A few things are guaranteed not to happen. For example, El Story-Duderino making a heart out of his murder pit in his old age. Hence this: There's little that gets on my nerves more than the storytelling buzzword-begurgle of the self-appointed crowd of experts, whose expertise already ends at the latest where story begins.
But what really makes my heart burn are Excel and PowerPoint. Two epidemics! Ugh!
Lists, addresses, membership directories, concepts, strategies ... Hardly a day goes by when I'm not surprised by an Excel file full of text, most of which the columns naturally swallow anyway. This is usually a good thing, because people who write texts in Excel usually don't bring anything interesting to the party.
Expect the worst.
By the way: Excel is a spreadsheet programme, which means: for calculating. When I receive an Excel file from someone, I calculate. And I do so with the worst in mind. That practically always happens immediately.
Even worse are PowerPoint and its peers from different manufacturers.
Majestix fears nothing more than the sky falling on his head. Storyduderix trembles at the prospect of being swallowed up by a bullet point.
Those black dots!
Look closely: These are actually black holes! Everything that has even a hint of creativity, humanity, inspiration or anything else that could be usefully used disappears into them.
And please pack as much as possible into one slide so that the presentation doesn't get too long. Don't worry, everyone will be asleep after the first slide anyway.
To do this, show the whole list at once and not point by point, so that everyone makes an effort to read illegible things, but no one listens any more. Maybe it's even better that way.
The main thing is that we have made a list.
Is it actually possible to export Excel to PowerPoint? That would be hell!
Oh yes, these are my favourite slides: projected Excel tables. When everyone in the room - including the shadowy figure presenting - tries to decipher the table, the official phrase for this situation soon comes: "It's hard to read here now, but you can find it all in the handout. - If you can find everything in the handout, why are you stealing our time with your presentation talent? Is this supervised reading for the brain-blind?
The perfect hiding place.
PowerPoint is the perfect hiding place for people who have nothing to say, doubt their own competence or are under the misapprehension that facts can make people do things.
Misconception. Facts do not hit the target!
If you want to achieve something, you have to get to the heart. There is no bullshit list that leads there, only story. Because that is what moves people. Our common story.
Start a sentence with: "A few numbers...", or "The numbers speak for themselves..." and your audience will freeze inside in a full-body fimosis of epic proportions.
Start a sentence with: "Imagine ...", or "Wouldn't it be fantastic if ..." and all hearts prick up their ears.
It's as simple as that.
By the way, when we talk about the future, there are no facts anyway. We might as well leave the bullet points where the sun never shines.
Steve, Jeff & Aristotle.
With all due respect, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos must be viewed critically. But it is no coincidence why these two, among others, did not (did not) tolerate PowerPoint.
Steve Jobs said, "People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint."
Meetings at Amazon are rigorously PowerPoint-free.
At the beginning, each of the participants receives a document of a maximum of six pages, which is structured according to clear narrative structures, and deals with it for 30 minutes. Then there is a discussion. Why?
Because Jeff Bezos has also recognised what Aristotle already knew almost 2,500 years ago. Every winning argument needs three factors: ethos - character/authority/credibility, logos - the evidence, and pathos - the emotional appeal, without which ethos and logos are for the Hugos.
Yes, facts are also important, but as a support, not as the cause of an idea.
Albert Einstein, who knew something about logic and numbers, said: "All that counts is intuition. The intuitive mind is a gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift. ”
Number logic? Hooray!
If there are five people in a room and seven go out, then two have to go in for the room to be empty. Do the math!
There are 24 million refugees in Austria - everyone has already seen three. Fact!
Numbers, facts, logic - hurrah! Surely Adam Riese is now lying in his pit with a huge erection.
That's exactly how we do it in our marketing communication.
The world's first advertising agency, founded by J. Walter Thompson in New York in 1864, was a media agency, i.e. responsible for shoving their clients' advertising under the noses of as many people as possible as efficiently as possible. This thinking is still the real driving force behind the entire marketing communications industry today. You can't drive so many Golden Lions through Cannes that this doesn't change and an Excel file isn't thrown on the wall somewhere at this very moment via a PowerPoint presentation so that you can really see it in the handout. Or not.
Advertising doesn't work any more because television is massively losing its importance? We'll think of something clever! An algorithm, for example, or targeting, re-targeting, native advertising, programmatic advertising ... Whoever hacks the best personal information from users wins! And that's whether the users know it or not ... Let's go!
Adverstalking? - That's the best idea we have? Honestly?
I don't want to believe that.
And somehow the idea doesn't seem sooo good.
CNN reportsthat thanks to the infallible facts and figures of YouTube's algorithms, the promotional videos of more than 300 companies such as Adidas, Amazon, Facebook (HiHiHi!), Hilton, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Netflix or Under Armour , including some US newspapers and government organisations, have been placed in the environment of channels containing Nazi stuff, paedophilia, conspiracy theories or North Korean propaganda. Of course, as a brand, you really want to be there, don't you?
YouTube is famously owned by Google - who at least manage to print "Don't be evil" on their T-shirts as they develop user data hacking into the most sought-after cultural technique and main source of income in the Global Village, while we ourselves enthusiastically click and turn into their product.
What changes?
Should we perhaps think about the quality of this service and the associated thinking for a moment? Is counting, measuring, checking out really sooo promising?
Will that never change? No, unless we change it. Do you want to? Because it's high time we did!
Already in the early 1960s, the legendary advertising man Bill Bernbach said: "This business of trying to measure everything in precise terms is one of the problems today. This leads to a worship of research. We're all concerned about the facts we get and not about how provocative we can make those facts to the consumer." Bill Bernbach wouldn't like to be right any more.
Let's do something new!
The best thing to do is to think about an alternative. An alternative that works and is clearly different from the offence of spying and sneaking in. About Story, for example. That is really new!
Or actually not.
Story is as old as we humans. Story does something for us and with us. Because story is based on values and attitude. Story is our tool to explain the world - what is happening now, how and why.
Story makes us living beings into people. Story turns products into brands.
Story activates meaning and creates relationship. From person to person. And if you approach it authentically, honestly and respectfully, also between people and brands.
Story instead of advertising has been proven to work. Brands with meaning have more success - in their KPIs, in the share of wallet, on the stock market. You can prove that with numbers, even in Excel spreadsheets. But you can't describe it in Excel spreadsheets.
You can't invent a story. But you can find it. Where the truth of a brand is rooted, because that is where its meaning for its audience is created.
That's my watchful hope in every PowerPoint torture: In the end, the better story wins. In the beginning, too.
Yes, story is a question of attitude and an indispensable necessity for successful communication. It doesn't matter whether you are a global corporation, an SME or an EPU - every person, every brand, every company has a story and stands for something, even if it's nothing. Without a story, you are left with only one issue, one way or another: the price.
My grandmother, old Story Dudette, also discovered this when she once spent the night poring over an Excel file and the formula threw up a clear result: "No Story. No Glory."