A class I gave at General Assembly on October 9, 2012.

1. Building Great
Presentations

2. What I’m going to cover
The State of Presentations
Crafting the Story
How Do You Make It Look Good?
The Art of the Delivery

3. ONT L
FR
Mattan Griffel
A
E
TH
BS
Founder & CEO, The Front Labs
Partner, Grow/Hack
I run the world’s first growth hacking agency based
out of New York City and have helped launch
dozens of different products. I've also spoken at
various industry events – including at Bloomberg,
Internet Week, and Social Media Week – and have
been featured in BusinessWeek, Mashable and The
Next Web.

4. This material is adapted from Garr Reynolds,
Chip & Dan Heath, Kevin Allison, and others, as
well as from my own experience

5. Have you ever sat through a
really shitty presentation?

6. Have you ever sat through a
really shitty presentation?
(it’s a rhetorical question)

7. Who the hell likes to digest content this way?
• There’s way too much text. It’s pretty easy to lose track of
where you are. Are you still even listening to the speaker?
• The audience has to do too much work. What is the point
of this slide? What am I supposed to take away from it?
• The font, colors and images are crazy ugly. Seriously, if
you’re trying to visually represent something, at least put
some thought into how it’s going to look.
• This could be the most interesting content in the world,
and it would still be boring. A bad presentation can kill any
topic.

9. “ Countless innovations fail because
their champions use PowerPoint
the way Microsoft wants them to,
instead of the right way.
”
– Seth Godin

10. Seth’s 4 rules for slides:
1) Make slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them
2) Don’t use cheesy images
3) No dissolves, spins or other transitions
4) Create a written document to leave behind

11. Sample Slides
from Seth Godin

12. I like Seth’s approach

13. I like Seth’s approach
but I don’t think it’s
practical

14. Teach Yourself to Code.
How to
Growth Hacking
LEAN MARKETING FOR STARTUPS
When they sold to Microsoft 1.5 years
after launch, Hotmail had 12 million users
“ Put ‘PS: I love you. Get your
free e-mail at Hotmail’ at the
bottom of each e-mail.
A lot of you just have
an idea Web applications are applications
” July September November January March May July September November
accessed over the internet
Viral growth
This is your rails command center
Do you pivot?
Do you keep releasing new features?
Landing page optimization
Product management
What do you do? SEO
Analytics
Part 3:
Onboarding How I Taught Myself
Terminal TextMate
Do you experiment with other Email marketing
UX
to Code in One Month
marketing channels?
Do you try to target a different
PR Behavioral economics
demographic? Google Chrome

15. My presentations have been shared over
150,000 times

16. How do I do it?

17. Start at the
end

18. The first step is to figure out
your take-away

19. What’s the
point?.

20. Sure, you can want people
to just know more

21. Sure, you can want people
to just know more
and that’s okay

22. Sure, you can want people
to just know more
and that’s okay
(but it’s also shallow and boring)

23. You want people to act
act!

24. “OH!”

25. ASK YOURSELF:
Who is your audience?

26. ASK YOURSELF:
Why are they there?

27. ASK YOURSELF:
What do they care about?

28. ASK YOURSELF:
How can I speak to them?

29. What makes
messages stick?

30. Simplicity

31. Unexpectedness

32. Concreteness

33. Credibility

34. Emotion

35. Story

36. First slide ??? ??? Last slide

37. Stories have 5 Beats

38. Stories have 5 Beats
1)
Set-up
Establishes
the Who &
What

39. Stories have 5 Beats
1) 2)
Set-up Inciting
Incident
Establishes A journey
the Who & begins
What

40. Stories have 5 Beats
1) 2) 3)
Set-up Inciting Rising
Incident Action
Establishes A journey Stakes
the Who & begins continue to
What increase

41. Stories have 5 Beats
1) 2) 3) 4)
Set-up Inciting Rising Main
Incident Action Event
Establishes A journey Stakes A turning
the Who & begins continue to point
What increase occurs

42. Stories have 5 Beats
1) 2) 3) 4) 5)
Set-up Inciting Rising Main Resolution
Incident Action Event
Establishes A journey Stakes A turning Explains
the Who & begins continue to point what it all
What increase occurs means

43. problem
to a
building up
Start by

44. Write
your o
• One utline
:
• Line
• At
•A
• Time

45. Each line builds on the
previous one

46. And ultimately leads to your
big take-away

47. Here’s mine:

48. Presentations are about
flow

49. And anything not essential
should be removed

50. You can use paper, whiteboards
or stickies for storyboarding

51. I like to storyboard in Keynote

52. So how do you make it
look good?

53. 1
No more than idea per slide

54. Reduce the noise

55. Slides from Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen

56. Slides from Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen

57. Slides from Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen

58. Also please take your logo off every slide

59. Also please take your logo off every slide
(are you really afraid
people will forget?)

60. “ If you want people to understand better, then
get that stuff off the screen... it is simply
making it more difficult for people to
”
understand what you are saying.
– Tom Grimes, Kansas State Journalism Professor

61. What simple visual element
would complement each idea?

62. It could be an image

63. Or maybe just some
typography

67. Where can you get good
images?

68. Buy (good) stock
photography
iStockPhoto (www.istockphoto.com)
Shutter Stock (www.shutterstock.com)

69. Find images online
Google Images (images.google.com)
Flickr Creative Commons (www.flickr.com/creativecommons)
(be careful of copyright issues)

70. Take your own photos

71. Give it room to breathe
(use plenty of empty space)

72. Consistency is
REALLY
important

73. Make sure you always use the
same font
And same colors

74. Don’t center everything

75. Asymmetry is more
interesting

76. Invisible lines are important

77. Rule of thirds
(just do it.)

78. Buy (good) stock
photography
iStockPhoto (www.istockphoto.com)
Shutter Stock (www.shutterstock.com)

79. “ Countless innovations fail because
their champions use PowerPoint
the way Microsoft wants them to,
instead of the right way.
”
– Seth Godin

80. Asymmetry is more
interesting

81. Sure, you can want people
to just know more

82. And try to line everything up
Either on the sides
Or in the middle

83. Avoid templates

84. Avoid clip art & bad stock images

85. Don’t use common fonts

86. Like Arial

87. Or Helvetica

88. Or
Calibri

89. Or Times New
Roman

90. Choose a good font like Serifa
like Futura
like Rockwell
like Avenir
like PF Din

91. Check out FontSquirrel.com

92. I like widescreen (you get way
resolution slides more room)
4:3 (default)
16:9

93. I like widescreen (you get way
resolution slides more room)
4:3 (default)
16:9

94. Black on white is easier to read

95. Black on white is easier to read
(Unless you’re in the dark)

96. Pick a color scheme:
background color
main text
emphasis text
complement text (optional)

97. Keep an archive of good
presentations to inspire you

98. 100SOME
1
“
Audiences everywhere are tough.
They don’t have time to be bored!
or brow beaten by orthodox, !
old-fashioned advertising.!
!
We need to stop interrupting !
E
what people are interested in !
W
& be what people are
A
!
INBOUND ! interested in.”
VS. !
OUTBOUND ! CRAIG DAVIS
MARKETING!
CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, WORLDWIDE
MARKETING!
J. WALTER THOMPSON (WORLD’S 4TH LARGEST AD AGENCY)
STATS!
4
CHARTS ! One third of US consumers !
& GRAPHS! spend >3 hours online every day.
46%
WARNING: SAFETY GOGGLES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
of daily
180+ MINUTES
35%
searches
are for
60-79 MINUTES
33%
info on
products
1-59 MINUTES
14%
or
0 MINUTES
19%
services.
7
SOURCE: THE MEDIA AUDIT, OCTOBER 2010 SOURCE: SRI, OCTOBER 2010
29

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100. 1 Your Idea
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101. THE
FRIENDSHIP
HOW TO BUILD BRAND ADVOCACY
IN A CONSUMER-DRIVEN WORLD
YES Thank you
But the real problem...
MODEL
Copyright © 2007 22squared
Here’s how we size up advocacy:
% of brand’s customers who are...
... we must create
relationships
SHAREHOLDER
EVANGELIST
Copyright © 2007 22squared
RECOMMENDER
worth talking about.
REPEAT SATISFIED
ADVOCATES BUYERS CRITICS
MARGINAL
CUSTOMER
DISSATISFIED
CUSTOMER ACTIVELY
AGAINST
Copyright © 2007 22squared Copyright © 2007 22squared

102. The art of the delivery

103. Start by speaking with
your audience

104. Move away from the podium

105. Hans Rosling at

106. Use a clicker

107. Make good
eye contact

108. Take your time

109. Keep the lights
on

110. Next steps

111. Presentation Zen
by Garr Reynolds
Read
Made to Stick
by Chip & Dan Heath

112. Practice speaking at:
Do

113. Learn
everywhere

114. Thank you.
Connect with me at
www.mattangriffel.com
Mattan Griffel
mattangriffel@gmail.com
@mattangriffel