Building Great Presentations

What I’m going to cover
The State of Presentations
Crafting the Story
How Do You Make It Look Good?
The Art of the Delivery

ONT L
FR
Mattan Griffel

A
E
TH

BS
Founder & CEO, The Front Labs
Partner, Grow/Hack

I run the world’s first growth hacking agency based
out of New York City and have helped launch
dozens of different products. I've also spoken at
various industry events – including at Bloomberg,
Internet Week, and Social Media Week – and have
been featured in BusinessWeek, Mashable and The
Next Web.

This material is adapted from Garr Reynolds,
Chip & Dan Heath, Kevin Allison, and others, as
well as from my own experience

Have you ever sat through a
really shitty presentation?

Have you ever sat through a
really shitty presentation?

(it’s a rhetorical question)

Who the hell likes to digest content this way?

• There’s way too much text. It’s pretty easy to lose track of
where you are. Are you still even listening to the speaker?
• The audience has to do too much work. What is the point
of this slide? What am I supposed to take away from it?
• The font, colors and images are crazy ugly. Seriously, if
you’re trying to visually represent something, at least put
some thought into how it’s going to look.
• This could be the most interesting content in the world,
and it would still be boring. A bad presentation can kill any
topic.

“ Countless innovations fail because
their champions use PowerPoint
the way Microsoft wants them to,
instead of the right way.

”
– Seth Godin

Seth’s 4 rules for slides:
1) Make slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them
2) Don’t use cheesy images
3) No dissolves, spins or other transitions
4) Create a written document to leave behind

I like Seth’s approach

but I don’t think it’s
practical

Teach Yourself to Code.
How to

Growth Hacking
LEAN MARKETING FOR STARTUPS

When they sold to Microsoft 1.5 years
after launch, Hotmail had 12 million users

“ Put ‘PS: I love you. Get your
free e-mail at Hotmail’ at the
bottom of each e-mail.
A lot of you just have

an idea Web applications are applications

” July September November January March May July September November
accessed over the internet

Viral growth
This is your rails command center
Do you pivot?
Do you keep releasing new features?
Landing page optimization
Product management

What do you do? SEO
Analytics
Part 3:
Onboarding How I Taught Myself
Terminal TextMate
Do you experiment with other Email marketing
UX
to Code in One Month
marketing channels?
Do you try to target a different
PR Behavioral economics
demographic? Google Chrome

My presentations have been shared over
150,000 times

The first step is to figure out
your take-away

Sure, you can want people
to just know more

to just know more
and that’s okay

to just know more
and that’s okay
(but it’s also shallow and boring)

You want people to act
act!

ASK YOURSELF:
Who is your audience?

ASK YOURSELF:
Why are they there?

ASK YOURSELF:
What do they care about?

ASK YOURSELF:
How can I speak to them?

First slide ??? ??? Last slide

Stories have 5 Beats

1)
Set-up

Establishes
the Who &
What


1) 2)
Set-up Inciting
Incident

Establishes A journey
the Who & begins
What


1) 2) 3)
Set-up Inciting Rising
Incident Action

Establishes A journey Stakes
the Who & begins continue to
What increase


1) 2) 3) 4)
Set-up Inciting Rising Main
Incident Action Event

Establishes A journey Stakes A turning
the Who & begins continue to point
What increase occurs


1) 2) 3) 4) 5)
Set-up Inciting Rising Main Resolution
Incident Action Event

Establishes A journey Stakes A turning Explains
the Who & begins continue to point what it all
What increase occurs means

problem
to a
building up
Start by

Write
your o
• One utline
:
• Line
• At
•A
• Time

Each line builds on the
previous one

And ultimately leads to your

big take-away

Presentations are about
flow

And anything not essential
should be removed

You can use paper, whiteboards
or stickies for storyboarding

I like to storyboard in Keynote

So how do you make it
look good?

1
No more than idea per slide

Slides from Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen

Also please take your logo off every slide

Also please take your logo off every slide

(are you really afraid
people will forget?)

“ If you want people to understand better, then
get that stuff off the screen... it is simply
making it more difficult for people to

”
understand what you are saying.

– Tom Grimes, Kansas State Journalism Professor

What simple visual element
would complement each idea?

Where can you get good
images?

Buy (good) stock
photography

iStockPhoto (www.istockphoto.com)
Shutter Stock (www.shutterstock.com)

Find images online

Google Images (images.google.com)
Flickr Creative Commons (www.flickr.com/creativecommons)

(be careful of copyright issues)

Give it room to breathe

(use plenty of empty space)

Consistency is
REALLY
important

Make sure you always use the
same font

And same colors

Asymmetry is more
interesting

Rule of thirds

(just do it.)

And try to line everything up
Either on the sides

Or in the middle

Avoid clip art & bad stock images

Choose a good font like Serifa
like Futura
like Rockwell
like Avenir
like PF Din

I like widescreen (you get way
resolution slides more room)

4:3 (default)
16:9

Black on white is easier to read

Black on white is easier to read

(Unless you’re in the dark)

Pick a color scheme:
background color
main text
emphasis text
complement text (optional)

Keep an archive of good
presentations to inspire you

100SOME
1
“
Audiences everywhere are tough.
They don’t have time to be bored!
or brow beaten by orthodox, !
old-fashioned advertising.!
!
We need to stop interrupting !

E
what people are interested in !

W
& be what people are

A
!
INBOUND ! interested in.”
VS. !
OUTBOUND ! CRAIG DAVIS

MARKETING!
CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, WORLDWIDE

MARKETING!
J. WALTER THOMPSON (WORLD’S 4TH LARGEST AD AGENCY)

STATS!

4

CHARTS ! One third of US consumers !
& GRAPHS! spend >3 hours online every day.
46%
WARNING: SAFETY GOGGLES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
of daily
180+ MINUTES
35%
searches
are for
60-79 MINUTES
33%
info on
products
1-59 MINUTES
14%
or
0 MINUTES
19%
services.

7
SOURCE: THE MEDIA AUDIT, OCTOBER 2010 SOURCE: SRI, OCTOBER 2010
29

!"#$%&'('% !"#$%&'('%

)*+,-%./0/1+,2%+,345-*6%+5% )*+%,-.%/0.1%2/344%,435.%36%!"##7%
7*4.89+,0%

:/55%;489+7/-+<,5%-/*02-23%/-%
4,2347/-23=%9<>2*%+,7<.2%/,3%<932*%
!"#$%&'($)*+,#-!$ ;<;49/-+<,5%2?+5-%

!"#$%%"&'()*+,"--&."/*+0*1')2*3"4"&+(516'()127"8"9#" !"#$%%"&'()*+,"--&."/*+0*1')2*3"4"&+(516'()127"8"99"

!"#$%&'('%
<@AB&CDED& !"#$%&'(&
!"##% %!"#$%)*+&,%-./0123.456%%#"7%89:5.31-;%4<%20;=.41/%#"%% .+*)/0**&
!"#$%&'(&)*&"+,&"-&.+*)/0**&&
,9>?;3%@.A9-B;*;9-;0C%24D;0<1??E%-./0123.=;6%D0;9F/%G9059:;% 1$.%0&23
1$.%0&234*53$,0%%),0&'(567'(&
H.I97BHJ.3;%K29G;%./%1>.L1.341/%MM%.823%<40%39>?;3%-./0123.45% 3$,0%%),0'
8+9#:$*0&89";+#,)"/&$**0,*&
I;3;0;-%>049->95-%20.G.5:%.5%;<<;G3%
1"9#$*,:
!"#$%%"&'()*+,"--&."/*+0*1')2*3"4"&+(516'()127"8"9:"
<=&:"+9&%"#$%&#$.%0>&67'(&/0?*&#:$//0%& ')90=$7
,;?G4BH.0;?;//BN9>?;%-;93J%893GJ%<40%J48;6%%DJ;5%G482?;3;%
OPQAR%QA,OR%Q53;05;3% >+7#<$*0

,D.33;0%./%ST)+%@95-%4D5;-%>E%U9G;>44FC%
$**0,*?&<
%"#$%&/0C
%
&
S(%G4820;//.45%3;GJ54?4:E%9-=95G;/%MM%%=.-;4%1>.L1.341/%
&
!"#$%%"&'()*+,"--&."/*+0*1')2*3"4"&+(516'()127"8"9$" D&AEFF&10/,7":&!!1G&H7">7)0,$7I&J&1"/-)50/,)$%&K&LM& &

1 Your Idea
Starting with your branded message...

Advertising
launch ⋅ accelerate ⋅ measure

Get more ROI with Viral Lift
BuzzFeed consistently delivers viral distribution even for advertising content.
Make it Viral
with BuzzFeed
For every 100,000 clicks generated to our advertisers’ content through paid
media, they saw an average of 60,000 “free clicks” generated by sharing
activity.

salesteam@buzzfeed.com

THE

FRIENDSHIP
HOW TO BUILD BRAND ADVOCACY
IN A CONSUMER-DRIVEN WORLD

YES Thank you
But the real problem...

MODEL
Copyright © 2007 22squared

Here’s how we size up advocacy:
% of brand’s customers who are...

... we must create

relationships
SHAREHOLDER
EVANGELIST
Copyright © 2007 22squared
RECOMMENDER

worth talking about.
REPEAT SATISFIED
ADVOCATES BUYERS CRITICS

MARGINAL
CUSTOMER
DISSATISFIED
CUSTOMER ACTIVELY
AGAINST

Copyright © 2007 22squared Copyright © 2007 22squared

Start by speaking with
your audience

Presentation Zen
by Garr Reynolds

Read
Made to Stick
by Chip & Dan Heath

Thank you.

Connect with me at
www.mattangriffel.com
Mattan Griffel
mattangriffel@gmail.com
@mattangriffel

Building Great Presentations

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Building Great Presentations

Similar to Building Great Presentations (20)

More from Mattan Griffel

More from Mattan Griffel (13)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Building Great Presentations