Breaking Bad news for business presenters – DVD extras are on the way out, together with invaluable editing tips

As I brace myself for the culmination of Breaking Bad and reflect on how much I enjoyed Kevin Spacey’s House of Cards recently, I realise that there really is a lot of good stuff on television these days. Except, of course, I didn’t actually watch either of those series on TV; I didn’t even watch them on DVDs; I watched them via the internet! 

Hugh Laurie has been saying this week that the days of big network TV series are over and there are clearly major implications for the whole of the entertainment industry and beyond. I, however, want to focus on one tiny element in the midst of all this change and mourn the inevitable passing of ‘DVD Extras’. Why? Because, hidden among those DVD Extras, you will often find some very useful lessons for anyone giving a business presentation.

Imagine you have just constructed a business presentation. You have carefully crafted the structure and honed your words, pretty close to what seems like perfection. To make your presentation really effective, however, you are now going to have to throw some of it – maybe even much of it – into the bin! 

For true clarity we need to eliminate anything that doesn’t actively help to make the point. Magicians are acutely aware of this principle. They live by the maxim ‘if it doesn’t add, it detracts’, so they are ruthless in editing down their performance to the bare essentials.

This is difficult – agonising even – because the content that needs throwing away may be very personal to you as well as carefully crafted. Little wonder then that film makers refer to the process as ‘killing your darlings’; they go to all the trouble of writing dialogue, creating a set, performing and filming, only for large chunks of their precious creation to end up on the cutting room floor! It is useful and educational, therefore, to watch the ‘Deleted Scenes’ sections that you find within the extras on DVD versions of films and TV shows; the latter have a particular pertinence as they require the content to fit very specific time allocations and include numerous breaks for advertising. Switch on the director’s commentary for these deleted scenes and you will hear comments such as: “this is a beautiful piece of dialogue, nicely acted by both the lead players, but it wasn’t really moving the story forward, so it had to go”.  One that I saw recently had the director saying: “this scene cost me a fortune; I had 350 extras coming over a hill, all being captured by a camera crew in a helicopter. But once I was in the edit suite I realised it was slowing everything down”.

So, if you ever find yourself in any doubt about the inclusion of a specific element of your content, consider: ‘Is it really moving the story forward’?  Might it even be slowing things down? Also, remember that some of the most memorable and enduring pieces of communication are surprisingly short. The Lord’s Prayer has a mere 71 words; The Ten Commandments extend to just 297 words; and the Gettysburg Address was all wrapped up in 271.

Extracted and adapted from Nick Fitzherbert's 

book on business presentation skills, Presentation Magic

Is your communication remaining ‘hidden in plain sight’?

The brain filters out most of the information it receives, leaving only what it considers important.

So says Rule number 4 of the ‘Rules of Magic’ that I, as a communication consultant and member of The Magic Circle, apply to coaching the business community in Presentation Skills.

Psychologists argue about how much information the brain takes in every single second – I have seen estimates ranging from 500 to as much as 11 million!  What they all agree on is that the brain can only retain a small number of those pieces of information - between about 16 and 40. Modern life has of course exacerbated this disparity, what with marketing messages bombarding us through multi-media 24 hours a day.

Think about when you have chosen a new car or perhaps changed your mobile phone. You have probably devoted careful time and consideration to your decision and may even be congratulating yourself on the select nature of your choice. And then suddenly you seem to see that model everywhere!  It’s because it has become important to you. I had exactly this experience when my car was due to its annual MOT test. The local testing centre had closed down and I cursed the fact that I would have to go in search of another and fretted over how inconvenient it would be getting to and from an alternative supplier, once I had found one. I decided to peer down some alleys near my home in case there was a test centre I had failed to spot in the past. What actually happened was that I pulled out into the main road, just around the corner from my house, and 50 metres on the right was a giant sign saying ‘MOT tests and all your motoring needs’. I had been driving past this sign for nine years – it was even on the school run - and yet it had never registered with me before, because an MOT test had not been important to me. Now that it was important to me the sign loomed large.

This is how people and objects can remain ‘hidden in plain sight’; they blend in so well

with the surroundings that they become effectively invisible. The ‘watch test’ demonstrates this very weIl. It’s an old favourite with magicians, but this version is by former president of The Magic Circle David Berglas. Known as the ‘International Man of Mystery’, David is the guru and hero to many magicians including Derren Brown, who described him as ‘One of our greatest living magical performers’.  David has done much work outside the performance arena, including training police recruits at Hendon in observation techniques.

This is exactly as he described the watch test to me; you might like to try it for yourself.

Without looking, tell me if your watch has

Roman or Arabic numerals, or maybe dashes or dots?

Incredible as it may seem, many people do not know the answer, despite the fact they are looking at their watch all day, every day. Allow them to look to see or check the answer, then ask:

How is the three / six position marked on your watch?

In spite of having just looked at their watch, many are unsure or incorrect, having failed to register that the date or other device actually fills this position. Allow them to look to see or check the answer, then ask:

Has it got a second hand?

Some people will even be unsure about this, but if they answer with great confidence ask them a further question: does it move in steps or sweep motion? Allow them to look to see or check the answer, then ask:

Finally, what time is it?

They have just looked at their watch three times and yet most people will be unable to tell you the time – it simply failed to register.  As David Berglas says: “You looked but you didn’t see”.

So, as well as making our messages clear to our audience we need to make them important to our audience. This is why the best magicians borrow items from their audience rather than simply make their own handkerchief or whatever disappear – it ensures much closer attention.  The answer to how the business presenter can achieve a similar effect is usually staring them in the face – the more you personalize your message to your audience, the more you are talking about their favourite subject and the more important your communication seems to be.  

        Extracted and adapted from Nick Fitzherbert's book
        Presentation Magic, published by Marshall Cavendish 

Steve Jobs and three of the ways in which he communicated like a master magician

Despite – or perhaps because of – the fact he is no longer with us, Steve Jobs remains a hero to many.  I certainly include myself among that number – I am writing this on an iMac as I listen to some iTunes form my iPod.  And my house has an array of other iGadgetary on which my whole family have become scarily reliant.  The main reason for hero status in my mind, however, was his presentation skills.  Jobs communicated like the very best magicians and he therefore remains the most brilliant example for me when I coach the business community in applying the Rules of Magic to their communication. 

Long before I was fully aware of Steve Jobs, James Randi, a wise old guru of the magic world, declared: “Magicians are the world’s greatest communicators; it’s just that everything they are telling you is wrong”.  I had been struck by the magic bug midway through a career in public relations, so Randi’s words caught my attention on two fronts.  The more I learned about magic, the more I concluded that many of its principles for directing attention, persuading and convincing were rather useful in real life and Randi seemed to be confirming my belief.  Once I gained membership to The Magic Circle I was able to extend and refine my research into the Rules of Magic, which now form the backbone of both my coaching for business people and my book Presentation Magic.

Subsequently I found that Steve Jobs was applying many of the Rules of Magic in his new product launches.  You can see this clearly in one of his finest presentations – his launch of the MacBook Air.

First, Rule 5: Concentrated attention requires a single point of focus.  Notice the way he handles the MacBook Air; indeed look at any picture of him displaying any Apple product and you will see that he holds them close to his face, straight and still for prolonged periods, complete with contrasting backgrounds to make them stand out. 

Then he takes Rule 5 a step further by creating a single point of focus mentally as well as physically.  His presentations are invariably long, detailed and technical, but he wraps up all the detail in one simple sentence.  In this case it was: The world’s thinnest notebook.  All the words, the graphics and the props were about thinness.  Making the thinness message so powerfully memorable had the effect of triggering many other memories: it’s the thinnest and yet it has a full-sized keyboard; it’s the thinnest and yet it’s as powerful as anything in its class; etc.

Jobs concludes his presentation by deploying one of magicians’ most subtle yet effective tools - the power of suggestion.  Rule 19 of the Rules of Magic states: People put more reliance on something they have worked out for themselves.  This is where, having focused long and hard on just how thin the new product is, he finally produces it – from inside an ordinary manila envelope.  The first thing this does for his audience is to engage their visual sense (Rule 12 – The senses offer five different ways into the brain).  Most importantly, though, it allows them to work out for themselves – just in case they remained in any doubt - that this new product really is thin!  He has already provided details of its measurement and its proportions compared to competitors, but all that could potentially be just clever chat.  Seeing it actually coming out of an envelope confirms in the mind of every audience member that this truly is thin.  Furthermore, it fixes a visual memory of that fact in their minds. 

 

Every magician works towards a ‘ta-dah’ moment that they want their audience to go away remembering.  The production of the MacBook Air from an envelope was Jobs’s big ta-dah moment. 

Extracted and adapted from Nick Fitzherbert's book 

'Presentation Magic'

As Monty Python would say, talking yourself down at the start of a presentation is just silly

Few would argue that self-belief is one of the most essential elements in your Presentation Skills tool kit.  And yet, many of the business people I coach in this area slip in a little pre-cursor to their presentation along the lines of “this is not going to be very good because…” or, “I’m sorry but I only had time for a quick run through on the train….”.  My response is always: “we will talk about Preparation techniques later on, but for the moment don’t talk yourself down – you will almost certainly meet your expectations!”. 

I told this to the publisher of a glossy magazine and she said: “You know, you’re absolutely right.  We went recently to a breakfast presentation by Tommy Hilfiger and we were all very excited because he very rarely does this sort of thing.  But he started off by saying he was really sorry, he felt awful having just got off the plane and not slept all night, so he might not be very good.  And you know what? He wasn’t very good!  Had he said nothing and concluded by thanking us for our attention as he wasn’t feeling great we would probably have enjoyed the talk and thought 'good on him' for doing it under what turned out to be difficult conditions.

I was reminded of this incident at the weekend as I watched the Monty Python documentary on Sky Arts. The team had made ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ and they were very nervous because they had never made a film before and had been learning on the job. They kept re-editing – 13 times in total – and no one laughed when they were shown it. They thought they had a dud on their hands. Then they were given an opportunity to show it to a paying audience in California and they loved it, laughing all the way through.

Python member Terry Jones observed – some 35 years and many films later - that no one had laughed at the previous showings because they were watching as a favour in response to the Pythons’ plea “we’re really worried about our film, would you come and have a look and tell us what you think”. They had been setting expectations low – and living down to them. The final test audience, however, had paid money to come out for good time – that’s what they were expecting, so that’s what they got.

So, while it may not feel very ‘British’, be sure to talk yourself up at the outset, not down.  Indeed, with a touch of ‘hyper-confidence’ up front you should soon feel a sense of energy bouncing back between yourself and your audience.  Get off to a good strong start and you should sail through.  Just make sure you conclude with a big, impactful Call to Action.

And now for something (slightly) different

While I am on the subject of Monty Python, I am also reminded of an excruciating Python-based incident that I experienced personally a few years ago.  I live in South-East London, close to what was for more than 30 years the home of the aforementioned Terry Jones.  Friends of mine moved in immediately next door to him; they had a lot of parties and Terry was usually in attendance, so I got to know him a bit.  As we sat down for dinner on one occasion I was seated two places away from him so we started with a bit of polite conversation about what each of us had been up to.  I concluded with a congratulatory mention of his success in a film-goers poll.  That week his famous line from 'The Life of Brian' had been voted the funniest line ever in a film.  

Terry thanked me with a hint of embarrassment, sparking an enquiry from the woman between us as to what we were talking about.  I explained that Terry's famous line in the 'Life of Brian' had been voted the funniest ever.  "Which line was that?" she asked.  I looked nervously at Terry, who shot me back a very definite 'I'm not doing Python's greatest hits tonight thank you' glance.  Which left the onus on me to say: "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy".  I had just re-enacted the funniest line ever heard in a movie - in front of its originator!

Bestselling crime novelist Peter James provides great lesson in retaining attention

The launch this week of Peter James's latest crime novel 'Dead Man's Grip' reminds me what a fine example he provides of the principles of holding attention.


Rule 11 of the Rules of Magic states 'Attention is sustained by variation, which shortens mental time'.   When making any kind of presentation you want to take your audience on a journey that involves lots of twists and turns, so you're never quite sure what is coming up around the corner.  You need to avoid the 'long straight road' that will simply send them to sleep.


When explaining this is my training courses on Presentation Skills I point to television news programmes where they never go for more than a few minutes without saying something like: "Now, over to our political correspondent, outside No.10".  Often the correspondent could probably do the job just as well sitting next to the newsreader in the studio, but the different inflection in the newsreader's voice, the shift to a new location and a fresh face - together with the implication that he is closer to the action - all help to retain our attention. It's about movement and change and what the presenter needs to do is to carve their content into a series of chunks which are interlinked but have clearly defined starts and finishes.


I also like to mention my favourite crime novelist Peter James, who has had huge success in recent years with his series of Roy Grace crime novels.  One of the hallmarks of these books - and a marked difference from the horror novels on which he focused previously - is that he carves the text into many different chapters.  His latest - Dead Man's Grip has 113 and his previous - Dead Like You, which entered the bestsellers list at No.1 - ran a little longer, concluding at chapter 123.


The result is the most page-turning read you could possibly imagine.  You feel like you are racing through the book because you are continually coming to the end of a chapter; another is about to start, but it brings a great sense of pace. Now, clearly you can't guarantee success simply by carving your copy into thin slices;  James's prose obviously has a lot to do with that, but the master of retaining attention provides a great example of the benefits of basic movement and change.  Watch out for a high bestsellers entry for Dead Man's Grip next week!

iPad 2 launch sees another classic presentation performance from Steve Jobs

As the founder of the world’s second biggest company and inventor of truly ground-breaking technology products, Steve Jobs has plenty of plaudits to his name. Arguably, though, it is his Presentation Skills that mark him out more than anything else and his famous ‘keynotes’ have undoubtedly played a big part in Apple’s success.

I train the business community in Presentation Skills by combining traditional best practice with the Rules of Magic – principles for directing attention, persuading and convincing that come naturally to the best magicians and prove equally effective in business. When it comes to inspirational examples in the business world Jobs reigns supreme, matching the finest magicians with his every move and, importantly, doing so consistently.

Here are just some of the techniques he deployed to devastating effect at the launch of iPad 2.

Gaining attention – I usually urge the people I am coaching to do something a little different at the outset of their presentation; give their audience a surprise that seizes attention. Jobs did that simply by turning up. No one expected him to be there, so just by walking on stage he created a surprise and generated a whole lot of warmth in the process. Furthermore, the flak that Apple had taken in the build up for apparently being lax in their succession planning was swept away in an instant – and all the more so by keeping his presence completely secret. Rule 19 of the Rules of Magic states that people put much greater value on something they have worked out for themselves. Turning up and making it self-evident that he is in reasonably good health was so much more powerful than any amount of corporate pronouncements. Crucially, he didn’t make a big deal of it – Rule 18 says that doubts may be increased by over-stressing – he simply said: “I didn’t want to miss today”, so heightening the sense of anticipation.

Pacing – Rule 11 states: Attention is sustained by variation, which shortens mental time. Here the content was beautifully chunked throughout, with clear headings and timely changes to other presenters and videos. Pauses – one of the presenter’s most useful weapons - were also used to masterful effect, allowing key points to sink in and signalling applause cues.

Repetition (Rule 16: Sustained impact depends on transferring information to long term memory) – needs to be stealthy if it is to be effective and here Jobs used repetition partly as a means of showing his excitement and partly as a way of bridging from other presenters as he underlined the points they had just been making. And as with all Apple keynotes a couple of themes were used repeatedly throughout with short, memorable messages.

• ‘Post PC’ was the term used to elevate the importance of the iPad and to link it into an innovation threesome with the iPod and the iPhone.
• ‘2011 - year of iPad2’ was the message used to bat away the competition and bring the presentation full circle from its start point.

Graphics were, as usual, deceptively simple and highly effective as a result; if they had just managed to make all the bullet points one-liners (always so much more impactful) they would have been perfect.

Lack of jargon – as Jobs returned to the stage after demonstrations of extraordinary new features and apps he referred to them several times as ‘stuff’. How refreshingly straightforward!

Addressing what is inevitably on the audience’s minds – iPad 2 comes in both black and white, but there is a little history to consider here; white versions of iPhones were announced but proved hard to find and created frustration among some loyal customers. So rather than brush a niggle from the past under the carpet, Jobs addressed it by announcing: “It will be available in black and white (short pause) from Day One (slight twinkle in the eye)”.

Audience-facing messaging – the presentation showed much consistency in style and layout, for instance with the use of the same easy chair that says so much about the way that many people like to use their iPads. The big difference between this keynote and last year’s, however, was that Apple now had real knowledge about how the iPad could be used rather than simply the aspirations on which they launched. So the presentation soon moved to focus on scenarios such as hospitals and schools in which the product was being used to great and often unexpected effect. They let their customers do the talking for them and once again let Rule 19 (people put more value on someone they have worked out for themselves) support their communication.

Closing – We have already seen how Jobs got off to a great start and he played a blinder with the other most important part – the climax (Rule 13 says: Firsts and lasts are remembered.) As well as bringing the 2010 – Year of the iPad full circle, he also summed up the key points in a concise manner, supported by a perfectly-paced video. So he went out with a ‘bang’, but also used a technique favoured by showmen of old – he brought attention back for a final quiet moment between himself and his audience, which he devoted to a round of applause for the team behind the iPad 2 – and then their families.

Welcome back Steve and, once again, take a bow and accept all the applause that is due to you.