Your deck can begin with a company origin story and end with a high-level overview of your service or product offerings. It can even start by addressing problems, followed by an introduction to your company’s superior solutions. Or vice versa. A plethora of iterations of the presentation narrative approach exist. But Ethos3 champions one standard content pitch in particular. Our bread and butter format looks like this:
1. Opening Story
2. Introduction of the Main Points
3. Details of Each Main Point
4. Review of the Main Points
5. Closing Story
6. Call to Action
It may seem as though we concocted this format out of thin air. The reality though is that this narrative approach is highly intentional and scientifically-rooted. Here’s an explanation of why we structure a majority of our client presentations the way that we do:
What We Remember
Our brains automatically categorize memories in a variety of ways – the most important of which is short-term versus long-term. The primary mode of transportation a short-term memory takes to becoming a long-term memory is reinforcement. When a presenter introduces his or her main points at the beginning of a presentation and concludes with a review of those same main points, the main messages are constantly being reinforced into their minds through different methods. The delivery of distracting information, in this case, only serves to dismantle an audience member’s memory. If you remove the distracting information and enhance the focus of your content, an individual’s hippocampus will begin the process of taking the working memory of your agenda slide and transferring it to long-term memory.
How We Learn
This goes way beyond the classic conversation of the various learning styles of people. In an experiment testing the structure of presentation content and its impact on how well subjects learned the material, a certain slide format prevailed. According to Joanna K. Garner and Michael P. Alley, a slide that includes an assertion first, followed by an explanation of evidence garners the best results from students and audience members. Study participants wrote more knowledgeably about the presentation topic, recalled more of the material, and understood more of the concepts correctly. The lesson here? Make your presentation assertions at the beginning of your presentation and outline your reasoning after through the body of your slide deck. You’ll only provide benefits for yourself and your audience members.
When We Act
The conclusion of a presentation provides the greatest opportunity for presenters to tie up their message and convert their listeners and viewers to leads, customers, or clients. A presentation audience is much more likely to follow through on any call to action a presenter gives if they have a reason to do the activity. When a call to action uses the word “because,” presenters see a 94% increase in the number of individuals who complete the desired action. Why? Because they are answering the most crucial of audience questions – What is in it for me? If you don’t deliver that information, don’t expect to get much follow through on your request. In this era, people don’t have gobs of time to do anything and everything they want to do. So if you want them to put your call to action at the top of their priority list, it has to be about much more than making the ask. Crafting an emotional appeal will ignite the corresponding regions of the brain – like the amygdala – and will make the task seem more urgent to your audience.
To find out more about the Ethos3 narrative and design approach, check out the resources below!
Get Inspired! How We Made Our Core Values Memorable Through Design
Fight For Your Right to Simplify: How We Edit Down Presentations
The Dannon Company Grows Business by 8% with Redesigned Deck
