Stage directions

The term ‘Death by PowerPoint’ has become the popular cri de coeur of people anxious to highlight the problem that too many market research presentations are frankly rubbish. However, it seems the message is beginning to get through, as evidenced by the range of innovations at this year’s Research Annual Conference. In order to improve something, we need more than just an intention to change, we need to know what we mean by a great presentation.

Great presentations
Having made the decision to improve our presentations we are faced with a conflicting array of advice. Visual explanation expert Edward Tufte describes PowerPoint as “evil” (and was the first to coin the phrase ‘Death by PowerPoint”). Silicon Valley’s Guy Kawasaki says we should use 10 slides, limit the presentations to 20 minutes, and use a minimum font size of 30 point. Marketing guru Seth Godin produced five rules, the first of which is “No more than six words on a slide. EVER.” Author of PresentationZen Garr Reynolds (of PresentationZen) talks about the benefit of putting “25-30 hours or more of planning and designing the message, and the media”.

While there is much we can and should learn from these leaders in the field of great presentations, it is clear that their field is not market research. Most research presentations are constrained by tight budgets, short turnarounds and a need to convey complicated and sometimes detailed information. So how do we transfer the ideas from other disciplines to our domain, in order to define and create great presentations?

Researching research presentations
Being a market researcher, as well as a presenting nerd, my response to the question “What is a great market research presentation?” was to conduct research. The core element of the research was a survey amongst 254 market researchers from 42 countries.

Key Messages
The key messages from the research are:

• The focus of any presentation should be the audience. However, audiences report that presenters often seem to think the presenter or the data are the focus.
• Since audiences and situations differ, there is no single best way of presenting. Requests from audiences are often contradictory, reminding us that you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
• Audiences expect presenters to be confident, capable, and rehearsed. There is little tolerance these days for a presenter who turns up and simply delivers the content in a clear but unengaged way.
• Conference presentations and research debriefs are different and have different requirements. Conference presentations can be of general interest, but debriefs have to answer specific business needs and should provide useful guidance for decision makers.
• Audiences want presentations to be shorter and to provide deeper insight, while at the same time being enjoyable.
• Themes that have been talked about for the last few years such as storytelling, are important but so are issues such as confidence, ability and a willingness to put forward an argument, not simply a report.

In order to create great presentations we need to listen to these messages from the recipients of our work.

Great conference presenters
In order to investigate great conference presentations, the research asked participants to think about people who give great presentations, and then to discuss what made those presentations so good. In total 114 presenters were mentioned, but only ten were mentioned twice or more.

These ten, presented in no particular order, were

I have seen most of these people present and I would certainly agree that they are good presenters, and well worth making the effort to see.

The ten key characteristics
The research produced 246 descriptions of what makes a great presentation. These descriptions have been analysed and produced ten key characteristics of great conference presentations.

1. Content. It does not matter how clever you are, you still have to have something interesting to say. If people are going to give the speaker 20-25 minutes of their life, they want more than entertainment, they want to hear something useful, something they did not know before.
2. Voice. The presenter needs to actively use their voice. One comment in particular highlights the extent to which voice is central to the process, “It’s partly his voice – he never speaks too quickly, and his tone is modulated and smooth without feeling put on - but it’s more that you feel that he’s speaking to you personally, not just reciting a bunch of jargon from a PowerPoint slide.” In a presentation the best way to emphasise a point is not to use caps, not to use bold, not to underline, but to use the presenter’s voice.
3. Audience. The focus of the presentation has to be the audience, not the data and not the presenter. Key comments include “their understanding of their audience”, “being interactive with their audience”, and “engage the audience (not one-way traffic)”. Like a considerate lover, we need to concentrate on “How was it for you?”
4. Story. For the last few years everybody who is anybody has been saying that storytelling is the key to better presentations, and there is clearly a lot of support for this view. Attendees are looking for narrative themes, analogies and anecdotes. They don’t want to see data, they want to hear what the data means and what its implications are.
5. Style. One of the hardest concepts to isolate is style. People know they want style, but they vary in what they mean and how they describe it. For example “Style, speaking to the audience, PAUSING for emphasis, no notes, entertaining with some levity, self deprecation” and “Relaxed and informal style, but also confident, upbeat, lively”. The variation in the descriptions of what ‘style’ means makes it harder to define it. However, it is clear that style is not something that just happens, it is the presence of a personalised approach, something which goes beyond just competence, something which adds that others would not have added.
6. Ability. The word ability occurs frequently in the responses, linked to a variety of topics. Presenters need to realise that it is not enough to make an effort, presenters need to develop the skills to be able to deliver against these standards.
7. Argument. The use of the words argue and argument, for example “The way he or she argues the content” and “Argument, passion, and slides” show that people are looking for presenters to be more than a neutral reporter, they are looking for a case to be put forward with coherence and passion.
8. Confidence. Confidence is to some extent related to ability, but it also expresses the way that ability is used in the communication process. For example: “Confidence, thorough knowledge of what they are going to present, they don’t just read out slides, they summarise well and point out things which are not obvious from slides”. If the audience has confidence in the presenter, then he or she does not need to hear about every step, enabling the focus to be on the findings and not the process.
9. Engaging. Audiences want to be actively engaged. This is one of the biggest changes that has happened over the last 30 years. It is almost as if audiences are suffering attention deficit syndrome. If presenters do not engage audiences the message will not be heard, and will be of little value.
10. Humour. Many responses talked about humour. Audiences aren’t looking for non-stop laughs, but they are looking for humour to be used as part of the audience-focused engagement process.

Client debriefs
The 32 clients in the survey who received debriefs were also asked to use the same approach to define the characteristics of great debriefs. The assumption is that there are important differences between client debriefs and conference presentations, and this is borne out by the data. Although the ten points mentioned above, in the conference presenting section, are important, their focus shifts when dealing with business objectives.

Three key points dominate the needs that were articulated for client debriefs:

• Business understanding. Presenters must do their homework; they need to know about the market and know about the client. They need to understand relevant factors such as legislation, production factors and distribution logistics. They need to produce their findings in the context of business outcomes.
• Analysis. The presentation should express the results of analysis, not simply describe the process or the data.
• Structure. The interest in storytelling that we saw in the context of conference presentations morphs into structure in the more serious context of the debrief. The common thread between storytelling and structure is narrative theme.

Some clients want the presenter to make specific business recommendations. But, other clients want to be given the analysis, in the context of the presenter’s business understanding, in a clear and coherent way, so that they can make the business decisions, in the light of the research.

This last point emphasises two things:

There is no single best approach.

A presenter needs to know whether the focus of the debrief should be the analysis or the recommendations.

How to improve?
The analysis looked at the best way to get from where the market research industry is at the moment to where it needs to be. The key thing that presenters should be aware of is that the competition is getting better. The competitive set in this sense comprises agencies and individuals who are making a difference, important figures from other industries and the media.

The following four comments illustrate what is being called for and how far the industry has to go:

“Value to the client/audience should be the focus of the presentation.”

“Some agency debriefs are still a summation of everything they captured in a quant survey.”

“Move away from mere reportage to telling a story. From findings to learnings.”

“Moving away from being scripted to being rehearsed.”

The last point is a key reminder that every presentation is a performance. There are three levels that a presenter can perform at:

• Make it up as they go along, looking at the screen and saying what they think it means.
• Creating a script for the presentation, but leaving most of the script on the screen.
• Rehearsing the presentation to create a better piece of communication.

Too many presenters are operating at the first of these levels. Many presenters think they are doing a great job, but are only reaching the second level. It is the third level that we need to aspire to, and at present just a few are reaching it.

Steps to improvement
There are many ways for presenters to improve their presentations and this section addresses just a few of them.

Attend courses, read books, watch videos and learn more about the current theory of presenting. Note, much of what makes a great presentation now is different from what made a great presentation 30 years ago. Audiences are different and the competitive set is different. Think about how today’s TV news reporting differs from the lengthy and deferential reports of 40-50 years ago.

Make a point of asking your clients to say who they think presents well and then find out what they are doing.

Keep up to date with what the vanguard are doing and saying. People such as Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, and Garr Reynolds. Watch the TED videos, seek out the highest rated ones and evaluate why they are so highly rated. In particular watch the ones involving Hans Rosling.

Practise and rehearse, but don’t confuse the two. Practice is how you develop the skills for presenting. Rehearsing is how you improve a specific presentation.

Seek feedback from people who attend your presentations, including colleagues. Ask them to tell you something you should change, and something you should not change. Most people are willing to be honest with you if you adopt this simple one positive and one negative model.