This week in my public relations writing class we are discussing what makes a message stick. We’ve started reading a book called Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by brothers Chip and Dan Heath (who also write a blog). This is exciting for me, because it’s not a text book. This a book that all pr professionals should probably read. The tone of the writing is casual, straight forward, and sometimes funny; and the arguments they make make a lot of sense. Our professor is having us apply their six principles of sticky messages to presentations that we’ll create with PowerPoint or Keynote software. The Heath brothers stress that any sticky message is simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and narrative.
Basically we’ve been looking at examples of what to do and what really not do to. Surprisingly, a PowerPoint presentation given by Bill Gates was an example of what not to do. His slides were cluttered and predictable, and although Mr. Gates may be the most credible guy in the universe, his message was not concrete or emotional. On the other hand, Steve Jobs’ Keynote presentation was the stickiest of the stickies. His slides were simple and concrete, his timing and design created a level of suspense (an unheard of characteristic of a slide presentation) and the fact that he was giving a speech about the greatest accomplishments in the history of Apple Inc. gave him all the credibility, emotion and narrative a sticky message could ever need. I imagine my presentation falling somewhat shy of Jobs’ level of stickiness, since I’ve made only one or two very un-sticky slide presentations in my life, but for the sake of education I’m willing to give this a valiant effort.
There are some things I know to avoid right away: bullet points, big blocks of text, over use of color and graphics.
I’ve decided to make my presentation about recycling to reduce energy consumption and preserve the climate (that wasn’t predictable right?). I’m excited to give some emotional, negative effects of global warming, present some concrete statistics about the benefits of recycling, and leave my fellow classmates with a simple message: Recycle, Reduce, Reuse.
Let’s just hope I can steer clear of boring them, saying “ya know” or holding my hands like Mr. Burns -I mean Mr. Gates.
