What if you only had 8 words?
Consider this - would your presentation work on the side of a bus?
In my other job writing ads, you spend a lot of time making it as simple as possible for people to get your message.
People are busy. Extra words get in the way. And nowhere is the law of minimal wordage more brutal than outdoor poster ads.
They’re driving past your poster at high speed with a Bluetooth headset in each ear. Or it’s on the back of a bus whizzing past them in the street. They can’t read an essay on the wonders of the product.
The generally accepted rule is that you’ve got no more than 8 words, or you’re wasting your time. It’s a brutal discipline to compress a complex message into that space, and it takes lots of practice, but it’s worth doing when you’re putting a presentation together.
An interesting picture is usually the best way to get them to start reading your words.
So your presentation can use this approach - a visual and a few words:
Or you can hit ‘em with the full thesis:
Both of them get the message across, but which works faster? And which will they remember next week?
A presentation audience isn’t as distracted as people on the street. But the more you make them read, the less they’re listening to your voice, and the less they’re looking at your face.
“Great,” some of you will say. “I don’t want them looking at me, it creeps me out.” And if your objective is to fill a half hour time slot with minimal embarrassment, go for it. But if you want to persuade or inspire people, they have to be looking at you.
Obviously presentations call for a greater level of elaboration on the topic, but the trick is to do it step by step, using a series of simple, understandable points using the ‘8 word’ principle.
Sp there’s a yardstick when you’re creating your next set of slides – imagine each slide on the side of a peak hour bus, moving slowly past a crowd of commuters. Would they get it? If the answer is ‘yes’, your audience is going to be very grateful for your efforts.
Tags: few words, outdoor ads, PowerPoint, Speaker Support
Ian Whitworth believes passionately in the power of live communication, without the buzzwords and bullet points. He works as a creative director and principal of agency A Lizard Drinking. He is also one of the founders of audiovisual company Scene Change. Ian is an ex-professional presenter and long ago, ex-audiovisual technician. For non-presentation stuff, try @ianwhitworth. 
