Easiest way to get more people to understand your report, email or presentation

The two biggest challenges facing every communicator are - Comprehension and Credibility. Comprehension is all about whether your audience understands you. Credibility is about belief. Do they believe you?

Today I want to talk about increasing comprehension. There is one tool which can help you improve the comprehension of your written text (and by extension, the spoken word too).

Flesch–Kincaid Readability Score

You have written your email or content on your slides. Before you press send, why not check what your readability score is? The higher the score, the more readable (and comprehensible) your content is. Scores usually range between 0 and 100.

Click here to visit the site. Copy paste your content and you get the readability score.

Let us see how it works. I will copy paste parts of Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk. His TED talk is the most watched TED talk ever. Here is a short story from his talk:

I heard a great story recently -- I love telling it -- of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson. She was six, and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this girl hardly ever paid attention, and in this drawing lesson, she did. The teacher was fascinated. She went over to her, and she said, "What are you drawing?" And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the girl said, "They will, in a minute." [Score: 84.3 Excellent]

Here is another one describing his family's movement from the UK to the US:

But something strikes you when you move to America and travel around the world: Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one. Doesn't matter where you go. You'd think it would be otherwise, but it isn't. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on Earth. And in pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think math is very important, but so is dance. Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do. We all have bodies, don't we? Did I miss a meeting? [Score 76.3 Excellent]

His entire talk is very easy to understand, and this ease of understanding makes his talk one of the best ever on TED stage. Now let us see how the corporate world communicates. Here is a sample text from some of the largest and most popular companies in the world. I have masked the names of these companies.

We are focused on maximizing our differentiation and competitiveness, and continue to make significant investments in the areas of training, acquisitions, emerging technologies, offerings and assets, and more. [Score -5.9 Pathetic]

We’ve always believed in serving the best coffee possible. It's our goal for all of our coffee to be grown under the highest standards of quality, using ethical sourcing practices. Our coffee buyers personally travel to coffee farms in Latin America, Africa and Asia to select high quality beans. And our master roasters bring out the balance and rich flavor of the beans through the signature XYZ Roast. [Score 56.1 Decent]

Our overall vision is for ABC's to become a modern, progressive burger company delivering a contemporary customer experience. Modern is about getting the brand to where we need to be today and progressive is about doing what it takes to be the ABC's our customers will expect tomorrow.  To realize this commitment, we are focused on delivering great tasting, high-quality food to our customers and providing a world-class experience that makes them feel welcome and valued. [Score 38.1 Poor]

You get the drift, don't you? This test might not be accurate all the time, but it is surely a great tool to check the readability of our text before we deliver a presentation, write a report or send that important email. Click here and get testing.

Thanks Julian for the tip!

Precautions to take while presenting to a new audience

We can present to two types of audiences; First, repeat audience. People to whom we have presented before and second, new audience. People who have never met us and are attending our talk for the very first time. When we present to our colleagues, it is usually a repeat audience but when we present to customers, investors or talk at TED or TEDx the audience is completely new.

Here are 5 precautions to take while presenting to a completely new audience:

1. Boost your credibility

2. Avoid the curse of knowledge

3. Avoid jargon altogether

4. Be more likable

5. Go slow

Since the audience has never met you, credibility becomes crucial. There are two types of credibility. One, your personal credibility and second is the credibility of your message. If you are a domain expert, you have personal credibility. An experienced professor of marketing talking at TED does not need to worry about his own credibility. Having said that, he still needs to worry about the credibility of his message. If you have domain expertise, ensure that it is communicated before you begin talking. Get introduce dwell. Otherwise introduce yourself at the start. The audience should start trusting you right from the start.

Why should the audience trust your message? You plant 'credibility boosters' all over the speech or presentation. A report from McKinsey or Gartner is a credibility booster. A quote from a domain expert. A story or a news article. All these are boosters. A startup presenting to a group of investors can show images of his customers using his product, his manufacturing facility or his own images of doing consumer research. This will add a lot of credibility to what you say. You might be honest, but the audience is meeting you for the very first time and they do not know that you are honest.

Since the audience is completely new, the other things to avoid is the use of jargon. You do not know your audience well and hence assuming that they will understand your jargon is a big risk you are taking. Using jargon does not make you look smart. It hinders understanding.

I was at a Demo Day in Mumbai. Startups pitch to investors on Demo Day. One startup founder was constantly using abbreviations like KVK and PST and the audience was completely confused. When you present to a new audience, you have to be aware of the curse of knowledge. Chip and Dan Heath, in their book Made to Stick, talk about this concept in detail. You know about your industry and your business. Your audience does not. But you do not know, how it feels not to know what you already know. Hence you use jargon. You assume the audience knows what you know and you speak fast.

Lesson 1 - Speak slowly

Lesson 2 - Avoid jargon altogether

Lesson 3 - Rehearse in front of a friend who does not know anything about your business. Ask her to make notes of things she did not understand while you were presenting.

Last but not the least, let us tackle the biggest thing; Likability. We do business with people we like. We invest in companies where we like the founder and his team. Since the audience does not know you, you have to become more likable. Be natural. Do not put on an accent. Do not come across as stiff. Talk with passion and with confidence. Do not hold yourself back. Answer questions directly and do not get defensive. A successful presentation is one where the audience likes the presenter. Likability trumps everything else.

1 statement that will change the way you present

Show them, don't tell them.

When making a presentation, we make lots of arguments and points. We talk about falling sales, competitors becoming aggressive, changing market dynamics and about our innovations.

The problem - most of the time we only tell them, never show it to them.

Us vs. Them

You have gone to make a pitch.

You will surely talk about your company and its credentials. You may start with the basic information, the offices you have around the world. Then talk about the business you are in and its various verticals. Then talk about the clients you serve and some testimonials.

You will eventually talk about the client. How can you help them? You understand their business and know their problems. You are the right resource. Aren't you?

How much time do you talk about yourself and how much time you talk about the client?
Cut down drastically on the time you spend on yourself. The client is not interesting beyond a few basic things. You are good that's why you are there. Finish talking about yourself and focus on the client and their problems.

Less: About Us
More: About Them

66 Best Presentation & Public Speaking Tips

I wrote my 500th post last week. That's a big milestone for me. In this post, I try to present the crux of my five and a half years of blogging. What follows is the best 66 tips you will ever read on making a presentation and giving a talk. Benefit from it.

Planning Your Presentation

1. You have to tell a story to your audience. Stories are memorable and stories appeal to people. Ask not what information I have to share. Instead ask, what story should I tell?

2. Appeal to emotions. Most presentations are too logical but all decisions are based on emotions.

3. Every argument needs; Ethos, Pathos and Logos (Aristotle). Ethos is credibility, pathos is emotions and logos is logic. You need all the three to convince someone. Most presentations lack emotions.

4. Our brain loves novelty. Teach people something new.

5. If your audience remembers only one thing, what would it be? Try to come up with your main message in less than 140 characters. This will force you to think properly.

6. Divide your talk into 3 parts. Your audience will find it easy to follow and remember.

7. Deliver a jaw-dropping moment which will be remembered for a really long time. Nancy Duarte calls it the 'star moment'. STAR - Something They'll Always Remember.

8. Our brain also loves humor. It lowers defenses and make you more likable by your audience. Using humor will mean audience will not find your boring.

9. If you can, try to present/speak in 18 minutes or less. The shorter your presentation the better.

10. Give concrete examples. Your audience cannot understand abstract concepts.

11. Set a time limit and make your presentation. Creativity flourishes under constraints. Do not keep working on your presentation till the last minute.

12. Plan your content on paper. Software comes at the end. Once you have complete clarity, your slides will get made faster.

13. Spend time in understanding your audience. Who are they? What they know? What they want from your presentation? Where are they right now and where do you want them to be at the end of the talk?

14. Prepare for questions which your audience will ask. On every slide ask, what will my audience ask me on this slide?

15. Make proper handouts. Handouts are not printouts of the slides. Use handouts effectively. You can print a summary in a one page handout and given it at the end of the presentation.

16. As per John Medina, a molecular biologist, our brain loses attention after 10 minutes. If your talk is longer than that then every 10 mins do something different. Play a video, get a new speaker or give a task to your audience.

17. Prepare for less time. For a 10 min talk, you should prepare for 7-8 minutes.

18. Everyone pays attention at the start. Make the most of that extra attention and start well.

19. End early. Everyone loves to go home early or finish a meeting early.

20. How to start a presentation? Start from where your audience is now. What do they know about the topic. Start talking about that and get everyone on the same page. Now start your journey to where you want to take them.

21. What is the objective of your talk? Remember this all the time and make sure you fulfill it.

Designing Your Slides

1. Visual display of information is important. Avoid too much text and go for images and videos.

2. Picture Superiority Effect states that photos are better than text. Using photos make your audience understand more and remember more. Use photos to amplify your message.

3. Have one theme per slide. Do not try to say too many things on one slide.

4. Use very few words per slide. Avoid bullets at all costs.

5. For every slide ask; "What's my point?" and "Why does it matter?"

6. Remove all 'noise' from your slides. Try to keep it clutter free. Whatever can be removed without losing the main message is a 'noise'.

7. Keep animations and transitions to the minimum. Use it only if very necessary.

8. Do not use 3-D charts. Your objective is not to impress your audience. 2-D charts are better for audience understanding.

9. Utilize empty space on your slide properly. Do not fill every corner of your slide. Empty space adds to the power of your slide.

10. Help your audience understand your numbers. Make sense of the numbers and compare/contrast them.

11. Have large size text on your slides. Your slides must be visible from the back of the room.

12. If you have 10 slides with 10 charts, try to give a break to your audience by showing images or telling a story after presenting 3 slides.

13. Have a one sentence summary of what is the key finding of every chart/table you present. Do not wait for your audience to figure out the key message.

14. Edit your slides ruthlessly after your first draft is ready. Remember, the shorter the better.


Delivering Your Presentation

1. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Unless you rehearse 10 times you cannot master your presentation. The aim is not to memorize but to be in the flow.

2. Talk as if you are having a conversation. You are not 'giving a presentation' to me. You are talking to me as a person talks to another.

3. Deliver a multisensory experience. Try to engage more than one sense. Can you make people feel the message?

4. Be authentic. Do not try to be someone else. Speak from your heart.

5. Do not hold yourself back during delivery. Be natural. Be the same person; on and off the stage.

6. Move around. Do not stand behind a lectern. Move your hands as well.

7. Make proper eye contact.

8. Do not read the slides.

9. Do not stand facing the slides. Have a laptop in front of you, so you don't look back.

10. Use a wireless presenter to change slides.

11. Reach your venue early. Check your equipment. Do a dry run before the actual talk starts.

12. Do not try to be a perfect speaker. Just go and talk. No one is perfect. No one can become perfect.

13. No one cares about your mistakes. Most of them will not even notice it. Take your mistakes in your stride.

14. Calm yourself before every presentation. Tell yourself everyone gets nervous. Take slow deep breaths to calm your nerves.

15. Engage your audience. You talk is not a one way lecture. Ask questions. Give away prizes. Mingle with the crowd.

16. Take charge of the room in which you are presenting. Make any changes in seating styles, lighting, etc. if you feel that is affecting your performance.

17. Share the stage with other speakers. Your audience will love this change. One speaker can become boring (especially in long presentations/workshops).

18. Voice modulation is necessary. You remember your college professor who drove you to sleep in every lecture because she kept on talking without any voice modulation.

19. Do not use jargon.

20. Have fun while preparing your presentation and while delivering it. If you have fun, your audience will also have fun. You are tense and they will not enjoy at all.

21. Use props to explain concepts. Go out of the way in figuring out ways to make your audience understand and remember your story.

22. Do not speak too fast. Pause often. Pauses help you get extra attention.

23. The more you speak, the better you become. If it is your first presentation, you will fumble and that is fine. Only after you have presented multiple times can you hope to improve.

Other Tips
1. You have to be passionate about your topic. If you are not moved by the topic, how can you move your audience? Passion is contagious. Your passion will affect your audience.

2. Your talk has to help people. Do not sell what you will not buy yourself.

3. Start with a beginners' mind. There is no right and wrong way of giving a talk. Do what you feel right. Take a risk. Try out something new.

4. Be clear, be simple and be short.

5. PowerPoint is not a must every time you speak. Go without slides once in a while. Just carry some prints of data you want to present.

6. You are the focus of your presentation. Not your slides. People have come to listen to you. So stop equating presentation with PowerPoint.

7. Videotape first few minutes of your talk and watch it. It will help you immensely.

8. Look back at the talk you just gave. What went right, repeat it. What went wrong, learn from it.

Most of these tips are based on the following books: Presentation Zen, Talk Like TED, Confessions of a Public Speaker, Resonate, HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, The Quick & Easy Way to Effective Public Speaking  & The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. It is also based on my 6 years of blogging. Read the book reviews by clicking here.

3 Things that make a Story great

Film making is a difficult job. Hundreds of new movies are released every year and only a small fraction of them succeed. Few weeks back I came across a book on movie making. The author has given a simple answer to what makes a story good. He says:

In order to create a great story we need...

1. Great Characters,
2. Great Conflict, and
3. Great Expectations


If you are writing a story, create great characters. They can be interesting because of their looks, habits or nature. Look at any good movie, and you will find interesting characters. The joker in The Dark Knight. Mr. Gru in Despicable Me. Minions in Despicable Me. The characters cannot be completely ordinary. There has to be something unique about them.

The second element is a conflict. Your characters need to face a big challenge or obstacle. In Despicable Me, Mr. Gru has to steal the moon.

Finally, great characters + great conflict = great expectations. In The Dark Knight Rises, the Batman has almost lost the battle. Can he make a comeback? The audience has to ask such questions as they see the movie or hear your story. That's when they will be hooked.

If you are narrating a story, remember to focus on the characters. Talk about them in detail. Then talk about the conflict. A big obstacle or challenge. Build in the expectation. What will happen next? Will the hero win this battle?

How do you start your presentation?

What is the first thing you talk about?

• If you are proposing to launch a new product, do you talk about the 'new product' right at the start?
• If you are offering a solution to a problem, do you start with the 'solution'?
• If you are seeking a sponsorship, do you start with 'how much money you want'?

Yesterday I was chatting with a senior manager from one of world's leading technology companies. This manager makes high-stakes presentations in her company. On asking, how should one start a presentation she said this:

"Find out what your audience already knows about your topic. Start your presentation from there. Start by tapping into their existing knowledge. Go where the audience is standing right now. Then take them along a journey and leave them where you want them to be by the end of your presentation."

If you are proposing to launch a new product, start from what the audience already knows. Talk about the market situation now and then draw their attention to a gap you have identified.

Image from unsplash.com

"Can you present in 10 minutes?"

Here is a real life instance.

Radha stood up to present to her top management. She was supposed to talk about marketing strategy for the coming year. She had 50 slides and was looking at a 1 hour presentation.

The presentation started and then the CEO asked. "Can you present everything in 10 minutes. I cannot listen to so many things and remember everything. I am stupid. I need to know what matters in just 10 minutes."

Forcing someone to present their 60 minute stuff in 10 minutes is a challenge. But if you do prepare a 10 minute edit of your 60 minute presentation, it will help you retain the absolute core of your idea and knock off the unnecessary stuff. The top management does not have the time to listen to hour long presentations.

5 Presentation Mistakes You Keep Making

1. Going very fast. Give your audience time to understand. If they are not saying anything, does not mean they have understood everything.

2. Using jargon. If you have to, then explain it properly. Do not assume the audience knows all the jargon you are going to use.

3. Talking to yourself. A presentation is a conversation you have with the audience. Talk to them. Speak and then listen. Observe the audience. Do not keep talking (as if to yourself).

4. Skipping important details. While presenting tables and graphs, write down if the volumes are annual or per month. The amount is in USD or Rupees. Mention the source of your data. Mention everything that needs to be mentioned.

5. Presenting for too long. The longer the presentation, the lesser the audience understanding. Try to say the same thing in half the time (or half the slides). No one can remember content worth 50 slides. Cut down. Present the bare essentials and skip the details (unless the audience asks for it).

Telling a Story in your Presentation

Human beings love stories. We read fiction and we watch movies. Stories convey information in an easily digestible fashion. Yet, few presenters share stories. Here is one simple way which will help you come up with stories for every presentation.

Go back to your experiences and find out what shaped your current opinion (point of view).

In every presentation you are sharing your point of view. You are presenting to your CEO and asking her to launch a new brand. You are presenting to your employees and asking them to follow some new rules. Why? What makes you believe in your argument?

To discover what stories to tell, all you need is to ask yourself; "Why do I have this point of view?" What incidents led me to have this belief?

You will start discovering anecdotes and incidents which happened to you or to somebody you know. These incidents and events shaped your existing point of view. Use these into your presentation. Share the story and then put forth your argument.

5 Laws of Presentations

Law #1: The understanding, attention and retention of your audience is inversely proportional to the length of your presentation.
The longer your presentation, the lesser your audience pays attention, remembers and understands. Keep your presentation as short as possible.


Law #2: A picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth a thousand pictures.
Sometimes just one picture is equal to a paragraph full of words. A video is even more powerful. It an audio visual medium and engages the audience better than even pictures. Stop your reliance on plain text. Make it interesting and entertaining with pictures and videos.


Law #3: The power of a slide is inversely proportional to the amount of words on the slide.
The more words on the slides, the worse the slide becomes. Great slides are low on text. Bad slides are text heavy.

Law #4: Effective delivery of your presentation is directly proportional to the amount of practice you have put in.
The more you rehearse, the better you deliver the presentation. The more you practice, the more confident you become. There are no naturally born presenters. Practice is the difference between great and average presenters.

Law #5: Your audience mirrors you.
Your audience mirrors your behavior and state of mind. If you are positive, passionate and confident, your audience feels the same way. If you enjoy the joke you just made, your audience will enjoy the same. A nervous presenter makes the audience uncomfortable too.

What does my audience want? [B2B Sales Presentation Disaster]

Today I sat through a 20 minute presentation which was irrelevant and a sheer waste of time. I had to agree to give time to this B2B business development manager. He had come to talk about his company and what they do. I already knew most of it. Moreover, I was not interested.

And this presenter flew all the way from Mumbai to meet a few clients like me. What a waste of time and money for his company!

What the presenter should have done?

Ask me before coming what I wanted to hear. A small amount of market research helps a lot. By knowing what I would take interest in, he could have made the meeting much more interesting and useful. To him and to me.

I regret sitting through the 20 minutes. What a waste!

7 Tips when Presenting to Foreigners

1. Go through every slide of your presentation and ask yourself, "What is it that my audience will find difficult to understand?" You will realize that the foreigner does not know what you mean when you say, South India. He/she might not know the city they are sitting in right now is in North india.

2. Using Maps: Handhold the audience, go slow and make them comfortable. Give them a nice print out of the map of your country / state (if your presentation requires your audience to understand the geography). Understand that they are totally unfamiliar with your map.

3. Talking Currency. Your audience might not understand what you mean by $10 or Rupees 5, if he has lived all his life in The Netherlands.

4. Keep checking your audience understanding. Keep asking every once in a while "Should I move on, or do you have any questions?"

5. Avoid Jargon all together. Your audience might not understand what do you mean by 'middle class'. In India, we use the term and we know what it means. But it does not mean the same thing in Europe. There might not even be a term called 'middle class' there. Even within the same industry / profession, the jargon differs from country to country. Hence, avoid jargon all together.

6. Take extra care to explain vernacular words. If you 'have to' use them, do explain the meaning before moving on.

7. Measurement of any kind: The US talks in miles and gallons and India speaks kilometers and liters. Take care.


Image courtesy of Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

5 Lessons Presenters can learn from Advertising (Part - II)

In the last post we discussed the process involved in making a television advertisement. In this post, we will compare making presentations to making TV ads to see what presenters can learn from the process of ad making. Here are the 14 steps in making of a TV ad:

Defining the advertising objective
Understanding the consumer
Developing rough one-sentence/paragraph stories (concepts)
Client choosing one concept
Conducting consumer research to check appeal and effectiveness of the story
Fine tuning the chosen concept
Selecting the director
Incorporating director's feedback
Making of the storyboard (each shot decided and sketches made)
Pre-production meeting to discuss every aspect of the ad shooting
Actual shooting
Editing and post-production
First cut for client approval
Final ad is ready

Here are 5 lessons all presenters can learn from advertising:

#1 Clearly define your presentation's objective
Advertising always starts with the brand objective and so should our presentation. Brand objective is written and sent by the client to the agency as part of the adverting brief. Every presenter should start making the presentation by writing down what is the objective of the presentation. This will help you keep the focus on what really matters the most.

#2 Understand Your Audience
Once the overall objective is defined, the advertising agency spends time understanding the target consumer for whom the ad is being made. If it is a youth brand, the model selection, the costume and language is different than if the brand targets older people. Again, the ads targeted at kids have a totally different look and feel. Almost all good ads aimed at children have a jingle, since songs reach to kids better.

Before we start planning our presentation, we need to understand the audience properly. Start with the demographics; age, gender, income levels, language. Then delve into deeper things like interests and preferences. Spend time with your audience before you make your presentation. Understand what your audience is like. You can also conduct a small research to know your audience.

#3 Develop a Rough Story line First and Test it
Do not jump the gun. Go slow. Start with a once sentence story line for your entire presentation. If you are going to present to your CEO and recommend why a new product should be launched, can you make the statement in one or two sentences (max a paragraph)?

Develop not one but two or three such concepts (paragraphs). As you go along, you might realize one story appeals more than the other. The arguments made in Story 3 might be better than Story 1 & 2.

Once the story lines are developed, choose the one which appeals the most. For this, you can always meet people (who are similar to your audience) and take their help. Discuss with them and see what counter-arguments they come up with.

#4 Seek Outside Help (Audience or Colleagues or Experts)
Once you have finalized on one story line, you can seek further help. If you are the manager presenting to the CEO about the new product launch, why not make the presentation to your colleagues and see what they feel about it. Prepare yourself before you face your audience. Sharpen your arguments before the final presentation.


#5 Develop Slides at the Last
Once all your arguments are fine tuned and your entire story is clear in your mind, start working on the visuals and the slides. This comes at the end. This is something like building the storyboard after the story has been fully fine tuned.

Let me know which lesson you found appealing. Is there anything else you learnt from the process of making an ad?

How is a TV ad made? Part - I

I have been part of 6 television advertisements for my brand so far and honestly, ad making is a very interesting process. A lot of effort goes into it and the stakes are really high. Advertising agencies are experts in making ads. The process has been refined over time and there is a standard way of making ads.

We can really improve as a presenter if we understand how an ad is made. But before we understand what presenters should learn from the process of making an ad, let me share the process itself.

Step 1: Client's Brief: The Objective
The advertising process starts with what is called an 'advertising brief'. In this document, the brand team shares their objective of making the ad. The target consumer, timing of the ad, language of the ad and a lot of other things are decided at this phase.

The more detailed the brief, the easier it is for the agency. However the most crucial thing in this brief is the advertising objective. What does the brand want from this ad? Enhance its image among consumers or get more consumers to try the product or something else.

Step 2: Understanding the Consumer
Once the brief is received, the advertising agency gets to work. What they do first is to understand the target consumer better. What is the consumer like, what does she do, what does she hate, etc. Market research is also conducted many a times to uncover 'insights'. The objective of this research is to understand the consumer in detail.

The agency also understands the brand. They know if the brand should be humorous or serious. Should the brand talk like a friend or an expert. This understanding is very critical.

Step 3: Develop Concepts
The advertising agency gets to work. The entire team sits together to discuss the brief and look at the consumer profile. They also go through the ads of competition brands to know what other brands are talking about. The copy writer (who job is to come up with a story) comes up with rough concepts (rough story).

These concepts are like the entire story in a few sentences. Something like, "The housewife is worried about the child who does not finish his lunchbox. She talks to her neighbor and she recommends her Brand X of cooking oil. The kid now polishes off his lunchbox."

Step 4: Client selects a Concept
The rough concepts are presented to the client (brand team) and the client choose one concept. This concept is now discussed and refined to suit the need of the brand better. It is tweaked and modified.

Step 5: Consumer Research
The chosen concept is then presented to a group of consumers. This is called a 'Focus Group Discussion'. The concept is converted into an audio-visual at low cost and played to the consumers. The ad is narrated along with simple sketches. Now the consumers are ask to share what they understood. Do they like the ad? Does the ad meet the brand objective?

Step 6: Fine Tuning
If the consumers does not like the concept, it is shelved or changed. If the concept is liked by the consumers, it is fine tuned using the feedback received during the research.

Step 7: Director
A suitable director is chosen to work on the ad. Some directors are good at shooting babies, some are good with humor, some are versatile. Everyone has different styles.

Step 8: Director's Meeting
The director meets the agency and brand team to discuss and add value to the storyboard. He uses his experience to make the ad more appealing and useful.

Step 9: Storyboard
The director then comes up with a 'storyboard' in which the full ad (say of 30 seconds) is broken down into individual shots. He draws the sketches which will help everyone understand how the ad will look like in reality. The dialogues are also finalized at this time.

Step 10: Pre-Production Meeting
This is the final meeting which happens between the director and brand/agency team. This usually happens very close to the day of shoot. In this meeting, every thing is discussed in detail; the costume, the models, the shooting venue, music, etc. Everything is finalized at this stage.

Step 11: Shooting
The director shoots the TV ad.

Step 12: Editing and Post-Production
Once the ad is shot, the post-production work is done. The music is composed, the editing is done. A 30 second ad is not shot for 30 seconds. It is generally shot for 60 seconds or more. Editing is one of the most crucial process in the making of an ad.

Step 13: First Cut
The director presents first cut which is approved by the client/agency.

Step 14: Final ad
Based on the feedback from client/agency, the final ad is released. It is now ready for airing.

To summarize, the process starts with understanding the overall objective of the brand. Then understanding the consumer. Unless we do that, how do we make the ad which the consumer will find interesting? The agency develops a few rough concepts. The client chooses one concept which is further fine tuned. The concept is tested with a small group of consumers. It is further fine tuned. Then a suitable director is chosen. The story is further fine tuned using the director's inputs. The storyboard is created which has exact shots and dialogues. Every detail of the shooting is discussed (models, costume, music, etc.) and then the ad is shot.

Advertising agency is a bridge between consumers and the brand. It understands the consumer and the brand and brings them closer.

Presentations Checklist [Workshop Material for Free]

This Presentation Checklist is the crux of my three years of blogging. This was given out as handouts to all the students who attended my Presentations Workshop "Making a Powerful Point" at SCMS(UG) at Pune.


There are four stages of a presentation.

• Context
• Content
• Design (slide design) and
• Delivery

This checklist contains tips on all these stages. This checklist will give you an overview of how to make a presentation step-by-step. However, this checklist does not contain sample slides I presented at the workshop or the discussion we had there. That will be covered in future posts gradually.


Go through this checklist and use it as a tool to make effective presentations. It will also ensure you do not make the common mistakes which you normally make in your presentation.


Click here to download from Google Docs (no log in required)
Click here to download from slideshare


View the checklist here. Feel free to share it with others. Any feedback/query on this checklist is welcome. 

Presentations Checklist

View more documents from Vivek Singh

How to prepare an Ignite Presentation?

Here is a slideshow I have created which captures the main messages of my longer post on the same topic. Take a look if you too are preparing for your upcoming Ignite presentation.

How to prepare an ignite presentation

View more presentations from Vivek Singh

Convert text to graphics for better understanding

When you want to explaining something, images/graphics tend to do a better job than mere text. For example, Samsung wants to conduct a market research on how many people are aware of Samsung Galaxy Tab (the new tablet). How did they become aware (word of mouth / TV ad / Print ad / etc.)? How many people have bought? Why or why not? What do they think about it? etc. etc. etc. (and the list goes on)

Assume Samsung is explaining this to its research agency. It can do the standard way; which is to write it all down as bullet points. Something like this:


They give this list and ask the agency to go ahead and conduct the survey.

There is however another way, which brings clarity to their thinking and also helps the agency understand the work better. I am talking about converting text to graphics. Penning down your thoughts in the form of a flow chart. Something like this:


In my experience, this comes out a clear winner. Provides a lot of clarity to you and helps your audience understand the work faster and easier.

Preparing for a presentation when there is very less time

Every presentation requires time. We need to think about our key message that we want to convey, choose suitable content, plan out the flow, design the slides and rehearse for excellent delivery.

This is theory.

In real life, most of the times, we do not get enough time to prepare. Your boss/manager wants you to make a presentation tomorrow. He also might have figured it out just now. No one is at fault but your reputation is on stake. You have to make a presentation tomorrow at 10am and you have just today's evening.

What do you do? Wake up all night and prepare? Work so late into the night that your eyes sore when you present and have butterflies in the stomach?

I am facing a similar situation today. I figured out at 1pm that I have to make a presentation to 275 people tomorrow. My presentation is for 15 minutes and I have to talk at 10am. All I have is today evening (and night) to prepare.

It is 5.45pm now and what do I have ready?

NOTHING.

I am going to plan it all out and deliver a good presentation. I am sure.
How will I do that? I don't know. Let me plan.
I am going to share everything with you tomorrow (or possibly by Monday). Stay tuned!


Image: Salvatore Vuono