How to use Apple's event to become "Presentation Guru"

Designing actionable business conferences is a vital need of organizations today, primarily because, presenters are injecting overwhelming information to the Audience, impacting their ability to produce desired results for organizations. The audience (employees, customers, or investors) leave the conference with beautiful memories of musical programs (and food as well) instead of “summary of desired actions” expected from them. On a side note, research shows, 91% people day dream during business conferences due to boring event flow, disconnected contents & self-focused presenters. Interestingly, in most of the conferences we have attended, this research falls true

According to the intensive research carried out by AIM Consulting (www.aimconsulting.co), organizations must structure their conferences by understanding & fulfilling Audience’s sub-conscious cravings such as individual participation, experience challenges through creative activities, feeling comfortable & recognizing their efforts. We believe to showcase it as a winning recipe of a successful business conference where rather than day dreaming, Audience are inspired to commit desired actions.

Although, the recent Apple launching event was a technical conference, our analysis still focuses on multiple dimensions applicable to most of the organizations. The purpose of choosing this event is to benchmark trillion-dollar company for organizations & leverage their understanding on importance of thoughtful conference flow, designing memorable contents & optimizing presenters’ delivery through historical rhetoric techniques

Firstly, while designing the conference flow, we must understand audiences’ limited attention span creating difficulty to comprehend and recall critical contents later. Additionally, the core consideration should be on “how to make audience comfortable” at the opening of the conference. Due to strong instinctive mind craving, audience desire safety as a top priority of their engagement with presenters. Lastly, each part of the key topic should be categorized wisely, cultivating audience mind breathing to let the mind process & transfer information to the long-time storage area (i.e. sub-conscious mind).

Secondly, our primary priority, during content designing, should be generating actions through Inspirational stories and methods to memorize key information. These considerations will help us to understand, how audiences’ mind works to absorb the information we present. With certain techniques, mind can work as a sponge to absorb maximum of the information increasing chances of desired actions, however, without proper understanding, Audiences’ mind can respond like a stone where information slips through the surface of the brain, absorbing extremely limited information, reducing the probability of actions from Audience. Slides, videos & animations are common tools for creating content; subconscious care is required while using these tools to memorize critical information which generate desired outcome.

Lastly, Leader’s stage presence is the most phenomenal driver and communication vehicle which delivers memorable contents to the audience. People of recent era still remember the historical charismatic speakers more than their contents such as the resonance of Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, JFK, King Martin Luther, Barack Obama, and Steve Jobs. Infact, people still adore the charismatic presence of stage gurus who inspired thousands of the audience across the world.

I recommend continuing enjoy the journey with us by reviewing Apple’s readiness in conference flow, intelligent content designing and leader’s delivery on stage. The lessons in detail can certainly add value in your future audience engagement, benefiting you and your organizations.

Conclusively, Actionable Presence is something organizations are aiming to achieve desired results

1) Conference Flow

Audiences' Attention Span

As per John Medina (www.brainrules.net), a presenter retains audiences’ attention span for only 10 minutes unless he/she introduce variety and remains unpredictable. Apple wisely managed to deal with this sub-conscious challenge by introducing new video, change presenters, and leverage product comparisons, after every few minutes throughout the conference. As a result, audience remained connected with the presenters absorbing maximum of the information cascaded. Most of business leaders should take calculated actions to deal with this challenge while designing their presentations for business conferences as well as key note speeches. Moreover, during my travel to several universities around the world, I found out that students had similar concerns regarding their respectable lecturers who delivered long sessions with limited engagement which elevates disconnected engagement & less information retention

Conference Opening with New York video

Simon Lancaster (world famous speechwriter) described the power of instinctive mind considering it as the first desire of people, which craves to be comfortable, feel recognized and avoid dangers. When Apple users tuned to live streaming of the launching event, their first preference was to have a connection with speakers on stage. However, the event started with video about New Yorkers degraded the credibility by disconnecting thousands of people connected online. I believe, the first few minutes of the event brought down the event from a highly global to an extremely local level, which caused a decrease in the excitement of new products for online audience. This damage continuously reduced as people got connected with product launching and popped up again at the end. The conference ended with a beautiful song neglecting the online audience once again. As a conclusion, Audience always have a craving of inclusiveness, sense of belonging & ownership. Apple should consider it carefully in future to connect all Audience specially who are connected online.

Singing Performance at the end

The event was a technical evolution but adding a melodious song in the end was a clever idea. Ending brought information gap & melodious songs brought smiles on peoples’ faces and they left the hall with winning minds & excitement to experience new products.

Segregation between Product Launches

The purpose of the event was new product introduction, still, audience was overwhelmed with a lot of tech stuff regarding multiple products. Our mind requires information breathing, “silent patches”, to comprehend the information properly. The videos played were also revealing technical information, so there were less escape opportunities for the audience. Moreover, there were multiple product launches but no proper gaps (separate color scheme, different presentation style etc.)  to segregate the products. It would have been improved by using songs (as they used at the end) after the introduction of every product to let audience take an information gap. Different lighting, ambiance and some breaks would have helped the audience to memorize the differences between the products

2) Actionable Contents

You can order today, and we will deliver next week

This idea was used wonderfully throughout the presentation. Leaders & organizations must learn and adopt this skill from Apple’s recent event. Any presentation, engagement or meeting without an action is a waste of organization’s resources. It was well planned to generate sales and trigger desired actions from the audience. With this technique, I am confident that organizations & leaders can also generate solid actions through their employees.

Summarize all products at the end of the session

Repetition is the key factor to help audience memorize important content. There were two strong tools used by Apple during the conference, firstly, multimedia touchpoints including videos, visuals & demonstrations. Additional spices were also added to enhance memory such as summary at the end by Tim Cook. Let me Refer Carmen Simon (memory expert), 90% of the information we hear, is forgotten due to sub-conscious forgetting curve, Apple has successfully enabled audience to memorize 10% key information. Furthermore, people would remember more than 10% information due to cleverly & timely usage of visuals, videos, and repetition.

Visuals with 3 seconds glance

When I traveled to several fortune 500 organizations across the world, my exemplary slides with a lot of information created relevance quite easily. I realized, organizations really need to understand that multitasking is a myth proven by neuroscience. Its proven, audience cannot comprehend text on the slide and listening speaker’s message simultaneously. I have witnessed senior leaders feeling embarrassed when all the audience start reading overwhelmed information on the slides ignoring leader’s presence on stage. This experience is quite painful for both audience and presenters. Apple has a tradition to set full backdrop with black color and visuals placement make it easier for Audience to comprehend information within 3 seconds. Instead of slides with a lot of data, we should create “billboard slides”. Each slide should have 3 seconds life only

Comparisons enhance long term memory

Comparisons also enhance memory; this idea was also used powerfully where most of the product improvements were compared either with previous version or the competitor products. Additionally, animations were used to describe the improvement and difference as well. Contrast is a catalyst to improve content retention in audience’s brain.

3) Presenters’ Delivery on Stage

Tim Cook demonstrated Artificial Passion

Tim’s presence on stage proves that, stage presence is more than a skill and it is a moment which is achieved when all parts of the communication touch points including contents, body language and passion are synchronized. This was purely missing in Cook’s presence on stage. He was pushing the words to create energy but his body language was not supporting his content during most parts of the conference. Although other presenters including John & Angela did well from connection and presence perspective (contact us at [email protected], if you need detailed analysis of all presenters from 30th October event)

Tim Cook continuously looking towards Confidence Monitor

Another painful act by Tim, he continuously looked down to see confidence monitor, compromising his credibility by proving inability to rehearsed well, demonstrating disrespect to the Audience. This was definitely painful for the audience because instead of developing continuous eye contact, he was looking down and referring the monitor to talk further. It was quite noticeable, since all other presenters were well rehearsed and engaged smoothly with the audience.

Visuals Aids to Presenter vs Voice Overs..Interesting Idea

Slides presented using different tools such as PowerPoint, Key note or Prezi are considered as Visual Aids for the presenters, while presenter is considered as focal point to cascade the message “a messenger”. During the Apple events, there are certain topics where visuals were the core focus & presenters looked like distractions. Apple should seriously consider using “voice over” at most of the places where they are unveiling the technology. Same learning could be considered by the leaders & organizations where certain technical launches could enhance the impact by using voice overs so that audience can fully focus on the content, triggering desired actions.

Visual Storytelling

As a reader to this article, if you ask me to recommend key take away for you, it will be “visual storytelling”. Steve jobs said, “The most successful people in the world are storytellers”. Many leaders across the world ask me about the right formula for creating business stories. The answer is quite simple, check the Apple Event (https://bit.ly/2CSahcK), video from 20.30 to 21.15 (quarter to a minute only) and you would learn a memorable visual story mantra, where Laura has unveiled the introduction of “100% recycled aluminum”. The story could be for one minute only, but it can have a great impact on the audience. If you are interested to learn our analysis on timeline-based story, do read my previous article (https://bit.ly/2FmpqG4)

Bringing it Altogether

As a summary to the whole event designed by Apple, I believe, conference flow can be improved by splitting the product launches in distinct categories with empty periods to give audience enough time to comprehend and process the information. Additionally, this can be managed easily by including songs or some instrumental music and create smaller breaks. Organizations & presenters must focus on making audience comfortable as a top priority while designing the conference flow. Imagine if we take a lot of gifts to someone but we enter the house without knocking the door. What would be the host reaction? They will not appreciate the gifts because we did not care about their comfort. I reinforce on it because, this is our instinctive mind’s craving and this part of the mind process 95% of our actions.

Due to information overload and considering multi-tasking as a myth, we must design the slides with 3 seconds processing time (like billboards) so that audience does not get lost in the slides ignoring what presenter is sharing on the stage. Both big corporations and small businesses should adopt this methodology to improve audience engagement.

Steve Jobs factor was missing a lot where he used to win Emotional, Instinctive & Logical mind successful using rhetoric devices. Apple is staggering towards “T” of Technology rather than “A” of the Audience engagement (this feedback is purely about the conference not to actual Apple products). They are not able to reproduce the rehearsal & passion of Steve Jobs. Additionally, there were only few stories used and a lot of data driven conference was planned which cannot produce successful conference and can compromise on desired actions.

AIM Consulting is focusing purely on generating Actions through Inspirational & Memorable Presence. Our breakthrough framework provides end to end formula to organizations and leaders in business development. Our expertise in business conferences architect, executive presence coaching & charismatic presence workshops are based on our intensive research and global experience with fortune 500 companies.

If you want result-oriented conference and audience engagement, you can contact us, being pioneer of this concept and we will be delighted to give demo of our products and idea. For more information, please visit (www.aimconsulting.co) or contact [email protected].