be.
Trump did a decent enough job at leveraging decades of Republican propaganda designed to create permanent unmet needs and resentments to support politicians permanently promising incremental steps in the direction of those needs, and cutting the legal out of the people making that offer by not nakedly offering the whole hog rather than incremental steps. But that's not a triumph of persuasion: the persuasion was done by decades of work by professional political propagandists; Trump was just meeting the already-radicalized Republican base where they'd been set up to be exploited.
- Involving the audience: People often ask questions and this can be the best part of the presentation because I learn about what I might not know, I understand what other people care about, and it often introduces fun interactions. Sometimes, giving away swag is fun by asking questions at the end of the presentation and giving a prize to the first answer.
- Give them a book: I always include a slide at the end of the presentation so people can contact me, find related material for more info, and the URL to any code used in the presentation.
- Making it sound like you: Non ego driven sharing for the benefit of the audience. Sometimes, I'll go listen to a speaker because of who they are, regardless of the topic.
I remember reading some of his other writing... One anecdote about superglue: want to show people it’s strong? Don’t just say it in a billboard ad; glue a car to the billboard!
Brilliant.
One way I frame the first bit of advice (about having a theme, and keeping it to the theme) is my favorite line from Planes, Trains, & Automobiles:
"When you're telling a story, have a point! It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!"