Steve Jobs (5 page)

customers see an endorsement from a publication or an individ-

ual they respect, it will make them feel more comfortable about

their purchasing decisions.

VIDEO CLIPS

Very few presenters incorporate video into their presentations.

Jobs plays video clips very often. Sometimes he shows video

of employees talking about how much they enjoyed working

PLAN IN ANALOG
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on a product. Jobs is also fond of showing Apple’s most recent

television ads. He does so in nearly every major new product

announcement and has been doing so since the launch of the

famous Macintosh 1984 Super Bowl ad. He’s been known to

enjoy some ads so much that he showed them twice. Near the

end of his presentation at Apple’s WWDC in June 2008, Jobs

announced the new iPhone 3G, which connects to higher-speed

data networks and costs less than the iPhone that was currently

on the market. He showed a television ad with the tagline “It’s

finally here. The first phone to beat the iPhone.” When the

thirty-second spot ended, a beaming Jobs said, “Isn’t that nice?

Want to see it again? Let’s roll that again. I love this ad.
”8

Including video clips in your presentation will help you

stand out. You can show ads, employee testimonials, scenes of

the product or of people using the product, and even customer

endorsements. What could be more persuasive than hear-

ing directly from a satisfied customer—if not in person, then

through a short video clip embedded in your presentation? You

can easily encode video into digital formats such as MPEG 1,

Windows Media, or Quicktime files, all of which will work for

most presentations. Keep in mind that the average viewed clip

on YouTube is 2.5 minutes. Our attention spans are shrinking,

and video, while providing a great way to keep the audience

engaged, can be overused if left to run too long. Use video clips

in your presentations, but avoid clips that run much longer than

two to three minutes.

Video is a terrific tool for even the most nontechnical of pre-

sentations. I was helping the California Strawberry Commission

prepare for a series of presentations set to take place on the

East Coast. Commission members showed me a short video of

strawberry growers expressing their love of the land and the

fruit. The images of strawberry fields were gorgeous, and I sug-

gested they create a digital file of the video clip and embed it

in the presentation. In the presentation itself, they introduced

the video by saying something like this: “We realize that you

probably have never visited a California strawberry field, so we

decided to bring the farmers to you.” The video clip was the

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CREATE THE STORY

most memorable part of the presentation, and the East Coast

editors loved it.

FLIP CHARTS, PROPS, AND SHOW-AND-TELL

There are three types of learners: visual (the majority of people

fall into this category), auditory (listeners), and kinesthetic (peo-

ple who like to feel and touch). Find ways to appeal to everyone.

A presentation should comprise more than just slides. Use white-

boards, flip charts, or the high-tech flip chart—a tablet PC.

Bring “props” such as physical products for people to see, use, and touch. In Scene 12, you’ll learn much more about reaching

the three types of learners.

Most communicators get so caught up in the slides: Which

font should I use? Should I use bullets or dashes? Should I

include a graph here? How about a picture there? These are the

wrong questions to be asking in the planning stage. If you have

a tangible product, find other ways outside of the slide deck to

show it off. On October 14, 2008, Steve introduced a new line

of MacBooks carved out of one piece of aluminum, a “unibody

enclosure.” After Jobs discussed the manufacturing process,

Apple employees handed out examples of the new frame so

audience members could see it and touch it for themselves.

Incorporating all of these elements in a presentation will

help you tell a story worth listening to. Slides don’t tell sto-

ries; you do. Slides complement the story. This book is software

agnostic; it avoids a direct comparison between PowerPoint and

Keynote because the software is not the main character in an

effective presentation—the speaker is. Jobs himself started using

Apple’s Keynote software in 2002, so what are we to make of the

extraordinary presentations Jobs gave dating back to 1984? The

software is not the answer. The fact that Steve Jobs uses Keynote

instead of PowerPoint does not mean your presentation will

look more like his if you make the switch. You will, however,

win over your audience by spending more time creating the plot

than producing the slides.

Use a notepad or whiteboard to script your ideas. It will help

you visualize the story and simplify its components. When Jobs

PLAN IN ANALOG
13

Aristotle’s Outline for Persuasive Arguments

A Steve Jobs presentation follows Aristotle’s classic five-point

plan to create a persuasive argument:

1.
Deliver a story or statement that arouses the audience’s

interest.

2.
Pose a problem or question that has to be solved or

answered.

3.
Offer a solution to the problem you raised.

4.
Describe specific benefits for adopting the course of action

set forth in your solution.

5.
State a call to action. For Steve, it’s as simple as saying,

“Now go out and buy one!”

returned to Apple in 1996, taking over for ousted Gil Amelio,

he found a company with more than forty different products,

which confused the customer. In a bold move, he radically

simplified the product pipeline. In
Inside Steve’s Brain
, Leander Kahney writes that Jobs called senior management into his

office. “Jobs drew a very simple two-by-two grid on the white-

board. Across the top he wrote ‘Consumer’ and ‘Professional,’

and down the side, ‘Portable’ and ‘Desktop.’
”9
Under Jobs, Apple would offer just four computers—two notebooks and two desktops—aimed at consumer and professional users. This is one of

many stories in which we learn that Jobs does his best thinking

when he’s thinking visually. Whether you plan best on a white-

board, a yellow legal pad, or Post-it notes, spend time in analog

before jumping to digital. Your ultimate presentation will be far

more interesting, engaging, and relevant.

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CREATE THE STORY

D IR EC TO R ’ S N OT E S

 Start planning before you open the presentation soft-

ware. Sketch ideas on paper or whiteboards.

 Incorporate some, if not all, of the following nine ele-

ments to make your presentation come alive: headline,

passion statement, three key messages, analogies,

demonstrations, partner showcase, customer evidence,

video clips, and props.

 Speaking like Jobs has little to do with the type of pre-

sentation software you use (PowerPoint, Keynote, etc.)

and everything to do with how you craft and deliver the

story.

SCE

SCENNEE 2

2

Answer the One

Question That

Matters Most

You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work

back toward the technology—not the other way around.

STEVE JOBS, MAY 25, 1997, WORLDWIDE DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE

In May 1998, Apple launched a splashy new product aimed at

shoring up its dwindling share of the computer market, which

had sunk to under 4 percent. When Jobs unveiled the new

translucent iMac, he described the reason for building the

computer, the target market, and the benefit customers would

see from buying the new system:

Even though this is a full-blown Macintosh, we are targeting

this for the number one use consumers tell us they want a

computer for, which is to get on the Internet simply and fast.

We’re also targeting this for education. They want to buy

these. It’s perfect for most of the things they do in instruction

. . . We went out and looked at all of the consumer products

out there. We noticed some things about them pretty much

universally. The first is they are very slow. They are all using

last year’s processor. Secondly, they all have pretty crummy

displays on them . . . likely no networking on them . . . old-

generation I/O devices, and what that means is they are

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lower performance and harder to use . . . and these things

are uuugly! So, let me tell you about iM
ac.1

After describing the weaknesses of current products in the

preceding excerpt, Jobs drew a verbal road map for his audience,

listing the features he would explain in more detail. (Learn more

about drawing a road map in Scene 5.) The audience learned that

the new iMac was fast (“it screams”) and that it had a “gorgeous”

fifteen-inch display, a large amount of built-in memory, and

components that would make accessing a network easier for stu-

dents and home users. In one of his typical surprise moments,

Jobs then walked to the center of the stage and pulled the cover

off the new computer.

Your audience wants to be informed, educated, and enter-

tained: informed about your product, educated on how it works,

and entertained while learning about it. Above all, people want