I had a meeting this morning with a counterpart at a mid-size well-established PR firm. We were discussing some of the work our company was doing for several clients. One in particular that was of interest to her involved helping our client to revamp a key executive’s presentation content and style. I recommended the blog Presentation Zen to her when she inquired into some of the resources we utilized in developing our approach. I had forgotten what a great blog that Garr Reynolds has.
One of the things we have been preaching to all of our clients is to communicate in a way that is less autistic and more human. Many of the mediums we recommend have to do with applications for the Internet, as it allows more of a two-way dialogue. But I had forgotten about how powerful a good presentation can be. It’s an opportunity to make a connection with your audiences, and potentially start an ongoing relationship with them.
Unfortunately, this opportunity is lost with many companies. They look at it solely as a way to push out information about their company or pitch their products and services.
As Garr points out in a recent post Presentations and Word of Mouth Marketing should play hand in hand. Giving your audiences something of value and providing a way for them to connect with you and your company goes a long way in fueling positive word of mouth. Direct them to a blog created around the topic being presented, share additional information and welcome feedback and dialogue. This has the added benefit of making it easy for them to share information about your company with their peers.
Think of presentations as an opportunity to build a new relationship and start a conversation. The end of the presentation is the beginning of the relationship, not the end of a tactic.
Today is November 7th, Election Day. I am thrilled that after today I won’t have to be bombarded with political ads that highlight everything people hate about advertising.
Between the MO Senatorial race candidates (R – Jim Talent and D – Claire McCaskill) and the proposed State Constitutional Amendments (Stem Cell Research, Tobacco Tax) I couldn’t tell you what to vote based on the ads. As the Election Day came closer and closer one camp would put out an ad making a negative claim against their opponent and a day later the opposing camp would completely discredit the claim and lash back with another negative claim.
The proportion of negative attacks vs. image-building ads has gotten more and more distorted over the years. If Nike and Adidas pulled these same tactics people would buy Reebok and sales would plummet. Too bad our political candidate and their parties still employ tactics that create decisions based on “the least of all evils” instead of the genuine embodiment of a candidate’s values and credentials.
OK – rant over.
Wired has just come out with their “Wired 40” list of the most innovative and progressive companies. They identified 5 major trends, power to the people being one of them.
Look at the trend today around Internet-based technologies. There are millions of individuals sharing information on blogs, sharing photos & videos, and participating in forums. Business and government are slow to adopt these new innovations using the Internet because they are seen as “radical” and therefore scary and risky. Government and large corporations are much more comfortable with evolutionary improvements. Even though they have been developed by and for the masses (ie MySpace), the applications of these technologies hold great promise in the business world. Those that choose to adopt them more aggressively will make great strides in moving ahead of their competitors that choose a more evolutionary path.
Let’s focus for now on internal communication (there’s a lot of ink on giving customers a voice so I won’t go there). Imagine being a large organization with thousands of employees spread throughout the world. Wouldn’t you jump at the chance to tap into all of the ideas that people have? Wouldn’t you want to give every employee a voice, a chance to be heard? Distributed intelligence – think about it.
So why aren’t organizations jumping at the chance to give a voice to the front line? It’s because, for the first time, the frontline people can talk to, or at least be heard by, the top. But this changes the way top and middle managers operate. It’s a huge shift to bypass traditional communication and management channels. Companies are also very cautious about what information they want to share outside of their organization. Generally, this is controlled by a few executives who handle the PR for the company. Companies fear the negative.
Olivier Blanchard articulates this principal well with his post on “reaching for the edges.” Translate his opinion to companies instead of individuals – they also tend to play it safe in the middle.
Those companies with forward-thinking top executives, who believe in the distributed intelligence of their organization, will be the ones to emerge ahead of their competitors. They recognize that there is far more to gain in ideas and positive word of mouth than there is to lose by some negative comments by disgruntled employees.