One of the the first lessons I learned in my career is that Marketing is about communication. Constantly. Every day. To everyone. Not just to your customers but also to your boss and your coworkers.

As marketers, if we want to do our jobs well, we don’t just have to be good at communicating our ideas, we have to be masters as it. Especially internally within the org as you move up the chain and have to start persuading people with increasing levels of influence and decreasing amounts of time. Having excellent communication skills is incredibly important whether you’re angling for a raise, pitching for budget, or proposing a campaign that requires lots of departments to work together.

Along the way, you’re going to have to make presentations. Lots of them. So as marketers, we need to be students of great presentations, constantly consuming them and harnessing their magic into usable bits that we can use into our own lives.

The 3 presentations below are amazing examples of how to effectively convey your ideas and persuade people regardless of medium. Looking at them closely, we find that they are effective because they can clearly answer these questions:

• What is the narrative?
  Is the presentation coherent enough that it can be distilled into a concise elevator pitch? Star Wars was pitched as “an opera in space”. Our everyday dealings may not be as exciting, but if a complex movie saga can be summed up in one sentence then you can find a concise way to convey your message.
• What is the human example?
  Is there a memorable, relatable story placed on a human scale? Arguments are best delivered via concrete examples involving names, faces and places — people are hard-wired to remember stories about things that we can relate to in everyday life. Think about why politicians in debates answer using personal stories instead of beating us over the head with statistics.
• What is the next step?
  A great presentation will spur the audience to take action (“pre-order the iPad Mini!”) or alter your perspective to affect your long-term behavior (“follow Al Gore on his environmental crusade!”). Regardless of the action, it should be obvious what next step needs to be taken.

Presentations that have clear answers to these questions are likely to be more memorable and have lasting impact, as we’ll see in the following examples.

1. Why Schools Kill Creativity

The speaker’s charisma aside, I love this talk because he gets his point simply by telling stories. No Powerpoint or speaking aids.

Thinking back to our checklist, we find that it has a definite answer for each question:

• What is the narrative?
  Schools are broken because we currently only recognize one kind of intelligence.
• What is the human example?
  A young girl who was considered an academic failure, but went on to become an accomplished dancer.
• What is the next step?
  Educators should consider a holistic approach to assess students and slower to diagnose someone with ADHD. Recognize that there are many kinds of intelligence.

The speaker shows that you don’t need speaking aids to get your point across. You can persuade by having a strong narrative and telling impactful stories.

2. Start With Why

This presentation grabbed my attention because the speaker uses a flipchart to make his point. Flipcharts and whiteboards are underused in this era of PPTs, but they are effective in creating a shared experience with your audience. Instead of your audience looking at your pre-made slides, you can take them through your thought process step-by-step at the pace you want.

It’s part of the reason why Khan Academy instructional videos can be mesmerizing to watch. When you watch the speaker draw circles and lines to illustrate a point, he’s taking you by the hand to reach a conclusion that reinforces his narrative.

In this talk, the use of repetition is also effective — he peppers the phrase “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it” throughout and sandwiches it with entertaining vignettes to really hammer it home.

• What is the narrative?
  People rally behind those who have a clear vision of what they want to achieve.
• What is the human example?
  The Wright Brothers who wanted to achieve manned flight versus the businessman who wanted to simply wanted to make money.
• What is the next step?
  Strengthen your team by uniting them through a common purpose — not just by chasing outcomes.

There’s lots to appreciate in this presentation. There’s something to learn from both the content and the delivery. Next time you’re in a meeting — look for the opportunity to draw your thoughts on a whiteboard to express your ideas.

3. The Real Social Network

This is the kind of presentation that most likely resembles what you see in your work life: a thick slide deck. The previous two videos showed us how to present on stage in front of a captive audience — a luxury we rarely have. The reality is that our presentations will be passed around via email without us there to give context and depth.

Despite being an intimidating 224 slides, the composition of this presentation makes it a joy to read. Each slide can be visually consumed quickly and has excellent speakers notes, making it sharable and easy to skim. It also manages to be information-heavy yet retain a personal tone. The photo usage is fantastic: lots of simple everyday photos, nothing too artsy and no stock photography.

• What is the narrative?
  Social networking online is unnatural and doesn’t account for the complexity of real-world relationships.
• What is the human example?
  A schoolteacher comments on her friend’s Saturday night party photos. Facebook then publishes this activity to her entire social network, including her students.
• What is the next step?
  Make social networks better reflect our real-world relationships.

A big takeaway here is to make your presentation a story. The speaker could have just as easily put up charts and graphs showing user dissatisfaction with current social networking sites, but instead we’re treated to a visual essay that’s more effective.

If you’re making a presentation that you know will live most of its life as an attachment, think of this presentation. Don’t be afraid to break up arguments into multiple slides to tell a story and include damn good speakers notes so the presentation narrates itself.

Unsexy presentations in the workplace

Our everyday presentations are likely not to be as exciting as those above, but we can still take our cues from them and re-purpose their lessons into our work.

Imagine you have to start creating a weekly status report to your boss. No doubt that it will contain lots of charts and figures. But go the extra step and uncover the story behind it — construct your presentations with a narrative in mind, not just facts and results.

Taking our cue from the above presentations, let’s imagine how our checklist might play out in our work lives:

• What is the narrative?
  Facebook ad campaign drawing less visitors, affecting revenue.
• What is the human example?
  Traffic via Facebook ads dropped 30% compared to last week; last week you had all 10 fingers but today you’re missing both thumbs and a pinky. (It need not be this dramatic, but point being always try to tie your points to the real world if you want people to remember)
• What is the next step?
  Look into ad performance and update low-performing assets.

Here’s another simple example, this time imagining that you need to get budget approval.

• What is the narrative?
  My team needs an AB testing tool to improve signup conversions.
• What is the human example?
  In user testing, we watched visitors go to our landing page and close the window before reaching the first call-to-action button. (As opposed to merely saying “our conversion is only 3%”)
• What is the next step?
  Approve $100 monthly budget and sign up for the tool.

Hope you find this helpful. The comments are yours.