Let me tell you a secret
It must be a secret because not many people seem to take account of it. If you ask people one hour after you have given a talk what they remember of it, you will probably be shocked at how little they do remember. The more you say, the less that goes in, unless you work specifically to make things memorable. I've done the following test now a few times and it's very telling: After a group have given a series of presentations, let's say 5 minutes each and 6 presentations, I ask them to quickly tell me what they remember of the first presentation. First they have to remember who gave the first presentation, can take a while sometimes. Then I write up on the whiteboard all the things they remember for one presentation after the other. A pattern emerges very clearly. The commonest thing that sticks is pictures or photos, striking ones, and best of all relevant ones. The second commonest thing is surprising statistics or numbers. The main message, even though it's thought out quite carefully in these cases, quite often gets lost.
A few weeks ago I coached an executive of a company in Stockholm for an important presentation for a whole day. I hope you're reading this, S, 'cos you did a fantastic job with that slide! He made a single slide with a single statistic on it, just white on black, and turned it into a perfect example of the above principle. That's all he needed for the presentation because the number plus the animation that mutated it into new numbers (all on the same slide by the way) was both striking and memorable and it conveyed a message. You could also say that the statistic itself became a picture because it was so simple. One of my favourite examples.
Some other great examples come from the very first Masters course at SLU that I ran. Outstanding pictures and overall presentations - you're still my dream team guys!
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