Clarkson gave business presenters a valuable lesson in editing. Now he needs to relearn the art of ‘Killing your Darlings’

So The Grand Tour, Clarkson, Hammond & May’s new post-Top Gear show, has finally hit our screens, albeit via an Amazon Firestick, and the ‘Terrible Trio’ have many reasons to be rather pleased with themselves. The bits in the tent need tightening up and they should make better use of their chosen location, but the films are magnificent – with one little quibble that harks back to a lesson for business presenters.

In my Presentation Skills sessions the subject of editing tends to loom large, especially when I am helping start ups with their investor pitches. I explain to the presenters that they simply know ‘too much’ about their topic. They have been fully immersed in that topic for months, if not years, so understandably want their audience to hear the full story, complete with all the intricacies on which they have laboured so long. The trouble is that the audience will be hearing it for the first time and have yet to develop any interest at all; at this stage they probably need a version that has been highly simplified. Really it needs an outsider (someone like me!) to look at the situation in an objective manner. Only then can you overcome what the psychologists call the ‘Curse of Knowledge’ – knowing too much to be able to explain something to people hearing it for the first time!

One of the techniques I recommend as a cure for this curse is to adopt the film makers’ approach to editing which is so ruthless that they call it ‘Killing your Darlings’. They go to all the trouble to writing dialogue, acting it out and filming it, only for much of the resulting footage to end up on the cutting room floor. The need to fill very specific time allocations and to hit commercial breaks at pivotal moments is part of what drives this approach, but it is more nuanced than that. If you watch the deleted scenes on DVDs the director’s voice over will typically include comments such as: “Nice performances from both the lead players here, but it wasn’t moving the story forward. So it had to go.”

Among the best recent endorsements for this ruthless approach to editing happens to be one from Jeremy Clarkson. In a Sunday Times column just after his famous fracas he said: “…every week the films were edited to a length that felt right. They felt balanced. They felt good. But every week there simply wasn’t time to fit them into the programme – so they’d have to be shortened. And without exception they were better as a result.” 

My ‘little quibble’ with The Grand Tour is that, while the films were both beautiful and embraced all that was best about the old Top Gear, they were a little too long. Early reviews seem to agree – The Evening Standard said: ‘segments testing hybrid hyper-cars drag at times’. In The Times, meanwhile: ‘the first sequence is too long…..For a show about speed, this played very slowly to me’.

What seems to have happened is that they have broken free from constraints but, as Clarkson himself said last year, one of those constraints – having to fit into precisely 58 minutes - had actually being doing them a favour. When broadcasting on the internet no one is putting up a stop sign and you can all-too-easily just keep wandering on.

So Clarkson and producer Andy Wilman need to re-learn the discipline of Killing your Darlings, possibly by doing as I advise business presenters – getting help from a third party who has had nothing to do with the content and so nothing to lose from making a few cuts. Furthermore, they will be seeing it for the first time, so will react much more like the audience will on the big day.

Why bother turning up to give your business presentation? Take a tip from the demise of the ‘Top Gear Experience’

“If you’re just going to stand there and read it out, you might as well send it in by email and save your audience a lot of time and effort.” 

Now, I have never actually given feedback like that in my Presentation Skills sessions – I like to think I have a reputation for giving tough advice in a kind and constructive way – but there have been occasions when I would have liked to!

A great presentation is all about the person giving it, possibly enhanced by some well-chosen aids. YOU and only you can bring the subject alive, make it memorable and make your audience do something as a result.

So it was no surprise to me when I read last week (see here) that the ‘Top Gear Experience’, which enables Jo Public to live out what they have seen on the TV screen, has gone bust.

Now, I’m asking for a slight leap of imagination here, but look at it like this. Without Clarkson, Hammond and May, the so called Top Gear Experience is just an old airfield in Dunsfold and some scruffy sheds. And ‘Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car’ is ‘Me in a Reasonably-Priced Car’ which, actually, is just Me Living Out My Ordinary Life, but on an old airfield used by Top Gear. It was that Terrible Trio that made the old airfield and scruffy shed seem like magic, helped along by their particular visual aids – exotic cars that only they will ever be able to borrow! And, while the new team still deserves a chance to settle in properly, we don’t (yet, at least) really aspire to driving like Chris Evans, the bloke from Friends or any of those other people, some of whom appear to have the makings of star quality.

Coming back to the world of business presentations, one of my trainees left a session last week with the personal objective: I am going to put much more focus on myself and what I say and do in order to engage the particular audience on the day. Only once I have cracked that will I think about the aids that might support me.

That is getting priorities in the right order. And here’s looking forward to The Grand Tour: 

Clarkson endorses my plea to business presenters to ‘Kill their Darlings’

I have written before (here) about the need for ruthless editing in any business presentation and I have suggested looking to film and TV directors for inspiration.  They have a phrase ‘Killing my Darlings’ to describe the fact that, having gone to all the trouble of writing dialogue, acting it and then filming it, they go on to throw much of it away – ‘on the cutting room floor’ or whatever is the digital equivalent.

“Take a look at the ‘Deleted Scenes’ of your DVDs”, I say, and you will get the director typically saying: “this was beautifully played by both the lead actors; but it wasn’t really moving the story forward; so it had to go”. They have to be ruthless in their editing for a number of reasons and they usually end up with a better product as a result. Anyone who has ever sat through a typical business presentation will probably agree that business presenters could do well in taking inspiration from these killers of darlings.

Now, Jeremy Clarkson, who I often lean on for presentation tips, has come up with perhaps the definitive description of the benefits of killing some darlings. In his Sunday Times column on March 22 he wrote the following:

I used to work on a television show called Top Gear and every week the films were edited to a length that felt good. But every week there simply wasn’t time to fit them into the programme - so they’d have to be shortened. And without exception they were better as a result.

Whatever you happen to think of Clarkson, most people who have read his books and columns would agree he is a very talented writer. And of course he scripted most of what went out on Top Gear. Quantifying just how good he is is difficult, but I can offer this little personal insight into his skills. Many years ago he and I were the only ones left at a dinner table in South-London – possibly because no one else was interested in our somewhat anoraky chat about the inner workings of journalism. “I have been writing columns for so long”, he said, that if I am asked to write, say, 400 words, I can start writing and come to a halt, knowing that I am within two-to-three words of the 400 target”.  And on that note…. I shall come to a stop, with absolutely no idea whatsoever of how many words I have written.

To build a reputation as an expert you need some tasty bits of trivia

If you want to get ahead in business it usually pays to display the expertise that your position implies whenever you can, everywhere from the boardroom to the conference stage. Presentation skills can help to create such a reputation and there is a trick to conveying expertise and being remembered for it: find yourself some tasty bits of trivia.

The fact is that quantity and even quality of knowledge is not necessarily going to enhance your reputation. Selecting knowledge that creates insight is what you should probably be aiming for, but even that is not necessarily going to make you memorable. To get people going away remembering and re-telling your gems of wisdom you need to be counter-intuitive and come up with a few simple one-liners that you might even go home and tell to your loved ones.

Think in terms of the little stories Sir Michael Caine used to come up with in his many chat show appearances. He claims he never actually said: “Not a lot of people know that”, but it’s exactly the sort of thing he would have said following one of his little trivia stories, so the phrase was used by all the impressionists and became attached to his persona. Nowadays the concept is exploited by Steve Wright on Radio 2 with his ‘factoids’ feature and the long-running Qi TV series is built entirely around the concept of: “I heard something quite interesting about……”.  You know the sort of thing: Fleas can jump 350 times their own body length; elephants are the only animals that cannot jump; polar bears are left-handed.

So how do you make this work in business?  Reflecting on what you say about your work to friends and family is probably a good start. I was coaching a travel market analyst in presentation skills; he was from Georgia and his latest assignment was to become the expert on all things Russian within his firm. In the initial run through of his presentation he displayed a lot of graphs and statistics, which were all very sound but left little lasting impression. When we took a break for coffee I happened to mention something about the big global online brands such as Amazon, Google and YouTube.  He responded, saying: “We have all those brands in Russia, except they are rip offs. They work on the same model and at a glance they look the same, but they are all fake versions”. 

I suggested he should use this concept in his presentation and he struggled at first to understand why it was applicable. I replied that it was not directly applicable to selling travel in his region, but he should remember his personal agenda: to become the ‘expert on all things Russian’. Telling this story and showing some pictures will give his audience a little bit of trivia they will remember and take away with them to use as chit chat at home and down the pub, as well as around the office. He could justify a small deviation like this as creating context for the hard facts and figures that follow. The audience might not remember that data, but the trivia would make them remember him as the ‘go to’ person on everything Russian. As a final convincer, I asked him if he had seen Top Gear the previous Sunday; he said he had missed it, so we looked it up on the iPlayer. Clarkson and May were visiting China and they made a very entertaining and extremely memorable feature on the fact that Western car brands such as Mini, BMW and even Rolls Royce had all been copied by rip off replicas.

So stand back, look at the bigger picture and pick out a few elements from the lighter side. That’s what is most likely to get you remembered as the serious player in your field.

Turn the Storytelling spotlight onto yourself - to add memorability and conviction to your business presentation

Having mouthed off last week along the lines of there being too much talk about storytelling and not enough about how and when to apply storytelling techniques, I am now going to suggest you tell more stories about yourself.

Some years ago I was doing some Presentation Skills coaching for a marketing executive whose job was to develop travel agency business throughout Russia and Eastern-Europe. As part of this responsibility he was expected to be - and to be seen to be - the expert on all things travel within Russia and Eastern-Europe. He hailed from the region himself and made mention of his credentials within his presentation. It all sounded fine but I wouldn’t remember him today on the basis of that simple extract from his CV. The reason he remains clear in my mind several years later arose from a chat we had over coffee as we took a break from preparing his presentation.

“In Russia”, he said, “we have all the big brands, such as Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, except they are not the real thing; they look and act very much like the real thing, but they are all fakes”. I urged him to talk about this in his presentation. “But what has it got to do with travel and the services I am selling?”, he asked. “Nothing directly”, I replied, “but it provides a little insight into life within the region. People will relate to and be intrigued by the topic, and they may even go home and talk about it. With respect, they are not going to home and talk about those extracts from your CV. Most importantly, they will remember you. Those stories of Russian rip-offs will fix you in their minds; you will be remembered as the person who really knows what’s going on in Russia and Eastern-Europe”.

I sensed I had not entirely convinced him, so I asked him if he had seen Top Gear on TV the previous Sunday evening. “No”, he replied, wondering what on earth was coming next. I told him how Clarkson and May had visited China and found what appeared to be Minis, BMWs and Rolls Royces, until closer inspection revealed them to be fakes. “Ah yes, I heard about that”, replied my client. “Precisely”, I said, “people are talking about it – the team identified a great opportunity to entertain as well as inform as they filmed their trip. You too could achieve that degree of engagement”. So we set about a bit of reconstruction of his presentation, building in some stories that we teased out by juxtaposing real brand images with their fake equivalents and my client discovered a whole new level of self-confidence as he progressively became known as the ‘go to’ man for all things Russian and Eastern-European.

None of this takes anything away from the most important principle of a business presentation, which is that the more time you devote to thinking and talking about your audience, the more you will be getting straight onto their favourite subject. There does, however, come a time when it’s appropriate to talk about yourself and it often pays to go a little deeper than you might realise. Compelling content aside, allowing a little light to shine on yourself makes your audience warm to you; as a result, everything you say becomes that little bit more convincing.