Using a PowerPoint presentation to explain your Chapter 11 insolvency protection might not be the first thing you’d expect Eastman Kodak to do. Yet, the once omnipresent face of photography, did just that last week when it filed for bankruptcy protection in the US courts.
The investor relations team at Kodak–who prepared the PowerPoint presentation–has been very busy.
The presentation sets out the context of the dramatic fall in the fortunes of Kodak, the digital onslaught and their expectations for eventual restructuring. That’s no tall order for any presentation. So it comes as no surprise that the presentation doesn’t deliver.
From the very first slide you sense that their material would be more useful in a report format. There’s too much text, font sizes are too small and there’s too little emphasis upon the imagery with which Kodak made its name.
Bullet point lists abound and financial performance graphs are loaded together onto one slide to an extent that makes them impossible to fathom.
Text overload is most obvious with the slides dedicated to financial transactions and cash-flow.
This was a disappointing presentation from the former masters of creative imagery. In essence, the job of serving this amount of information to shareholders would be better done with something other than a presentation.
That was the status of British public speaking last week; not dissimilar to watching clone reality TV across all the new digital terrestrial channels.
David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband all took the crisis of capitalism as their theme for major speeches during the week.
The speeches didn’t exactly detail the problem beyond vague slogans. In fact that was a feature of all three speeches–not much clarity.
We heard rhetoric. And we heard oratory. But we didn’t hear substance or policy in the speeches. It was Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, who said:
Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.
That’s something the party leaders might choose to consider for their next speech. But each speech did ring with rhetoric. For example, there was repetition in Ed Miliband’s responsible capitalism speech:
If he is serious about tackling irresponsible capitalism he needs to clamp down on the fact that train companies are ripping people off.
If he is serious about tackling irresponsible capitalism he needs to take action to break up the rigged energy market.
If he is serious about tackling irresponsible capitalism he needs to take action to stop those exorbitant bank charges.
An economy where people who work hard get rewards which are fair in the true Conservative meaning of the word.
An economy where people feel in control of their destiny…
…because they’ve started their own business, or are shareholders in the company they work for, or are part of a co-operative.
An economy where everyone has the chance to build up assets and pass something on to the next generation
David Cameron used a whole series of word pairs throughout his speech. These are less pronounced than lists of three, but equally effective…
I want these difficult economic times to achieve more than just paying down the deficit and encouraging growth.
I want them to lead to a socially responsible and genuinely popular capitalism.
One in which the power of the market and the obligations of responsibility come together.
One in which we improve the market by making it fair as well as free, and in which many more people get a stake in the economy and share in the rewards of success.
But there were some issues with these speeches.
Ed Miliband’s speech style still has the resonant style of an earlier Labour party leader with, “I say” or “I would say”:
But what I say to David Cameron is…
It’s an antiquated way of speaking that was in character with party leaders 20 or 30 years ago.
Nick Clegg was in some danger of sounding like a young liberal debating society member when he noted:
As this debate moves forward, we need to be clear about what we mean. Because, whether you call it a new economy, an ethical economy, moral markets, responsible capitalism, there is a big difference between having strong views on bonus culture or excessive top pay and wanting real change in the practices and principles that guide corporate life.
It wasn’t lost on his audience that Nick was far from clear.
And David Cameron’s enthusiasm for the short list of mini-sentences remains undimmed:
One that recognised what’s gone wrong with capitalism, and which freed people to make something of themselves…
…to get a good job. To own a home. To start a business.
The Kingdom of Bahrain is most definitely in the international spotlight right now. Like many other countries in the region it has experienced significant unrest since this time last year. Yet unlike other countries its governance remains pretty much the same.
So the King’s speech last week was a chance to hear from His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa how it’s done.
Allowing for matters of translation can be a problem. But there’s no disguising the King’s speech was a very dry, plodding affair.
Characterised by long words and long sentences the speech was nearly impenetrable. By the time the King reached the end of some of his sentences in the speech you wondered how the sentence had begun.
Our loyal people have demonstrated that their will, despite all events, is devoted to continuing the reform project, to preserving the achievements of the Charter and the Constitution, and to accelerating progress and momentum through constitutional institutions.
Being the Head of State in the Middle East is no small order right now. And it’s noticeable just how much of his speech is peppered with mentions of the constitution, institutions, legislative and executive branches of government. Not unexpected after all the unrest.
But buried in the arcane language we heard:
We cannot fail at this point to emphasize that democracy is not just literature, or constitutional and legislative provisions. Democracy is a culture and practice, commitment to the rule of law, respect for the international principles of human rights, coupled with serious national political action that represents all spectrums of society without exclusion or quotas.
The King’s speech appears to point to a reformed future. But such is the quality of the speech writing that you might be mistaken. The suspicion has to be that clarity might be more important in Bahrain than obfuscation. We’ll see.
Mercedes-Benz executive, Dieter Zetsche, and his revolutionary presentation
Using evocative images and icons in your PowerPoint or Keynote presentation has to be applauded.
And when you use evocative images to reflect your presentation theme or subject matter? That’s even better.
So it must have come as quite a surprise to the marketing team at Mercedes-Benz when it all went horribly wrong with their presentation.
Their presentation at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas took the theme of revolution reflecting the revolutionary qualities of the new Mercedes-Benz products. So far, so good. And indeed all seemed to go well with their presentation until it was publicised on the internet.
It was after their presentation that the Cuban emigré community, spotting an image of Che Guevara in the slide pack, took immediate offence. Their ire was compounded with the words, Viva La Revolucion, emblazoned on the slide.
The Cubans in exile pointed to Che Guevara’s record of murder and mayhem in Cuba and beyond and announced their extreme dissatisfaction.
At this stage the Mercedes-Benz public relations team went into top gear. They insisted that the presentation was an isolated event and that the slide did not represent the company or its products.
A well-engineered plan for this presentation quickly led to the presentation scrap heap.
Use images and use icons in your presentation. But, remember to look out for the pitfalls–not least in this interconnected, online, media savvy age where presentations speed around the world faster than Mercedes-Benz products could ever imagine.
If you thought that technology could add nothing more to your presentations, it might be time to think again.
A new application, supported on your iPad, gives you all the freedom of a wireless remote controller for your presentation, plus you can change your slides during your slideshow.
Splashtop Inc. has announced that it’s launched their new product, Splashtop Presenter. The new iPad app’ supports both Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote presentation software. Giving presenters the means to control their slideshows and make annotations from a distance is its principal claim.
The app’ sits on a user’s iPad, which in turn communicates, via wireless, with a notebook computer supporting PowerPoint or Keynote, and a slide projector. Very simple.
Presenters will have the chance to annotate their material, draw lines or arrows, highlight or mask material. The possibilities are endless.
Now the question of whether this will add up to a better presentation is hard to answer. The visual possibilities are certainly endless. But your application tinkering might well limit your audience’s attention.
I sense that this app’ will prove very valuable in interactive training, briefing sessions, technical workshops or design review presentations. And like most new presentation technologies you will need to practise everything first.
It’s worth a go if you own an iPad and have either PowerPoint or Keynote. There’s more about the Splashtop Presenter at the apple online store.
