Edited launch video. Full version (1hr 20min) here.

Steve Jobs is rightly regarded as a master of the presentation universe. How many presentations get that level of global PR hype, both before and after the event?

Here are 10 lessons to draw from the iPad launch speech:

1.    Open with an attention-grabbing  amazing fact: in this case, that Apple has now shifted its 250 millionth iPod. Which tells the audience: we’re probably right about this new product too.

2.    No jargon. Jobs uses none of the clichés that bedevil corporate speeches, particularly in the IT field. No “enterprise-class solutions”. No “best of breed”. Just a conversational chat the way any normal human would talk.

3.    No excess information on the screen. No ever-present logo bars, event titling or other clutter. If you can take something away without it affecting the message, then do it.

4.    Strong use of quality images. In the shot below, a single photo that sums up Apple’s unique marketing positioning. No extra verbiage required.

5.    Don’t be afraid to create an enemy, in Jobs’ case the Netbook, which he says is just a cheap PC that doesn’t do anything well. A lot of people will tell you that all negative messages are bad. That advice is well-meaning and wrong. If your product is the solution to a problem, you’d better spell out exactly what that problem is. And remind everyone how much it pisses them off.

6.    Perfect timing on the screen graphics. Nothing comes up too early to spoil the surprise, and nothing hangs around afterward as a distraction. Which comes from:

7.    A huge amount of rehearsal. Anyone who’s demonstrated software will know the tremendous scope for things to go wrong. The more effortless a presentation looks, the more effort has gone into planning and rehearsing every detail again and again.

8.    A distinctive look, where every detail is consistent. The Apple stage look is always designed for zen-like simplicity to match their products. Jobs’ clothes are always consistent – even if the jeans came straight off Seinfeld. It might not work for other companies, but it works for Apple.

9.    He demonstrates the product sitting back in a comfy leather chair.  The underlying message is: this is a product that isn’t just designed for work. You can’t kick back in a chair and read a laptop comfortably. With the iPad, you can relax and enjoy yourself. Good stage design can send messages like that.

10.    Use of the blank screen. If there’s no visual that goes with the words at any point, go to blank. The focus is on you, the presenter, with no distractions. Then, when the images return, they have much more impact.

It wasn’t a perfect presentation. It wasn’t exactly a revelation to see the iPad “just go straight to the New York Times web site” and allow you to look at it, like every other web device on earth. Snipping out some of this filler would have made it shorter without reducing the impact. But these are minor quibbles in a presentation that generally acted as a showpiece of how to get a message across clearly.

Let’s continue this week’s theme of presentation images. Anyone who travels a lot will know that airports are filled with ads you don’t see anywhere else, designed to attract business people.

A lot of them seem to be single frames from someone’s PowerPoint show. The headline will say something like:

Excellence. Delivered.

or

Your vision. Our mission.

or perhaps

Harnessing the Power of Globality.

Each has the tofu flavour of words that had to be cleared by a dozen committees.

And each is accompanied by a stock shot of stupefying dullness.

Now, we all use stock shots. You can’t hire a photographer for everything, nor take every shot yourself.

And yes, it’s hard to think up images that bring your service to life when your business is an office block full of business people doing business things.

But an interesting stock shot costs the same as a dull, clichéd one. And the interesting one generates a much greater return, because people will actually look at it and think. And if they do that, they might remember the point you’re making.

In cold, ROI terms, that’s a much better investment than something nobody notices because they’ve seen the same thing thousands of times before.

Here’s the a Top 10 stock shot cliché list to avoid next time you’re putting together that credentials presentation.

1. THE HANDSHAKE

The oldest stock shot image in the book. But what is it actually meant to achieve? Is it like business pornography, where if you show a business man pictures of an agreement being reached, he might get excited and get an urge to… you know… reach an agreement with you?

2. THE OVER-THE-SHOULDER LAPTOP POINT

In which an executive works on a laptop, while someone leans over their shoulder and points at the screen. For some reason models doing corporate work love pointing. Ask them to act natural, and they’ll just start pointing at things, which looks goofy at the best of times. And when their eyes don’t follow the hand, as we see here, they look like a store window dummy.

3. THE SUITED HURDLER

I once went to a lecture by a guy who ran a ‘Humorversity’, who claimed to have a ‘process’ that could teach anyone to be funny because humor was nothing more than ‘putting a familiar object in an unfamiliar context’. His first example: “Cartoon of a guy in a tuxedo playing a piano - not funny. Guy in a tuxedo playing a piano in a jungle clearing - now that’s funny.”

And I guess, by that yardstick, so is this photo.

This is a close relative of the Suited Executive Climbing a Mountain shot.

4. OMG! PROBLEMS!

All business marketers believe that if a customer were to use their competitors, the customer will have problems. Big Problems. And what do you do when you have Big Problems? You clutch your forehead like this.

Well, obviously not in real life, but if you search on ‘Worried Businessmen’ in iStockphoto, 93% of the thousand or so images feature men doing a forehead clutch like they’d just been shot with a pygmy poison dart. I once went through an insurance industry magazine with a client and we found six separate forehead clutch ads.

This visual interest factor in this shot, though, is slightly redeemed by using a guy with a rampant porno moustache, instead of the usual clean cut Senior Ken Doll actor.

5. CHESS

Intelligence. Experience. Strategy. Knowing your competitor’s weaknesses. These are the qualities of the master chess player, and the successful business person, a parallel that was first drawn in the year 1473 and has rather lost its impact in recent centuries.

The aforementioned insurance magazine search turned up four chess shots in the one issue.

6. GROWTH SAPLING

Growth is good. Shareholders want earnings growth, we all want to grow our personal wealth. So quickly! What’s the first thing you can think of that also grows?

These shots always have kind, patient, nurturing farmer-style hands protecting the fragile baby tree, rather than the pink, cufflinked hands that will clip 10% off your tree for themselves each year regardless of whether it grows or not.

7. PERSPECTIVE OFFICE BLOCKS

The cost of creating a stock shot depends on how many models appeared in it, how remote the location was, and if it needed expensive props. That’s why stock libraries appeared, to share the cost around. Office block shots, however… you could actually take this shot by accidentally bumping your phone with your elbow at a city cafe.

That’s why you shouldn’t encourage these photographers by buying them.

Plus obviously they’re even duller than the other nine shots here.

8. STAND OUT IN THE CROWD

We’re not just like every other firm, hell no! This style of shot often features a bowl of goldfish, with one of them Photoshopped blue. Or a white jigsaw puzzle with one colored piece.

The bland over-use of this concept creates a certain irony - that images designed to say ‘we stand out in the crowd’ tend to go unnoticed in their own crowd.

9. ATTENTIVE MEETING AUDIENCE

Anyone who has done a boardroom presentation will recognise the upright posture, the bright eyes, the applause, the balanced  ethnic / gender mix and all the other elements that you will never see in a boardroom presentation.

There’s a standing-up, office lobby version of this shot where all the executives form a sort of overlapped triangle, which is meant to look like a poster for one of those multiple superhero movies, but always ends up just looking like a photo of some models.

10. PRIVATE JET

Just how rich will using our services make you? Filthy, Pablo Escobar rich. Here’s an artist’s impression of your future life.

I have to admit the Private Jet is my favorite stock shot, always with the sunglasses and the sort of briefcase that nobody carries any more. The classic version of this shot has a hot executive secretary standing over near the door, for added Alpha Business Male appeal.

And now, regrettably, nearly extinct. You don’t take this stock shot to Washington for your presentation any more.

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By the way, don’t think I’ve dredged into some old stock library for comedy effect. I bought all these shots today, from iStockphoto. For a dollar each, which feels about right.

And now I’m off the airport. Clearly I’m a glutton for punishment.

Room elephant by Banksy

Business and conference speeches are a fertile breeding ground for clichés, highly contagious terms that are carried back to infect everyone at the office.

Before you know it, everyone’s giving each other a heads up and avoiding the elephant in the room.

And when the internet server breaks down on the same day the receptionist calls in sick, it’s a perfect storm.

But at least these sayings have a meaning, and it’s quicker to say “perfect storm” than “two or more sets of difficult conditions combining to make things really nasty for us”.

And a select few of them haven’t lost their magic at all, like lipstick on a pig.

Other clichés are just cholesterol in the arteries of your presentation. They have no meaning at all, beyond “Here I am now, talking to you, padding it out, and about to start a sentence which goes like this…”

If you deleted them altogether, it wouldn’t change the meaning of your message one bit. Often presenters aren’t even aware they’re using them.

Here’s the top 10 terms to trim to keep your presentation taut and terrific.

1. Going forward…
2. At the end of the day…
3. …as such,…
4. It is what it is
5. The bottom line is…
6. Let me say this…
7. Basically…
8. My message is this…
9. I did (whatever), as you do.
10. Cutting to the chase…