Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduces new Amazon and Kindle products, 09.28.2011.(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos addressed a press conference to introduce the new Amazon and Kindle products last September and his Powerpoint presentation was revealing: no bullet points.
When Bezos unveiled the all-new new Kindle Fire HD this week, his presentation slides were light on text and heavy on images. This style of delivering presentations is fresh, engaging, and ultimately far more effective than slide after slide of wordy bullet points.
Earlier in the presentation, Bezos unveiled the Kindle Paperwhite, an e-reader with a higher resolution display and patented built-in light. Bezos said the battery lasts eight weeks. Most presenters would have added “8 weeks battery life” to a long list of bullet points/features on one slide. Instead Bezos showed a picture of a calendar with the months September and October. September 6—the day of the presentation—was highlighted in red and Bezos told the audience that the battery would last until the end of October. That’s memorable. People will recall the text—8 weeks battery life—much more easily because it was connected with the image of the calendar. I know I will. That’s picture superiority—a little text and a lot of pictures.
Many other successful business leaders have discarded long pages of text and huge, blocky paragraphs for an image-rich style. Recent presentations by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and even Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Ford CEO Alan Mulally were light on text and heavy on images, attractive, simple graphs and illustrative charts. This works equally well for websites and online advertising. It’s been proven that images are retained by consumers more readily than text, partly because few consumers bother to read the text in an ad or a website, especially if there are large blocks of text.
The average PowerPoint slide has forty words – Bezos used less than forty words total in his presentation. Instead, he told the story behind the new products in images and text. The technique, called Picture Superiority, is well known to successful ad-agencies and presenters. It simply means that the brain processes information more effectively when the information is presented in pictures and words instead of words alone.
In Forbes Magazine, Carmine Gallo has a great article about this: Jeff Bezos And The End of PowerPoint As We Know It
Neuroscientists have also found that when a slide (or advertisement) contains pictures and words, it’s best to have the picture on the left side of the page or slide and words on the right. This is exactly what Bezos did for a majority of his slides.
For example, Bezos introduced the new Kindle Fire HD with a series of slides that just showed images of the products features and services (movies, games, photos). He also played a new video ad (most people don’t use enough multimedia in their presentations. Video clips are engaging and memorable. Just keep them short). On the final slide where Bezos revealed the price, he included a picture of the device on the left side of the slide and these words on the right:
Advocates of overly verbose advertising, websites and presentations might argue that this works for Bezos because he’s revealing products that people can see and touch. However, research has proven that picture superiority works better than text, especially large amounts of text for any type of presentation, advertising or website, no matter how complex the ideas and subject matter may be:
I recently gave a presentation on the topic of communication and storytelling to scientists at one of America’s largest nuclear labs. One person implemented the techniques immediately and sent me an email, saying it helped him deliver one of the most persuasive presentations of his career.
In no way am I advocating that you ditch PowerPoint. I am recommending that you ditch PowerPoint as we know it—dull, wordy, and overloaded with bullet points. Image-rich presentations work effectively because pictures appeal to the right hemisphere of the brain—the emotional side. You can have great ideas backed up by data and logic, but if you don’t connect with people emotionally, it doesn’t matter.
Carmine Gallo is the communications coach for the world’s most admired brands. He is a popular keynote speaker and author of several books, including the international bestsellers The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs and The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs. His new book, The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty is the first book to reveal the secrets behind the stunning success of the Apple Retail Store.