In an industry as detail-oriented and spreadsheet-heavy as real estate, it might seem there’s no avoiding PowerPoint. But John James, a broker out of Steamboat Springs, has broken the mold by using Haiku Deck to present to potential clients. John’s novel approach wowed his audience, landing him a $1.4 millionlisting. The story,covered by Chris Smith on InmanNext, has gotten big-time buzz, and we’ve seen realtors around the globe taking note. We reached out to John to hear firsthand how he made the switch to win the pitch.
Q&A with John James
Haiku Deck: Why did you decide to try Haiku Deck for your business?
John: I was trying to do a comparative market analysis provided by my MLS site. I was getting annoyed at how much work it was and how clunky it looked. Also, the presentation didn’t feel like mine. Finally, I said “Screw it!” and pulled up Haiku Deck on my iPad. I had only briefly toyed around with it up to that point. It took me minutes to put together on Haiku Deck what I had tried to do for hours on Powerpoint.
I also have to thank Chris Smith of InmanNext and Robert Scoble of RackSpace, who both had great things to say about the app and influenced my decision to download. {See Robert Scoble’s video review of Haiku Deck here.}
Haiku Deck: And how did it turn out?
John: My biggest takeaway on Haiku Deck is how its visual impact transformed my presentation. The key for me was having a limited amount of words per slide, which helped me focus my presentation. The images the app pulled up, along with my own photos, made dry market statistics come to life. It ended up being exactly the way I wanted it to be.
“The information you presented was so much easier to understand than any of the others. That’s why we went with you.”
John, high-five on your Haiku Deck coup! This also leaves us wondering…what other kinds of pitches are ripe for transformation with Haiku Deck? We’d love to hear your ideas (and your success stories) in the comments!
Over the past few weeks we’ve enjoyed collaborating with Nolan Haims, VP and Presentation Director at Edelman and author of the excellent blog Present Your Story, a fantastic resource for presentation inspiration and best practices. Nolan has been keeping us on our toes to make sure we’re not unleashing the wrong kind of zen presentation style into the world. We are grateful.
Q&A with Nolan Haims
Haiku Deck: What’s your presentation design philosophy in a nutshell? (Or, for super bonus extra credit, in a haiku?)
Nolan:
Design content
Not just frames
Around that content
[Haiku Deck note: This is technically more of a lune. But if we’ve learned anything from Nolan, it’s that there’s always a way to further simplify. Why have 17 syllables when 12 will suffice?]
Back to Nolan: The majority of presentation design continues to be focused on templates and unintegrated elements like clipart and random rectangles of imagery thrown on slides. Presentation design is too often thought of as template design, but a heavily designed template is just a frame around your actual message. I would love to see more people spend their energies and talents laying out and designing content, focusing on information design and a visual communication of the actual messages on a slide by slide basis.
Haiku Deck: What most makes you cringe in a poorly designed presentation?
Nolan: Too much content in on-screen presentations. Simply stated: the more that is on your slide, the less your audience will absorb—or even read in the first place. Studies have shown that students learn more when presented with less. It should be the same for presenters’ audiences. This means ruthless editing and often separate, more detailed print documents. Both of these things take time, which is why I think most people simply avoid them.
But, know when your presentation is actually a print document. There’s nothing wrong with creating a detailed textual document using PowerPoint—just know the difference between that and an on-screen presentation.
Haiku Deck: It’s not every presentation expert that recommends making your presentation like a Twinkie. Could you elaborate on that a bit?
Nolan: Oh, the Twinkie bit! When I train and coach, I tell people that they should have only two goals when creating presentations: 1) clarity and 2) stickiness. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you or your message is, if an audience doesn’t clearly understand your message and then remember it, your efforts are all for naught.
Much of presentation design is rightfully focused on the clarity part, but when it comes to stickiness, the most effective way to get your audience to remember your messages is to wrap them in stories. Charts, graphs, text, and pictures don’t last. Stories can live forever.
So, think of an idea as a Twinkie’s filling: on its own, it might be delicious, but it’s hard to digest, and it won’t last. But wrap that idea in a delicious cake wrapper—a story—and it will last forever. Just like a Twinkie…
A fantastic book on the stickiness of stories is Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick.
Haiku Deck: What’s the best presentation you’ve ever seen, and what did you love about it?
Nolan: I love Don Draper’s Kodak Carousel pitch from Season 1 of Mad Men. He makes use of many techniques that business presenters are hesitant to employ, but would be smart to incorporate:
Brevity: The pitch lasts just a few minutes.
Emotion: A good presentation should be a healthy mix of the analytical and emotional. While Don’s almost 100% emotional presentation style is probably too much for most non-fictional presenters, I think most presentations would be aided by more emotion.
The Personal: Every picture is a personal one of Don’s family—no stock handshakes, no guys climbing mountains; as with the emotional, most presentations would benefit from more personal touches.
Stories: Don tells a personal, visual story of his own life; it not only leaves his audience literally speechless, but will no doubt be remembered for years—only a story can do that.
Limited Text: “Kodak Introduces Carousel” is the only text on screen…
Haiku Deck: What advice do you have for Haiku Deck users who want to create strong presentations?
Nolan: Well, you could create a great Don Draper-like presentation with it, for sure. I think that Haiku Deck can be a good tool for creating a highly distilled presentation and in many ways keeping the focus on the presenter rather than the slides. Slides should always just be the backup singers—the presenter should be main attraction. But avoid the temptation of randomness and incessant metaphor in choosing imagery. If you’re selling widgets, but all your audience remembers are pictures of lemonade stands, handshakes and relay races (“teamwork!”), you haven’t created anything very sticky. Consider literal imagery when possible: How about a picture of your widget’s manufacturing process instead of one of a Swiss watchmaker?
More Presentation Inspiration
For more presentation inspiration, be sure to take a spin through our Presentation Pointers Pinterest board and our Featured and Popular Galleries, which highlight new awesome examples every week. You can also access the Gallery any time, right from the app.
Last week we noticed a Twitter comment from Joby Blume, managing consultant at Bright Carbon, that Haiku Deck could encourage the selection of “near random” imagery that might ultimately weaken presentations. We invited him to elaborate on the topic in this guest post, and he graciously shared his expertise and insights.
Haiku Deck: What’s your philosophy on presentation design, in a nutshell?
Joby: Well, first of all it’s important to note that a presentation is more than just the slides – a presentation also needs a presenter. People seem to forget this basic point – slides can be put on SlideShare, or emailed – but without narration that’s not the whole presentation, it’s just the slides. The best way to design slides for SlideShare isn’t the same as the best way to create slides to actually use in a presentation.
A presentation needs to make the most of the interplay between slides and presenter. If the slides are self-explanatory, then the presenter gets ignored while the audience just read for themselves. If the slides aren’t relevant or helpful, then the presenter ends up giving a speech, not a presentation. There needs to be a balance – slides should help audiences to understand what’s being said, without making the presenter unnecessary.
Haiku Deck: What most makes you cringe in a poorly designed presentation?
Joby: There are levels of poor presentation design. Most slides are awful – full of text, often in font sizes that can’t even be seen by the audience. That’s the bottom level of awful. People who just never even thought about what they are doing too much, and used PowerPoint to type – just because they can.
Not like this. (Creative Commons licensed image by Oran Viriyincy)
Quite a lot of people are starting to understand that bullet-points don’t work, and are moving away from text-heavy slides. But what people do instead doesn’t always work either. It isn’t enough to stop using bullet points and assume that every slide you create will be awesome.
I saw a slide yesterday with six separate diagrams on. It looked professional in the sense that I think a graphic designer had created it, but they hadn’t thought about the unique medium of presentations. I think the logic of cramming things together was to try to keep the number of slides down, but it’s better to have more slides and present them faster. Where was the audience meant to look when shown six diagrams at once? The slide was un-presentable, even though it wasn’t text heavy at all. Slides don’t just need images – they need the right images.
Haiku Deck:You mentioned that the increasingly popular “zen” presentation style can lead to some pitfalls. Could you elaborate on that a bit?
Joby: When Steve Jobs stood up to launch the iPhone or iPad, he could show beautiful images of the products behind him on stage. These product shots were relevant – they were photos of what he was selling. And of course Steve jobs didn’t need a lot of support from his slides – he would have been confident standing up on stage and giving a speech anyway.
For the rest of us, things aren’t as simple as that. We can’t show product shots if we aren’t talking about products. We might not feel comfortable giving a speech. We sometimes need our slides to help us get the point across, but we can’t do that if we put up a beautiful picture of a snow-capped mountain when we are talking about complex derivatives. It’s the manatee problem – where slides look like they have been created almost at random with pretty photos and buzzwords that are too far removed from the actual message.
Ooo, pretty. (Creative Commons licensed image by JessieHarrell)
Joby: If you are giving a zen style presentation, using Haiku Deck or “the hard way,” ask yourself two questions:
Does this image actually help the audience to understand what I’m saying?
Would this image need to change if I was saying the exact opposite of what I’m trying to say?
If the answer to either question is “no,” then think about finding a more relevant image. Your slides need to be more than decoration. Don’t be scared to find or make some images of your own – create a chart, or sketch a diagram. Sometimes that’s the best way to explain your message. You can still use your own images in Haiku Deck – don’t worry!
Haiku Deck: What’s the best presentation you’ve ever seen, and what did you love about it?
Joby: For a conference-style presentation (on stage, with a large audience), perhaps Dick Hardt’s Identity 2.0 talk:
The slides aren’t beautiful, but they support the message, and presenter and slides work in perfect harmony. There’s an incredible number of slides – but they only show for a second or two each. It works.
The best presentation I’ve seen to a small group was really more like a visual conversation, with a lot of interactivity and back-and-forth. Seeing my colleague Richard having a visual sales conversation while using an iPad is pretty awesome.
We believe everyone has great ideas and fascinating stories itching to get out. We also believe that crafting ideas and releasing them into the wild should be a joyful exercise of creativity. In the age of smartphones, tablets, and web connectivity, sharing thoughts is easier than ever, but getting people to listen? That’s another challenge completely. We also believe that listeners deserve to be captivated and inspired, not filled with despair at the sight of another dull presentation.
This is why we set out to create Haiku Deck, a simple way to instantly unleash your ideas through beautiful decks that are as visually stunning as they are easy to create. Haiku Deck’s image search engine spurs your creativity by providing a beautiful photographic backdrop to accompany your written words. We suggest related terms to help you find the perfect image and we even let you use your own photos if that’s what you want. Haiku Deck also includes easy-to-use design filters, helping you pick the perfect look for your deck, without requiring any design skills. Our goal is to make you look your best, every time you share.
Lastly, we know that inspiration can strike any time. Wherever you feel like crafting a Haiku Deck, just pull out your iPad. And whenever you have an audience–whether it’s on the bus, at a cafe, in a conference room, in an elevator, or on a stage, your Haiku Deck is there for you.
Most presentation tools aim to pack in as many features as possible with complicated menus, toolbars, and a range of capabilities to address every possible use case. Haiku Deck is intentionally simplified. We’ve focused on making it fast and easy to create the kind of decks you share every day. Here are a few ways you can use it to set your story free. We can’t wait for you to try Haiku Deck and send us your feedback at founders@haikudeck.com.
