Jon DiPietro is Domesticating IT

Back in July, I read an article about an ad agency who wrote a blog post criticizing Zappos over their review process for proposals after theirs didn’t make the final cut. At first blush, this sounds like a story of sour grapes but in reality, it’s much worse. The crux of the argument was that only 5 of the agency’s 25 page proposal were ever reviewed by Zappos, which in their mind was unfair and disrespectful. But as far as I’m concerned, if you’re an ad agency who can’t hook your reader in the first five pages then you’re not very good at your job. So how can this be a lesson for us to more effective communicators?

#1 Own it

The most stunning aspect of this story to me was the shifting of blame from the agency’s failure to deliver a compelling message to the vendor’s laziness. The burden of communication falls on the author. Period. Whether you are crafting a proposal, writing an email, authoring a blog post or designing a presentation, you must take responsibility for crafting a message in such a way that it will engage the reader. Our information-overloaded society leaves precious little time for things that don’t add value. Be respectful of the reader and recognize that if only 20% of your proposal is read, then “It’s not you, it’s me.”

#2 Use catchy titles and subject lines

This may sound obvious but think for a moment about how much thought you really put into the subject line of an email or the title of a presentation. The first step in crafting an effective title or subject is to tell people what they will get out from reading your content. For example, instead of titling your proposal “New Conveyor System Proposal,” try something like “Improving Efficiency and Capacity With a New Conveying Approach.” The first title is pretty typical, but automatically puts your message at a disadvantage by sounding pedestrian at best and a little desperate at worst. The second title makes a promise right out of the gate and sets an expectation that the reader will have something to gain from reading the proposal.

The second step is to use strong, concise words. Try to use words that personalize subject matter, like “you” and “your.” Also think about trying to strike an emotional chord. These can include anger, sympathy, fear, etc… Words like “tips” and “hacks” are examples of words that are emotionally enticing by creating intrigue. Finally, (when applicable) consider the search engine implications of your titles by using keywords “early and often.” This means choosing relevant words that are used as search terms and placing them as early as possible in your title. Then, use them often in your post to reinforce the relevance of the keywords. Just keep in mind that this should not be done at the expense of the humans reading the title and content; keep it readable.

I know my idea is in there somewhere!

#3 Don’t bury the lead

I’ve read a number of articles that talk about the journalistic tactic of not burying the lead, which means make sure that the most interesting and/or important idea in an article appears early and isn’t “buried” within the story. However, one of the best I’ve read comes from Copyblogger and is titled “What a Bestselling Author Can Teach You About Hooking Your Readers.” This article describes Steven Pressfield’s the lesson of using an “inciting incident,” which he had learned from screenwriter Robert McKee.

Pressfield is quoted as follows:

McKee has given me (and thousands of others) so many valuable lessons, it’d be hard to pick one out, but here it is:

The ‘inciting incident.’ I had never heard this term or focused on this concept before taking his Story Structure class. I did it in my writing, but only on instinct; I had no idea what I was doing. Having that idea crystallized helped me tremendously.

I now ALWAYS ask myself, even in short blog posts, What is the inciting incident? What event or moment gets this story rolling? It’s been a huge help.

If you go back and read the first paragraph of this post, you can see that I used this technique by relating a short story and immediately presenting the central plot. If you’re still reading, I guess it worked!

Again, many of the examples and links I’ve provided address blogs, but the principles apply equally to any other content you’re generating – including (and perhaps especially) emails.

#4 Make it sticky

At the risk of appearing to be a shill for this book, I find myself repeating my recommendation to read the book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die.”  Assuming you’ve accomplished the first three steps, the final task is to make your idea(s) sticky, which is to say memorable.  ”Made to Stick” presents six principles that help make ideas stickier:

1. Simple (prioritized, not dumbed down)
2. Unexpected (violate a schema, then use curiosity gaps)
3. Concrete (use sensory language to hook into multiple types of memory)
4. Credible (from authorities and/or statistics and details)
5. Emotional (what’s in it for your or appeal to identity)
6. Stories (simulation and inspiration)

Being a successful communicator requires that you get readers interested, then hook them so they pay attention, and finally present a memorable message.  Have I missed anything?

Photo credits:
‘Crybaby’ courtesy of loneymops from Flickr (creative commons)
‘World’s Messiest Office Cubicle Discovered in Colorado’ courtesy of Jeffery Beall from Flickr (creative commons)

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PowerPoint doesn't kill people, bad presentations kill people.

I used to think I was pretty good at creating presentations. I took a business communications class in graduate school and learned the same old rules; limit your fonts, three to seven bullet points, don’t read your slides, blah blah blah. I withstood others’ horrible presentations, invisibly smirking and silently mocking the 250 word novels slides with their horrifying color schemes and monotone, stammering presenter.  I congratulated myself on not being “that guy.”  But the truth is that I was just as guilty of Really Bad PowerPoint as anyone else.

Then I read Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds and everything changed.  My goal in this blog post is nothing short of paying forward that same change, and so I’m using myself as a case study to show what my presentations used to look like, what they look like now, and what I aspire them to be in the future.

But before we go down that road, in case you’re dubious about whether or not really bad PowerPoint is a problem, here is a presentation that Guy Kawasaki put together that was used as the forward to Presentation Zen.

The Presenter As Storytellter

The number one lesson I’ve learned is that “slides do not a presentation make.”  Rather, they are simply a prop for the story you’re telling.  The following slide show contains a series of before and after shots from the same presentation, which I completely overhauled after reading Presentation Zen.  They illustrate the first major change; move the narrative off of the slides and into the oratory.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Once the presentation is transformed from a distraction to a storytelling prop, the burden of communication falls on the story itself.  Based on the recommendation in Presentation Zen, I also read “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die.”  This indispensable book presents six principles that make stories “sticky.”  It’s invaluable to crafting messages of all sorts, not just creating presentations.  Whether writing an email, composing a blog post, or crafting a memo outlining your thoughts on your organization’s next mission statement this book will help you do it more effectively and memorably.  These six principles can be represented by the acronym “SUCCESs”:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories

The Presenter As Designer

Duh.  That’s the one word that best describes how I felt while reading Presentation Zen.  Reynolds eloquently and convincingly makes the case that design is important, poorly understood, and badly implemented (by and large).  Those were the “duh” moments, as I realized that those are all true and that I had never realized it or paid much attention previously.  But next came salvation, as basic design principles and techniques are presented that make it possible to learn how to improve design.  Imagine that – you can actually learn how to design!  Looking back, I can’t believe that design wasn’t part of the core curriculum for my engineering degree or any of the computer science tracks I’ve seen.  And now that we live in the age of Web 2.0 where we are all content producers, it seems to me that it should be required in all college programs.  But I digress.

Reynolds begins by stressing simplicity, balance, noise suppression, and space.  These are all related and as I look back on my old presentations it seems as though I was deliberately violating as many of these guidelines as possible on every slide.  Take the slide shown below, for example.  This is not simple at all; there are too many ideas at once and even the screen shot, while appropriate was still complex and distracting.  The layout is completely unbalanced and top-heavy.  The slide template is noisy with lines and the “ISA” logo implanted in the corner of every slide.  Finally, there is a small amount of empty space on the slide, but it is concentrated in one corner and looks more like something is missing.  They eye darts around this slide searching for meaning with no help provided from the design.

My personal design renaissance has begun with what Reynolds calls “The Big Four:” contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.  I’ll now provide examples from my own presentations on how I’ve implemented these principles.

This slide uses contrast in two different ways.  The first is the color contrast between the dark gray background and the pure white text. The words jump off the page in way that bullets never can.  The second use of contrast is the emphasis of the words “interesting” and “boring” by changing the font size. For some reason we seem to be afraid to make things BIG enough or bold enough.

One of the central themes of this particular presentation was the abundance of free tools available on the Internet in our Web 2.0 world. Therefore, I made use of design repetition by placing the “Free” price tag graphic element on eight consecutive slides in the exact same spot. I also made sure to emphasize this in my delivery by asking the audience to guess how much each solution cost. Of course, the answer was the same and the audio and visual repetition made sure that this point would be driven home. Plus, the audience had fun with it.

Alignment stresses the importance of making objects appear as if they were placed in a particular place deliberately, rather than simply thrown anywhere there was space available. This slide aligns the letters of an acronym quite deliberately to show their relationship. While this is a good example of alignment, I’m not sure it’s a great example of contrast, balance, or noise. I’m sure there is a better way to present this idea, so I will keep tinkering.

This title slide demonstrates the use of proximity.  The graphic and title are strongly related and so they are grouped together in close proximity.  My name, company, and position are also grouped together and separated from the title in order to distinguish and de-emphasize them.  You can also see elements of contrast and alignment in play here as well.

Photo credits:
“death-by-presentation” from HikingArtist.com on Flickr (Creative Commons)

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