It’s All in the Presentation, Pal

Most PR folks know the syndrome: we’re great at promoting and telling the story of our clients, but not so great at doing the same for ourselves. That’s why it’s important to have someone in your corner who’s a pal–and by pal I mean someone who will tell you the truth when you need to hear it.

A good pal will tell you when your breath isn’t so fresh or you have a stain on your tie. (A pal will tell you when you’re full of it, too–but that’s a different post.)

Professionally, a pal will also tell you that your website needs work or to get your butt in gear and start blogging (in my case, that honor goes to Ms. Shelly Kramer at V3 Integrated Marketing).  In that vein, I created a Keynote slide deck for my media training seminar and found it was okay, but more often than not it impeded the flow of my presentation. I showed it to Shelly–and she gently (!) told me that my media training slide presentation needed some…er…okay…a lot of polish.

Shelly recommended I show it to Al.

Al Bonner of Presentation Transformations evaluated my lackluster presentation and told me a number of ways to make it more effective. He zeroed in on the elements that were holding back my presentation (and yes, I am using bullet points–it’s a hard habit  to break, Al):

• Too many bullet points. Heck, I had bullet points with bullet points under them.
• Images that were hackneyed and tired.
• Colors and fonts were inconsistent.
• Audio and video slides were clunky.
• I also went a little crazy with the animated transitions–a lot of fancy flights and typewriter effects. I needed to go to Animation Abusers Anonymous.

All of these issues conspired to distract from my message rather than enhancing it.

When Al kindly showed me how distracting those elements are, I blushed a little. I’m a professional communicator for Pete’s sake! (Though he did say he had seen worse.) But Al was right. He was that pal who tells you when you’re wearing one brown shoe and one black shoe.

So, Al took my clunky Keynote presentation (he can do PowerPoint, too) and smoothed out the rough spots, cleaned up the transitions, fonts and multimedia elements. What he gave me was a consistent, creative presentation that enhanced my message and will help me focus on sharing information rather than fooling with a gimmicky, clunky slide show.

I’ve posted a truncated version on Slideshare (see below). The limitations of Slideshare prevent you from seeing the video, hearing the audio or experiencing the transitions; but what you do see is a clean, easy to follow slide presentation. Have a look, and if you want to see what Al can do for you, email him.

If you’d like to see the entire transformed presentation live with the video, audio and wisecracking PR dude, contact me and we’ll schedule your very own media training seminar.

Media Training: Opportunity Has a Secret Knock