PowerPoint Hall of Shame

In this brief post, I wish to speak of the many mind-numbing, painful to watch PowerPoint presentations I have endured in my long career. There have been so very many. Just try to make sense out of the abortion at left.

Here are my rules of PowerPoint with help from experts.

No gratuitous animation.
No more than five words per slide. (Seth Godin)
More pictures than words.
One theme per slide.
Very few bullet points.

There is a certain London based Search Marketing firm (picture a light bulb and color it Green) that is the poster child for horrifically bad PowerPoint.

When I became VP of Sales and Marketing there, one of the first things I asked for was their corporate PowerPoint presentation. What I got shocked me. 47 heavily engineered, mind numbingly complex (animated) slides guaranteed to make eyes glaze over by the fifth slide.

It was truly a horror show, but did they care? The most certainly did not. The ownership was young and rich. It was a case of “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” I, and many others, headed for the exit.

Another example was at the CMO Thought Leadership Summit. A senior exec of a very reputable firm stood up in front of an audience and presented the findings of their white paper — with most of the white paper on the slides. I stayed to be polite, but wanted to run as fast as I could for the exits. In fact, a CMO with me in the room left to hit the gym. Sweating profusely was better than listening to a really bad presentation.

Want to see the right way to present? Look for presenters like Seth Godin, Guy Kawaski, Steve Jobs, Al Gore or Garr Reynolds. Google them, find them on-line and watch them. Sign up for Toastmasters and practice, practice, practice.

Your audience will thank you.

Jeff Ogden is in expert in sales and marketing and the President of Find New Customers, who helps companies find and acquire new customers using best practices in lead generation and using a clearly defined demand generation process. He’s also the author of the highly regarded white paper, How to Find New Customers. Lastly, Jeff is featured in the new book by Jill Konrath, Get Back to Work Faster.