Tag Archive for: Death by PowerPoint

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The Truth About Powerpoint

I’m sorry, but I have to say this 😱

This will probably offend you…

But everytime I hear someone say “Powerpoint is so boring”… It really makes me angry.

Listen, if you think that having a fancy “prezi” or animated presentation is going to help you…

It is complete bullshit! 💩

Powerpoint is not boring – YOU are!

Powerpoint is just a tool. And, while a tool can help you to create great things, it can never ever be responsible for a bad outcome.

Think about it… would you hold your car responsible for crashing into the car in front of you?

Yes, you can create awesome presentations with Prezi.
If you know how….

But, you can also create awesome presentations with Powerpoint.
If you know how…

So, it is the “Know How”, that differentiates a persuasive from a boring presentation, not the tool used.

My tip: Before you open any presentation software, get that basics right. Think about the people in your audience & their challenges, your message, your content and your story.

Then you are on the right track to creating a convincing presentation.

Not by blaming the software.

Focus on the story THEN the presentation.

Bullets kill – so do bullet points

6pm, Wednesday in the office! The day is almost over and you still haven’t started the presentation for first thing tomorrow. But now you’ve really got to step on it. So it’s open Powerpoint and off we go!

‘Insert title here’ and ‘insert text here’ shines radiantly on the screen. Well, if it’s there already, then let’s do it! You enter the title and ‘copy & paste’ the text into the slides from the various sources. Two hours later and it’s done. True, it’s not the best, but it’s got everything it needs.

The slides look something like this:

Slides of text - lots of text, no statement, otherwise known as a slide bombardment.

Bullet points as far as the eye can see and no end of text. If the first slide looks like this, you can assume that all the other slides will look the same.

And that’s why people also like to call this type of presentation ‘slide bombardment’.  In English, we talk about ‘death by Powerpoint’.

Bullet points lead to ‘death by Powerpoint’ through the slide bombardment.

It all sounds very warlike – bombardment, death and so on. The ammunition for these bombardments aren’t real bullets though, but rather ‘bullet points’.

This killing isn’t actually people but the attention of the audience. But if you don’t pay attention, you won’t even notice anything.

In other words:

Attention gone => focus on other things => remember presentation = dead loss!

The aim of a presentation is obviously to not bore the audience. You want an attentive audience that is enthused with your presentation and that you can motivate to take action. If you literally ‘shoot’ them during the presentation, they will be unable to take action afterwards. So what do you do?

Kill the bullets before they kill you

The first step is to keep bullet points to an absolute minimum. The image below jokingly highlights how important this is.

Bullet points

  • Look at your slides
  • Count the bullet points
  • Are there more bullets in your presentation than in the entire Godfather trilogy?
  • Time to change your presentation!

And if you don’t want to ‘shoot’ your audience, then you need to aim to make do with as few bullet points as possible.

The best presentation has NO bullet points at all!

When creating your presentation, simply start thinking about the bullet points and your public, and you’ll soon find different ways to present your content!

If you can’t find any other ways, then we’ll help you with it – promise!

After all, our super powers are saving the world from dull presentations!

Check it out for yourself and get in touch with us today!

Image source: © dinostock – Fotolia.com