Interactive Presentation

Presentations are usually created in Microsoft PowerPoint (or Apple Keynote), and are shown as a linear series of “slides” that hope to clarify what is being said. Sometimes there are some pretty (yet superfluous) animations or transitions, and more often than not the slides have too much information, parrot what the speaker is saying, and are just plain ugly. I’m not going to talk about any of that here, but this site does: http://www.theslideclinic.com.

Instead, I propose that presentations become interactive. This can help engage the audience, and empower the presenter to really seal the deal. There are two simple ways to do this.

Non-Linear Presentations

Add menus to the presentation to break the linear habit. For example, get four different examples that support your product or service, then add a simple menu that jumps to one of them. Then ask the audience which example they want to see: Let them choose if they want to see another example or continue.

This will be especially useful if the examples can better match your target audiences. So what the media buyers see will be different from what the creative people and the manufacturers see.  Yet if the details have interest for other groups, they can still see that information.

Another way to break the linear mold is to make the presentation agenda a menu, and give the audience control of what happens when. Some people may understand a product better by seeing it in action first, while others may want to see facts and figures to see if they can afford it before investing their time.

Interactive Content

Another way to give presentations more life is to include actual red-blooded interactive content. This includes:

1. Content That Further Engages the Audience

The possibilities here are endless: a game that exposes content; tools that manipulate content such as to colorize an image or affect an audio sample; rollover effects that show/hide copy or images; integration with a website; and more…OH so much more.

2. Up-to-the-Second Data and Content

Using RSS feeds, links to websites or other tools, get the actual current stock price into the presentation, the latest news headlines, or Tweets somehow related to the presentation. It may take some fancy digital footwork for the presenter (i.e. it might be hard to sell something new to a company whose stock price is skyrocketing), but it will lead to a more accurate and current presentation. It also helps limit concerns that a presentation was prebuilt with inaccurate or out-of-date data to support its premise.

3. Tools That Allow the Presenter to Customize the Presentation

This can be something as simple as including the company’s name and details throughout the presentation (i.e. not just “Welcome Company X,” but also “…so when Company X send its annual ‘Puppy of the Year’ calendar to annual contributors, our product can be sure postage is accurate no matter where they live…”).

Another option is to pre-select presentation content based on time or audience. So if you have 15 minutes, make the agenda the top three items, instead of the complete 20 items. If it’s a manufacturing company, they may not need to know about compatibility with Quark. It can also be something as simple as replacing all the puppy images with kitten ones if you know the company is more of a cat company than a dog one.

This would all be done prior to the presentation, unbeknownst to the audience. It will help connect by making the presentation seem as if it was custom-built just for them, instead of feeling like the recipients of yet another one-size-should-fit-all show.

How?

There are ways to do some of this with PowerPoint and Keynote, but some will need advanced settings, backend execution, or a tool like Adobe Flash to create the presentation. Simply pick the right tool for the right job.

The biggest argument against these ideas then becomes the tired statement that presenters want to be able to change things on-the-fly, and new systems will just complicate that.Is the goal of the presentation to make it easier for the presenter, or to get information across to the audience in the best way possible? If it’s the latter, and one of these ideas helps, then that’s the answer.

Like this idea?
It’s yours.
I’ll make more.