Month: June 2014

3 Tips For Creating A Winning Presentation

/ SJ / 1 Comment

Winning PresentationMaybe it’s because I come from a graphic design background, but the importance of having a solid deck (powerpoint presentation) is not lost on me. And when I say ‘solid’, I’m not talking about all of the fancy facts and figures procured from the insights or finance department.

I’m talking about the basics like: fonts, page layout and presentation size. It’s unbelievable how many presentations I’ve seen from agencies, sales people, etc. that forget (or just don’t know) these 3 basic rules.

1. Fonts
While it may be tempting to put on your creative-hat and hope to impress your audience with the latest font you downloaded, keep in mind that you are the one that downloaded it – not the rest of the world. So unless you plan on attaching a font suitcase to your presentation and asking them to download and install it, stay away from adding pieces of flair to your deck.

Stick with the classics, also known as systems fonts or universal fonts, that most people would have on their computer so when they open your presentation it looks as you intended on not like gobbltyguck.

Fonts

So yeah, that will happen. However you can get around the font neutering by creating your presentation with as many bells & whistles and you can stuff into it, then saving as a PDF and sending that way. Word of caution though; From personal experience I’ve tried this route and you would have thought I’d sent the recipient a bouquet of dead roses (i.e. They did not like the PDF file.)

I think there’s something familiar and standardized about good ol’ PPT files which makes people feel more at ease because that’s what they are used to getting. Also (and I’ll touch more on this when we get into file size) you never know who’s going to get their hands on the file, so my advice would be to keep it simple and stick to the basics.

2. Page Layout
This step is tricky because sometimes you don’t know what the final outcome of the presentation will be… is it going to be printed, displayed during a webex, both? I actually worked on a deck once that was going to be projected onto a movie theater screen, which required some additional planning to say the least! On that size screen, you have to actually think of your deck as a movie and keep in mind where the eye goes (and what it can easily see) during a film. I took the stance of keeping everything at least an inch or two away from all borders and trying to centralize all of the text + images. That would make it easy for anyone, regardless of their seat in the theater, to see the content.

Anyway for all of those times when you don’t have to worry about a cineplex-friendly layout, here are a couple tips:

• Try to get as much info as you can in advance about where this presentation is going to go and how it will be used. If you know it will be printed, try to stick with standard sizes (letter and legal). Absolute last resort would be tabloid size (11×17) unless for whatever reason that is deemed reasonable. (Another personal experience tid-bit here: I received an agency presentation once in tabloid size and 30+ pages [goodbye rain forest]. Not only was it a nightmare to get printed for myself and the team, but carrying the thing around from meeting to meeting was like having a toddler on my hip. So if possible stay away from the dreaded tabloid size!)

• If it’s going to be displayed on a screen and not printed, try to find out what size. For example: movie theater or boardroom. This makes a difference. But in either case you want to use the 16:9 ratio setting which will work on most flatscreen tv’s and newer laptops.

3. Email-able Presentation Size
I think we’ve all had the vendor/boss/coworker who’s emailed over a presentation and said “can you take a look at this?” only to click on the attachment and realize it’s 20mb or more. (Really?) Not only does this fill-up your inbox but if you’re expected to forward it onto someone else, now you’ve got two copies of this beast on your email and sending/receiving will absolutely slow you down if you’re traveling and on wifi. No bueno.

So what to do? Well if it’s your presentation, it’s time to take it to fat camp:

• Make sure all of the photos you’ve inserted are optimized for web. If you’re not sure what this means, ask a friend who has photoshop and tell them you need 72 dpi JPG images stat!

• Be careful about embedding videos. Yes, it’s cool and all when you don’t have to navigate out of a presentation to show a video but I recommend following the Spandex Rule here. (Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Know what I mean?) In this case, embedding a video file directly can take a simple presentation from the 20mb range up to the 200mb range… (“I love it when you call me Big Poppa”) My advice, pull up the videos on You Tube and leave that tab open on your browser. If you need to hop over during the presentation it takes about 2 seconds and I don’t think anyone is going to fault you for that.

• And to wrap up the point I made earlier, you never know who’s going to get this presentation so keep things svelte. The worst thing would be having a CEO/boss/potential client receive your big fat deck, decide it’s taking to long and they’ll “download it later”. Which means… the Monday after never.

Definition Refresh for Open Work Space: The pro’s and con’s of an open work environment

/ SJ / 8 Comments

At every job you go to there’s the expectation of having a desk, computer, phone, post-it’s and sometimes even a red stapler if you’re lucky. But how the desk area is configured depends on the company… sometimes you get a full-on office, sometimes a cubby and sometimes you’re out in a ‘bullpen’ type area known as the open work space.

In all of these scenarios there are obviously pro’s and con’s, but in my humble opinion the open work space area carries with it the most con’s as you truly don’t ever get to unplug from your coworkers. Now depending on what your job is and what you’re being asked to produce, this might not be a bad thing, but I have to say I think most people need a little “me time” even during their work day.

But besides needed/wanting to unplug there is one other big negative to the open work space… the chatty Cathy. (You know who I’m talking about.) The coworker that doesn’t know when to stop talking and over-sharing. I think we’ve all know someone like this and it truly can create a problem within a team because productivity stops while rambling Rita regales all of us with her stories from the weekend.

However being that you work in close proximity and have to see this person every day, it’s not really appropriate to say, “I don’t care about; your significant other, your pets, your vacation plans, your family problems, the new restaurant you just tried or what class at the gym you’re going to take this week. Okay??”

So what can you say? Well first off, my advice is to employ the stray cat analogy of “don’t feed it”. If you don’t pay attention to this person and engage, at some point they will realize they don’t have an audience and (hopefully) put it on mute.

If that doesn’t work and/or you really do have a friendship with this person, try saying, “You know I’d really love to hear this story but could we talk about it over lunch?” Again hopefully you’re not dealing with someone who is so daft they can’t pick up on hints and after doing this a few times will realize that you are trying to focus on work during work hours (you know, the whole reason you’re there) and that chit-chat time is for coffee break or lunch time.

Now onto the good things about open work spaces… to the pro’s list!

On the upside, being able to quickly gather the troops and have an informal meeting is by far the biggest plus to having your whole team within arms reach. I would say this is especially helpful for social media teams who need to react to news in real-time and if you can do a quick chair swivel to get feedback and/or approval for the perfect tweet. Bonus!

Another positive side-effect is being able to hear other conversations going on that might not have included you, but that you need to be apart of! Example: brand manager is talking to graphic designer about collateral for a new campaign. Let’s say you are the web master and overhear this, it’s the perfect opportunity to say, “Are you going to include the website on the collateral? If so we can add a CTA to the homepage that correlates with the messaging on the collateral.” Boom! That’s a win-win and now the campaign completes a full circle from static piece to website.

So now I want to hear from you – leave a comment and let me know what experiences you’ve had with open work spaces (good or bad).

Happy typing!

Blog Introduction: So what is all this typing about?

/ SJ / 1 Comment

Let me start off by saying I am not a fan of know-it-alls.

So that’s not what this blog is about because I certainly don’t think I know everything there is to know about marketing, etc.

I’m just someone who has worked in small start-ups all the way up to Fortune 500 companies and as different situations have come up I decided I wanted to type out my thoughts about it. So maybe you find something useful here – maybe not – but thanks for stopping by. And don’t forget to tip your waitress 🙂