How To Give a Presentation Like Steve Jobs

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http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/01/27/as-apple-reveals-tablet-tips-on-how-to-give-a-presentation-like-steve-jobs/

How has Jobs done it? Speakeasy asked Carmine Gallo, the author of “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience” (McGraw-Hill) to break down Jobs’ techniques and explain how the average corporate citizen can employ them. He boiled Jobs’ magic down to three basic points:

Rule #1: Create a Headline for Your Product, Service or Idea: “Apple always creates a one-sentence description for the product,” Gallo said. “I call it a Twitter-friendly headline because it’s always under 140 characters.: Example: In 2008, when Jobs introduced the MacBook Air, he did so with the line “The world’s thinnest notebook.” Said Gallo: “It positions it in your mind. It’s not a tagline. It’s an actual description.” If you can’t describe what your product is clearly and concisely, he added, “go back to drawing board.”

Rule #2: Introduce an Antagonist: “For every great novel, there’s a hero and a villain,” Gallo said. Example: before Jobs showed the world the iPhone, he spent several minutes going over the smart phone marketplace and noting what competitors lacked. Apple’s popular “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” commercials do the same thing, setting up a supposedly inferior rival and demonstrating Apple’s superiority. “Sometimes,” Gallo noted, “the villain is a problem in need of a solution.”

Rule #3: Strive For Visual Simplicity: “There are no bullet points in a Steve Jobs presentation,” Gallo said. “That’s mediocre. It’s what everyone does.” Instead of relying on words, Gallo said, “think pictures, images.” Consider the way Jobs explained the iPhone touch screen – with a picture of a finger on the screen. To illustrate the thin frame of the MacBook Air, Jobs used a picture of an office envelope with a notebook sticking out. “It’s visual simplicity,” Gallo said.