In an inspiring book 'The Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas' by Jon Steel I read that presentations are all about managing expectations. After having spent hours of train journeys thinking about this versatile sentence and with the risk of sounding bit like a Cactus Jack I'm going to claim that the general field of marketing can be summarized with this very statement.
Expectations I have exceeded recently in a pitch for a big client at Prism. As a digital creative I tend to present (internally or in pitches) without PowerPoint slides. For me images do just fine. I despise bullet points, text-heavy slides or spreadsheets. Those I leave to the guys upstairs in accounts. Images are more likely remembered than words according to what psychologists call the picture superiority effect.
With the foam-boards in my hands I say things like:
'The design aims to look crisp, fresh and yet pragmatic and structured through an intuitive information architecture that makes it easy for users to find content that is most relevant for them. This is achieved by...'
I also like asking rhetorical questions:
'How will the concept retain your costumer's attention? The intersection between clearly defined messages aiming at a memorable experience and interactive and shared contents weave the page's elements into one platform your customers have a reason to return to.'
In retrospect it's seemingly trivial, but... two months later we were told that we won the account! Maybe not that trivial after all?
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