Beyond Visual Presentations – bring back bullet points?

I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that the revolution is over. What revolution? The revolution that started a few years ago with posts from Garr Reynold’s venerable Presentation Zen website and other places. The revolution that gets us away from bullet points – consider BBP by Cliff Atkinson.

And they’re right – bullet points don’t work. People get bored; people switch off; people don’t remember things. But now there’s a whole industry that’s grown up of people who’ll turn your boring slides into visual slides which, presumably, are less boring. I’m sure they’re great at what they do (Hi Nadine). They’re probably brilliant, absolutely brilliant, at creating visuals with a lot of impact.

But something got missed in the rush away from bullet points – and that was what we were all rushing to, not away from. Running away without knowing where you’re going can get you into more trouble than you’re originally in – trust me on this! :)

Here’s the crux of it. In the ‘crusade’ to get away from boring Death By Powerpoint we jumped, culturally, on the fist effective alternative – which happened to be big, bold images. So far so good – but it’s not the whole story.

The bigger picture (pun intended) is this: we are looking for impact, effectiveness, engagement and the ability for our audience to remember what we’re saying, right? And visuals help – but the key thing that helps, that really really helps, are stories, not visuals per se.

Visuals work because they are a shorthand story, not because they’re pretty.

There are other ways of getting the message over and I’d venture to suggest something of a hierarchy (but if you don’t agree with my specific order here, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater).

Your audience’s stories are the most effective – get them telling each other stories and you’re on to a winner. My favorite words from an audience are “Yes, that’s right! I remember when…” because people are more likely to trust each other than to trust you. Why else do you think Facebook likes are expensive for companies like Coca-cola to buy, and why they spend money to do so?

A ‘like’ is a story their clients tell each other.

Second come your stories (rather than your audience’s). We’re hard-wired to like stories, it’s how we learn.  No ones parents put them to bed and read them facts about how to be brave: your parents put you to bed and read you stories about heroes being brave… and that’s how you learned to be brave yourself. Find a story that resonates inside your audience’s heads and you’re half way there already!

Third come pictures – they’re visuals that tell a story at a glance. They can’t engage your audience like a properly told story, but they’re better than dry facts and figures in a table! :)  A well-chosen image will allow the audience to create their own story around what they see: they fill in the ‘back story’ for themselves of what happened to get to the point in the image and they’ll imagine what happens next. They’ll respond emotionally to the story they tell themselves… and that makes it more likely that they’ll remember the point associated with the image.

And finally?

Finally come headlines. Headlines are stories in a sentence. Quotes are headlines. Newspaper headlines are headlines. Aphorisms are headlines. Sayings your Dad came out with when you were a kid might be a headline. Use them carefully – and if your audience had a Dad who said the same thing you’re onto something.

So what’s my point? (It’s probably time I got around to it, I suppose.) My point is this – don’t just rush to images/pictures. Think first. Is what you’re trying to say best done with a visual? Great, then use a visual.

If it’s best done with another method, use that method. You don’t teach dance by bullet points, or even images – you teach it by dancing. If the best way to get your point across is to train elephants, use trained elephants.

Heck, it’s even possible the best way to get something across is to use bullet points. Guess what?  In that case use bullet points.

But don’t use anything – anything – just because that’s what is expected of you; or what everyone else does; or because the gurus tell you to; or because you don’t know better.