presentations - FUEL LINES

SlideShare: Presentation Trends For Ad Agency New Business

The Biggest and Best Uses of SlideShare for Ad Agency New Business.

Here’s a brief synopsis if you are unfamiliar with SlideShare. Launched in October of 2006, it is a slide hosting service, often called the “YouTube of presentations”. SlideShare claims to be the world’s largest professional content sharing community.

Ranked as one of the top 150 sites on the Web, SlideShare has more than 60 million visitors and 3 billion slide-views a month. The traffic comes from organic search, social networks and other SlideShare content.

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The Reader’s Digest Version of the Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is a master presenter and he provides some important lessons that are helpful to any ad agency pitch opportunity.

Carmine Gallo’s book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs is a must read. There’s much to learn from Jobs presentation tactics and style since delivering. Applying his simple formula can greatly improve any agency’s pitch and help them to stand out from the rest.

“You’re time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

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The 10-20-30 Rule for Keynote Presentations for Ad Agency New Business

Clarity, brevity and connectivity are key for winning presentations.

During my advertising career I’ve been part of and a witness to hundreds of agency presentations using PowerPoint or Keynote. I’ve seen many new business opportunities wasted because agencies couldn’t get their point across, tried to include too much within their allotted time or had absolutely no chemistry with their audience.

Guy Kawasaki, well-known blogger, author, managing director of a venture capital firm and an Apple Fellow, promotes a technique that can help small to midsize agencies with their Keynote presentations, the 10-20-30 Rule:

No more than 10 slides
No more than 20 minutes
No font smaller than 30 points

10 Slides

Guy’s premise, “a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting … If you must use more than ten slides to explain your business, you probably don’t have a business.”

Your audience doesn’t need all of the details so don’t give them the minutia.… Continue reading

4 Presentation Tips from Lee Iacocca for Ad Agency New Business

The former Chrysler CEO’s speech writing team provides some useful information for how ad agency executives can inspire their staffs, clients and prospective clients by the spoken word.

“Lee” Iacocca is an American businessman and pitchman, known for his revival of the Chrysler Corporation in the 1980s. He served as President and CEO from 1978 and additionally as chairman from 1979, until his retirement at the end of 1992. He is one of the most famous business people in the world

Iacocca’s business success—saving Chrysler and reinvigorating the American automobile industry in the 1980s—has also become a staple of B-school “case studies.” And most analysts agree a key ingredient—what Iacocca himself called “my most important management tool” —was the spoken word.

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The Only Rule That Really Matters When Presenting for Ad Agency New Business

Every agency presentation must be focused on capturing your audience’s attention and keeping it. It is the presentation rule that matters most.

A lot of agency presentations are nothing but recycled insights, predictable services, with the same agency speak, nothing note worthy or memorable for an audience that must be bored out of their minds. I wonder how much new business opportunities were squandered because of boring ad agency presentations.

If you want to reach your audience, you must have something significant to say that you are passionate about, genuine passion will attract attention and attention will lead to action.

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Resources for Successfully Pitching for Ad Agency New Business

If you want to win pitches for new business I would encourage you to be a constant student of public speaking.

Recently I wrote an article that received a lot of attention, “Steve Jobs: 10 Presentation Tactics for Ad Agency New Business.”

Every new business pitch should do three things: inform, educate and entertain.

This week my resource is a bit dated but can be just as helpful. I’d like to go back in time to the 1930′s, “Monroe’s motivated sequence,” is a technique for organizing persuasive speeches that is still in use today.… Continue reading

Steve Jobs: 10 Presentation Tactics for Ad Agency New Business

Steve Jobs has something to teach small to midsize ad agencies about pitching for new business.

Every new business pitch should do three things: inform, educate and entertain.

BusinessWeek.com columnist Carmine Gallo reveals the techniques that have turned Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, into one of the world’s corporate presenters. There are some helpful nuggets that will add punch to your next agency pitch.

Here is the ‘Readers Digest’ version of his 10 Ways to Sell Your Ideas the Steve Jobs Way: