 Awesome photo by Grok—an instance where AI, and good prompts, rock. This is a true story. As usual, we’ll blur the details for privacy, but you’ll get the important take-aways for your business.
We were on a Zoom call recently with a client, brainstorming ideas for updating their tagline. The tagline was basically a message to prospects, saying, “Use this service, and you’ll be better at doing XYZ.” During the call, the client asked, “Hey, why don’t we use the word ‘turbocharge’?” “Sure. Try it.” And so: “Use this service to turbocharge your ability to XYZ.” Hmmm. Here’s the thing. This service has nothing to do with turbocharging. It’s a B2B play, not an automotive one. In the land of taglines, where you typically only have less than a dozen words to get your point across, you can’t be off one bit. And now comes the lesson of this article. Ready? At this point, our instinct was to start brainstorming other ways to update this tagline. Starting with the customers’ needs, and layering in what this company really specialized at, and how they did it. That should seem straightforward to you, especially if you’ve ever read any of our other articles here at Copel Communications. But remember: We were on a Zoom call with the client at the time. And so that client said, “Let’s ask ChatGPT.” And they brought up a screen-share, and plugged the “turbocharge” tagline into it, asking ChatGPT for other versions. (If you see where this story is going already, give yourself some extra points.) And so ChatGPT dutifully delivered. It spat out a bunch of other options, all with variations on the word “turbocharge.” Things like “energize.” “Electrify.” “Invigorate.” “Supercharge.” Et cetera, et cetera. Guess what? None of these was any better than the original version. Of course you know why. Although it wasn’t immediately apparent to our client during the call. It was a classic case of GIGO: the old software programmers’ acronym for “garbage in, garbage out.” ChatGPT assumed that “turbocharge” was a perfectly good prompt, so it ran with it. Client: “Let’s try ‘amplify.’” They did. And ChatGPT spat out more of the same. Having waited patiently during this exercise, we then asked the client specifically what we’d mentioned, in this article, just a few paragraphs ago: Why don’t we take a different tack? Why don’t we start with the target customers’ needs, and layer in what your company specializes at, and how it does it? Guess what? And, no—it’s not a case of “Ta-dah! We got something brilliant, instantly.” The “Guess what?” answer is this then took a lot of work. ChatGPT is easy. But in cases like this, it’s just a GIGO vacuum. At least our client could see that it wasn’t delivering useful output. And so we worked on answering those questions above, because we both knew the answers. At that point, it was a matter of narrowing it down to just a few bullet points and words, and assembling them into a tagline-like sequence that would have a strong cadence and impact. It went something like this: Master the art—and science—of performing XYZ to achieve ABC benefit. Look! “Mastery”! And the subtle art-like touch that comes with this company’s services… not to mention the grounded-in-science methodology. Plus specific business benefits that the company delivers to its clients! Honestly. Do you think that ChatGPT would have figured out any of that on its own? Of course it couldn’t. That’s not fair to ChatGPT. Now you can (in fact, we did) feed “Master the art—and science—of performing XYZ to achieve ABC benefit” into ChatGPT and let it try and polish that. But again, it just didn’t come through as well as good old-fashioned elbow grease. Don’t get us wrong. ChatGPT is a cool tool, and it can be quite useful. But you need to apply it appropriately, and recognize its limitations. It’s like that old adage that if you’re a hammer, you tend to perceive everything in your world as a nail. Need help with a creative challenge that AI can’t handle? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help.
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 Great photo by Grok. Sometimes, the success of your creative marketing hinges on some decidedly un-creative input.
Here’s a true story. We were recently tasked with scripting a video for a client of ours. Granted, we have to cloak this in anonymity, but you’ll get the gist: The client of ours is a consultancy. They had created a breakthrough technical solution for one of their clients. Our job was to script a video, showing the whole world this breakthrough solution—while also anonymizing our client’s client. Follow? On the surface, this is a pretty straightforward assignment. We had to write a script which would show prospective clients (for the consultancy) how amazing this technical solution is. But it quickly became trickier than you might think. Our point of contact at the consultancy was one of the super-sharp technical people who had actually worked on this breakthrough solution. Let’s call him Steve. Steve was our source of input. And so Steve—not terribly shockingly—told us all about this breakthrough solution. Every nut and bolt. Every feature. Every output. Every paradigm-shattering spec. And we couldn’t write the script. Know why? Think about it. Our task was to write a brief—as in, two- to three-minute—video, dramatically showcasing this breakthrough solution. Yet what had Steve, in all his ardent energy, failed to provide us? Of course: Act One. Huh? Two sides to every story (and marketing piece) A video like this—or any marketing piece like this—should follow what we call “a two-act structure.” Steve had given us all of the input for Act Two. That is, the solution. But of course! Now it’s super obvious, isn’t it? A solution solves a problem. What was the problem?? We asked Steve. And he said “Well, our client couldn’t do X.” And yes, he technically answered our question, but he didn’t exactly help us. And here we get to the gist of this article. Steve is not a creative pro. That’s not his job. He excels at plenty of other stuff, and the world is a better place because of it. But he needed a little help, a little nudging, from us, to give us the input we’d craved for Act One of this script. And so we asked him, “Could you tell us more, please? Why couldn’t your client do X? What were all the contributing factors? We want to know, as much as possible, about the sheer chaos they were confronting before your solution came along. We want the ‘Before’ to be horrendous! Inundate us with details! The messier, the better!” You could see the light dawning in Steve’s eyes. Of course! The messier, the better! Because The Great Wonderful Solution isn’t so great or wonderful unless it really clears what appear to be insurmountable hurdles. Once Steve got it, he got it. After all, who would know that client’s “before” situation better than him? He piled on with gory details, and voilà! We were able to pen a truly effective video. Clearly, you can extrapolate a lot from this little story. Marketing and advertising routinely require creativity. And just as routinely, your input sources may not be people who are naturally creative. But they can be coaxed. The information is there. You just need to tease it out. Need help with a creative challenge like this? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help!  Great photo by Grok. We recently worked on a book project, wherein we worked closely with the author (to be specific, we ghost-copy-edited the manuscript), and we were also involved, as a creative resource, when it was time to create the book’s cover. We had a great graphic artist we were working with.
All of this will tie in—shortly—to the gist of this article: Directing other creatives. There’s certainly a fine line between over- and under-directing them. So how do you find that sweet spot? Quick tangent about book design. Regardless of the cute aphorism you were taught in grade school, we all judge books by their covers. In a word, Duh! That’s what they’re there for. You wouldn’t buy a technical how-to guide with a cover that teased a torrid romance, or vice versa. The cover needs to inform the would-be reader of what's inside. It’s as important to the book’s success as a poster is to a movie, or even further back in the day, what a record sleeve was to an album. (Contact us in case you don’t get either of those references.) So. Having worked with the author on this project, literally word-by-word, for months, we knew very well what the book was about. Far more than, say, our great graphic artist. Which is fine. It wasn’t her job to read the entire manuscript, and know who the target audience is, and all that. We knew that stuff. We also knew the mandatories for this project: For example, the author runs a company that figures prominently in the book; the company logo needed to be on the cover. Stuff like that. Who speaks what, visually We quickly pencil-sketched nine different thumbnails as cover ideas for the book. And here’s where it’s important to know your different players well. The author of this book is not a graphics person. So he basically understood the thumbnails, but didn’t get any of them. He needed to see his favorites fleshed out before he could pass any real judgment. So we sent these along to our graphic artist, with fairly minimal instructions. We walked her through each one, explaining its basic intentions, but carving absolutely zero elements in stone, aside from the aforementioned mandatories (company logo, company color palette, etc.). And in this process, we very purposely downplayed the quality of the thumbnails themselves. Sure, there was the very real possibility that one of them would end up being “the” one, and thus the germ of the final cover art. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to inspire our graphic artist to improve upon what we’d sent her. To, for lack of a better phrase, show off. The thumbnails weren’t so dumb as to be negligible. But they were loose enough to require input and interpretation. And that’s the fine line you want to walk when you’re directing a creative person. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Creatives are a lot like athletes. While many creatives are ostensibly introverted, they still yearn to be challenged, and to strut their stuff, to flex their creative muscles, so to speak, and to outdo themselves and what they’ve done before. The winnowing Despite what we’d hinted earlier, our thumbnails were actually clear enough for our client to pick a few favorites before we sent them along to the artist. This worked well: The client/author picked his three faves. We sent all nine to the graphic artist, with the three top choices highlighted; this way, she could see what the client had rejected, and possibly draw some inspiration from elements of the also-rans, if needed. This also had the very pragmatic effect of reducing time and budget. Having that artist work up nine different covers would be quite a bit of work. Three, on the other hand, was pretty reasonable. The good news: It was hard to choose among the three designs that the artist submitted! We had our favorite; the author had his. Guess who prevailed? Of course. The author. It’s his book, not ours. And his choice, while not our tip-top choice, was still among our favorites—and that’s counting back to the original nine. From that point, it was just a matter of iterating and refining. As we write this, the art is finalized, and the book is at the publisher. Importantly, everyone is happy. Our client has a great book cover (by which others will rightly judge that book!). Our graphic artist is justifiably proud of her creation. And we’re delighted to have helped the process along, walking that fine line between over- and under-directing our precious creative resource. Need help with a challenge like this? Contact us. We’d be happy to help.  Great photo by Designecologist. We know a talented web designer who told us that websites age in dog years. That may well be true of the technology. But in this article, we’re going to talk about your branding and your messaging.
If you’re considering a refresh of your site, or perhaps even a wholly new site, this article is for you. Even if a potential rework is way in the future, you can still learn some good time- and expense-saving tips here. So read on! Website in the spotlight We have a client whose business recently pivoted from serving mid-level customers to very high-end customers. (We can’t give too much detail here, but there should be enough info for you to follow the story.) The high-end prospects would be more profitable for our client. Making this choice to pivot was the result of a lot of soul-searching and analytical number-crunching. It represented a switch from serving a greater number of decent-revenue-providing clientele to a smaller number of awesome-revenue-providing clientele. As we’d said, we’re gauzing up this story. But you now know enough to follow it—and to see the parallels that exist to your situation, and your website. Ah yes. The website. The moment this client of ours decided to pursue a newer, higher-end audience, their existing website (not to mention all of their other marketing materials) immediately became outdated. It was way “beneath” their new audience—and wholly lacking in the newly-refined service offerings they had developed. Our client knew that this would be coming. Recall all of the aforementioned soul-searching and number-crunching. So they called on us to help them create the new website. We don’t do this alone. We work closely with the client. They have a great web designer, with a full team, that we love. We also have some great video editors to help create the site’s embedded content (which we scripted). But here, in this article, we’d like to walk you through the process we employed—and get to those elusive “pilot pages” that we’d mentioned in the title. Starting wide As we’d noted, the client had decided to serve a new audience. And if you’ve read any of our articles here at Copel Communications, you can practically do a drinking game for each time we mention “taking a customer-back approach.” We’re passionate about this. (Because it works!) In other words, start with the customer. Explore their needs. Then work backward to the marketing strategy and tactics. So here are the big things we did with this client, in order:
Exciting new subhead: Pilot pages! Mind you, all of the work we’d described above is upstream of the web designer. Why? Two reasons:
So what are these teased-to-death-by-now “pilot pages”? It’s actually really simple. Despite the wonderfully described tone from the chosen narrative creative concept, it’s time to create actual public-facing website copy at this point. So should you unleash your writer—even if it’s us—to pen all of these pages at once? You have, after all, an approved concept and a signed-off wireframe. Answer: No. Again, you want to be efficient and frugal. So go through your wireframe and pick out just a few—two, maybe three—pages that would be good tests of the final tone-and-feel verbiage. These will be your “pilot pages.” They’re easy to choose—but hard to write. Expect a bunch of revisions. But once you lock them down, the other pages go way, way faster. The obvious one to start with is the home page. That’s mandatory. After that, it depends on which one you think would be 1) difficult, 2) representative, and 3) a good model for subsequent/deeper pages. That last point is especially important if you’re going to be engaging a team of writers: You want them to be able to reference the approved pilot pages, and use them to make sure they’re sticking to the proper tone. Incidentally, once you have your approved pilot pages, you can then feed them, with confidence (along with the approved narrative creative concept and wireframe), to your web designer. From that point, it’s off to the races. Need help with your next website project? Contact us. We’ve done lots of these, and would be delighted to help with yours.  Great photo by Yan Krukau. We can’t count how many corporate videos we write here at Copel Communications. That’s because video is simply a killer medium, however you look at it:
But video can be a killer in other ways, too. Like production budget. Turnaround time. And keeping the project on track as it goes. In this article, we’re going to explain a way to keep your next corporate video on-track, using a technique we’ve developed, honed, and proven over the years. Note that we say “corporate video.” The technique we’re about to describe doesn’t work for narrative films, home movies, or Hollywood blockbusters. But it’s great for videos you need to make quickly and cost-effectively—and which, more than anything, sell. The old-school approach A video script is formatted in two columns: one for audio, and one for video. Very straightforward. (And wholly different from, for example, the WGA format for screenplays, which is structured to support dialogue being delivered by actors within a given scene.) But if you ever looked at a video script, you’ll know, without even reading it, that it’s hard to read. It’s like looking at the blueprint of a jetliner and trying to figure out what makes it fly. There’s stuff all over the place: Indications for on-screen titles, transitions, sound effects, music cues, suggestions for stock footage, directions for layering of motion graphics, et cetera, et cetera. It’s a very useful tool for a video editor. Or a voice-over artist. But for you (or for your client), it’s pretty indigestible. The old-school approach is straightforward: Start with that script. And that’s the rule we’re about to break. Going rogue There actually is somewhat of an analogy for the work-around we’re about to describe. And it’s based not in corporate video, but in feature films. In Hollywood, it’s known as the “treatment.” For our corporate purposes, we’ll call it “the spine.” It goes something like this: A Hollywood screenplay is typically just over 100 pages long (with the rule of thumb being one page for each minute of on-screen time). The treatment is a short narrative description of what happens in the finished movie. Like a synopsis. It could be a page; it could be five pages. Regardless, it’s quicker and easier to read than a 100-page screenplay. And it can be useful in getting people with limited time to wrap their heads around the movie-to-be. The treatment, as we’d noted, is a narrative, third-person account of the story and its characters. But a good creative treatment should be fun to read, and typically will include some choice snippets of dialogue, to help convey the mood and “sell” the piece. The ”spine,” for your corporate video, is similar. But it’s even simpler. The original name we’d given it was the “audio spine,” and that should tell you a ton. Think about it. Your corporate video doesn’t feature, say, two characters toughing it out in an argument or bar-room brawl. It shows stuff that you do, and a voice-over narrator is your guide. Ta-dah. That’s where the “audio spine” comes from. If you can write that announcer track, you’ve cleared a huge hurdle. Plus, you have something that, unlike a two-column video script, is incredibly easy to digest, regardless of the reader/audience. Hence, the “spine.” On your way So the trick is to write that “spine” first. Iterate and improve it via review and revision. Then get sign-off on it. From there, you can paste the approved “spine” into the “Audio” column of your to-be video script. At that point, it becomes straightforward—although of course, not simple—to populate the rest of the script with visuals, sound effects, and all the other elements we’d mentioned above. The nice thing about starting with a “spine” is that it’s fast and easy. It locks the most important element of your video script early. Which keeps all the subsequent steps on-track, and thus faster and better cost-contained. We use this approach a lot. So should you. Need help with video scripting? We’d love to come to your rescue. Contact us today to get started.  Great photo by Andrea Piacquadio. Zoom! And another year goes screaming past. Are we really ready for our year-end round-up of best-practice articles, written for our beloved creatives audience, here at Copel Communications?
The calendar doesn’t lie. Here’s your chance to catch those ones you’d missed, and/or revisit those that helped:
Have suggestions for an upcoming post? Contact us. We’d love to hear from you!  Our long-suffering dog. Thanksgiving is a tradition. Writing an article about what to give thanks for? Well, we’ve been doing it for so long each November, that it’s also a tradition here at Copel Communications.
Before we list what we’re thankful for, let’s turn the table on you. What are you thankful for this year? It can be big. It can be small. It can be professional. It can be personal. The thing is, there’s always stuff to be thankful for. You don’t need a national holiday to remind you. Just like you don’t need to book a spa day to take care of yourself. Or hug your kids to remind yourself that you love them. Chime in. Leave a comment. It might make you feel better; rest assured that it will make us feel great. The little things Sometimes, it can be a tiny bit of tech that makes your day nicer. We recently upgraded our AirPods, and are thankful that we can finally adjust the @#$% volume without having to reach for a phone or ask Siri. Here’s another technical marvel: A remote-controlled training collar. Our dog has a habit of running out in the middle of the night to bark at the deer; a little beep and vibration from the training collar broke him of that habit. He might still be looking at the deer at 3 a.m., but he’s not barking at them anymore. So we’re thankful for a better night’s sleep. Clearly, we’re starting small. And non-professionally. Let’s shift gears. The bigger/business things In 2024, we’re especially grateful for the power of networking. Whether it’s via in-person gatherings, Zoom meetings, LinkedIn, or forwarding a colleague’s Pitch59 card, it’s opened up new business possibilities. More importantly, it’s connected us to some really nice people. People first, business second. If you don’t like that person, you won’t like working with them. More importantly, the opposite is just as true. We’ll still reach out to, say, second-level connections on LinkedIn, and simply say “hi” to people whose profiles look interesting. It’s better than spamming them with a message-bot. Many people are understandably jaded these days, but there are still plenty of people out there who will respond with a “Hi, it’s nice to meet you.” Again: People first, business second. Saving the best for last We can’t build much suspense here, because you know what’s coming. Aside from the Big Two (having good health and being lucky enough to be in the USA), we’re grateful for our friends and family. That includes the dog. He’s been a good boy. Have a thankful-for to share? Contact us or simply comment below. We’d love to hear it.  Great photo by Andrea Piacquadio. We’ve worked in marketing long enough to know our bounds. Note the careful phrasing of the name of this article: “Goofy gadgets to help you be more productive.” We never said “guaranteed to make you more productive.”
That said, let’s dive into the challenge, and how it affects you in your daily work life, and, of course, all the neat stuff. Why is this needed? That’s a great question. Let’s consider the answer before we move on. Put it this way: You wouldn’t need any of the stuff we’re about to describe—and we wouldn’t need to write this article about it—if you, and we, were all naturally super productive and creative, all day long, without any dips in our performance, energy, or creativity levels. Of course we aren’t. We’re human. (Now there is an entire sub-topic of this discussion, which we’ve pet-named the “Best Energy Theory,” revolving around the intentional pairing of your daily peak energy periods to the daily tasks which are hardest to perform, and vice versa, but that goes beyond the scope of this article. Reach out to us if you’d like us to write an article devoted solely to that topic.) So. There are little gadgets, toys, food, furniture, you name it, which can help you get through the day, and have more/better work to show for it, too. Here, we’ll rattle through some oddball (and not-so-oddball) items from our daily inventory here at Copel Communications. Some of these may overlap stuff that you already use. Some, we hope, will be new and useful to you. And of course this is a two-way street. We would love to hear about the stuff you use, that’s novel to us. Reach out or simply post a comment so everyone gets edified equally. Paging Dr. Maslow Let’s start with the bottom of the Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. If you’re in the knowledge-work biz, you’re sitting at a desk for the bulk of your day. Don’t go hungry. In the movie business, this is what’s known as “craft service”: a setup of all kinds of goodies (think of a mini convenience store) with sweet and salty snacks, bottled water, you name it. Pick fun stuff. Keep it in arm’s reach. Think of it as a “caloric heads-up display”: You can keep working, keep reading, keep typing, etc., without so much as taking your eyes off the screen, and not get distracted by hunger. Or thirst. And of course, yes, there’s caffeine. As in, duh. You didn’t turn to this article to learn about that. Crank up the comfort Where are you sitting, right now? We don’t mean “in your office.” We mean, “what kind of chair?” Again, you want to be comfortable. You want to want to sit in that awesome chair—and only get to do so if you’ll be getting work done while sitting in it. Some easy tricks: You can (we did) dress up an old leather office chair with a plush sheepskin cover, like the airline pilots use. So it’s never too cold in winter nor too hot in summer. And you can (we did) add a plug-in seat heater, too, for those chilly mornings. Again, you want to love sitting there, so you can be totally relaxed and focused on the work at hand. Put another way: We once heard an expert on airline seating say (and we love this quote): “Comfort is the absence of discomfort.” Brilliant, no? Dial down the stress Stress, at work, is unavoidable. But you can fight back. We’ve got a whole slew of spring-loaded and sponge-rubber finger squeezers. Stress balls. A neck/shoulder heater. Numerous massaging gadgets, including a lumbar massager and even a pneumatic/electronic eye massager. (As you might’ve guessed, you can’t work while wearing that eye massager; it blocks your vision. But sometimes a ten-minute session helps to regain your focus.) Reduce the distractions As we sit here typing this, our office window is behind us. Would be nice to peek outside and see how the weather is looking, right? That’s why we added a remote-sensing weather station to our desk. We can see the outside temperature and humidity trends at a glance, and return to our real work, having scratched that itch. Similarly, we just have some neat artwork in our office to look at and be inspired by: Posters, drawings, cards, miniature sculptures, models. They provide just the right amount of eye candy to keep us sated. Don’t work in a bare office. Dress it to your liking. Make it a happy space. You’ll be more productive. Allow for goofiness We participate in more than our share of Zoom calls these days. And sometimes these are flat-out brainstorming sessions, which actually require a degree of hair-let-down goofiness not just from us, but from the other participants on the calls. To that end, we’re fans of all the baked-in video effects that now come with the Mac operating system that let us, on occasion, toss confetti or light fireworks during a meeting. Heck, we even have a little rubber hand puppet of a great white shark which we keep handy. We can’t tell you how many times he’s bombed into Zoom meetings, often as “our attorney,” to add his opinion. Have the meetings gone better? More productively? You bet they have. What are your favorite tricks and tips? Contact us. We’d love to learn them.  Great photo by Mikhail Nilov. From time to time, we at Copel Communications are invited to make a presentation, via Zoom, to a business or networking group, to talk about what we do and how we do it.
When the time comes for us to present, the Zoom host invariably asks us, “Would you like control of the screen so you can show your deck?” Imagine their surprise when we say, “No thanks. No deck.” So do these presentations, pardon our French, suck? We don’t think so. The feedback we get afterward generally says otherwise. So what’s our secret sauce? Why do we hate PowerPoint so much? What’s going on here, and, most importantly, how can you benefit from this approach? We don’t hate PowerPoint That line above (“Why do we hate PowerPoint so much?”) was pure bait. We don’t hate PowerPoint, simply because we shun it for our own presentations. Truth be told, we make a decent chunk of our income here at Copel Communications from writing PowerPoint decks for our clients! But our business is all about communicating. It’s in our name. And we can communicate this, quite well, thank you very much, without the crutch of a deck of slides. It’s been said that no one wants to hear a sales pitch, but everybody wants to hear a story. So the trick is to frame the pitch as a story. Have a hook. Use teasers. Sure, we’ll toss in a visual (not a deck), when it’s appropriate, such as the cover a brochure we’d written, or simply a photo of our long-suffering dog, just because. There are times when PowerPoint is unavoidable. If you’re a CFO presenting sales trends and forecasts to the board, you’ll need those line graphs and bar charts. If you’re presenting on demographic distribution, a scatter plot is de rigueur. But most of the time, if you do opt to use PowerPoint (or Google Slides, or Apple Keynote, or whatever), go for the minimum. Speaking of Apple. Watch any old keynote presentation by Steve Jobs. He used slides. (Trivia: the in-house app which Apple created to make his slide decks is what morphed into the app called, appropriately enough, Keynote.) And those slides are minimal. An entire slide would say something like “Lightest Mobile Phone on the Market.” And that’s it. Take a page from that playbook. Put the onus on your presenting skills (including writing, practice, and polish). Which segues, quite conveniently, to our next topic: Cognitive dissonance How many times has this happened to you: You’re sitting through some presenter’s PowerPoint, and they say, “There are three big things our company specializes in.” And at that point, they bring up a slide with four Big Things. And the first three don’t even match what the presenter is describing. So you’re forced to decide, on the spot: Which is more important? What I’m hearing? Or what I’m seeing? Because you can’t really do both at once, unless they’re verbatim. Meaning, you either 1) ignore the text that’s staring at you on the slide, and close your eyes, shifting your attention to your ears to listen to the presenter, or 2) you cover your ears (or mute your speaker) and read what’s on the slide, effectively ignoring the presenter. Gee. This, to us, is the all-too-common hallmark of PowerPoint sloppiness. If you’re going to show your audience Three Big Points, then have them match, on screen, what you’re saying, aloud. Even better: Have each bullet appear when you mention it. Don’t bring all three up on screen at once; when you do that, people don’t know whether or not to read ahead. You’ve already lost them. It sounds simplistic—heck, it is simplistic—but have your audience “follow the bouncing ball,” like a sing-along video. We think that many presenters are afraid to do just that, because it seems like it’s dumbing-down or pandering. But nothing could be further from the truth. It’s respectful of your audience. And it makes your points drive home. Where they belong. Our favorite quote from Jeff Bezos, who never allowed slide decks in his “six-page memo” executive meetings: “PowerPoint is easy for the presenter. But hard for the audience.” To recap: You can, and should, use PowerPoint, when it’s appropriate to do so. But use it sparingly. And if you can avoid it—if you can captivate your audience without it—by all means, do so. Need help with that next presentation, regardless of modality? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help!  Great photo by ThisIsEngineering Everyone’s heard of the 30-second elevator speech. But sometimes, it’s a much taller building.
We were recently asked—and this will happen to you, too, soon, if it hasn’t already, so brace yourself—to present our pitch before a business group, with a six-minute time allotment. Quick: How do you present your business, to a target-rich environment like that, in six minutes? Follow-on question: How do you carve up those six minutes? Do you spend all of them, well, presenting? Audience first If you’ve read any articles from us here at Copel Communications, you’ll know that we take a near-religious approach to taking a customer-back approach to everything we do. Start with the customer. What do they want and/or need? Then work back from there, i.e., “customer-back” approach. Same thing applies for your six-minute preso slot. Know who’s in that audience, in advance. Do your homework. Are they like-minded businesspeople in a similar or adjacent vertical? Or—as was the case for us—are they perhaps members of a networking group, looking to lubricate the two-way process of referrals? Get your best possible grasp on who they are. What they need. How many will be in the room. The type of room: real or virtual. How much time will there be for Q&A? Is that baked into the six-minutes? Or is it additional? And if so, how much? Rule of thumb: The more annoying you can be with preliminary questions like these, the more you’ll succeed. Working backward So. We were going to be facing a business networking group—a common venue. What kinds of businesses? All kinds, with the distinction that they, like us, all operated in the B2B space. How did they differ from us? Oooh. That’s a good question you should ask yourself. In other words, how can you differentiate yourself and your offerings? That’s how you’ll cut through the clutter, make your presentation interesting and engaging, and increase your odds of successful business development. For us, fortunately, the answer to the “how do they differ” question was easy. While we toil in marketing, and many of the others in the audience either do, too, or certainly have exposure to it, we were unique in that our background is 100-percent based in creative services. So that made for a neat way in. Outline, outline, outline Turns out, for us, the six-minute allotment included the time for the Q&A. That’s a huge detail. So our outline went something like this:
Close, close, close Odds are, your business doesn’t do anything like what we do here at Copel Communications. Yet we’ll bet that that outline above is easily 90-percent useful to you. Some things are just universal. A speaking opportunity like this, is just that: An opportunity. Seize it. Work the room. Book meetings and calls. Send follow-up emails. Need help prepping for a six-minute presentation, or other similar opportunity? Contact us. We help our clients with challenges like these all the time. |