A perfect dramaturgy is always part of a successful presentation. If you really want to captivate and convince your audience, you need to present your messages in a gripping way from the first to the last minute. But how do you do it right? Ask your PowerPoint agency, because they specialize in releasing the desired impulses in your auditorium. There are important basic rules to follow.
.Perhaps you have already seen the show Germanys Next Topmodel, or at least heard of it. A few years ago, a juror and catwalk coach by the name of Bruce Darnell appeared there. Within a very short time, Darnell became a crowd favorite and outranked Heidi Klum, the actual star of the show. How did he become a crowd puller? He cried with joy and just as much with pain. He was a male drama queen, but in the process he gave the viewers something that was obviously important to them: he triggered emotions in them. Therefore, they eagerly awaited his next performance and were amused by his trollish remarks, such as “Drama, baby, drama,” which became a cult favorite among the audience. It obviously matters to the audience whether a performance triggers emotion in them or not.
Without emotion, no attention
.If you can arouse and positively influence the emotions of your audience, you have optimal chances to make your PowerPoint presentation a great success. Even with so-called “head people”, emotions play a big role. Even when we don’t want to, we are usually very receptive to emotions. On the contrary, the brain can even store information much better and make decisions faster if emotions are involved. At the same time, we are usually not at all aware of how much we are controlled by our emotions.
Much of the information we absorb and process is subconscious. In our brain there is an area that is specifically responsible for this: the corpus amygdaloideum or almond nucleus. The amygdaloid nucleus links events with emotions and stores them in the subconscious. If you succeed in presenting your messages in a way that creates the right feelings in the audience, this information will be absorbed faster and better. Your presentation will therefore most likely be a success. But how can you specifically generate emotions?
Successful presentations need good stories
.Since the Stone Age, people have enjoyed telling each other stories. We simply cannot escape an exciting or funny story. When we listen to a narrative, images and emotions arise in our minds. If you can generate emotions in a targeted manner, you bind your audience and can convince them much more easily of your core messages. That is why modern and successful communication can no longer do without good “storytelling”. In professional presentations, this stylistic element is almost always used. But what actually makes a good story, and how do you professionally translate the content of a presentation into a story? Unfortunately, this is not so easy, but the necessary know-how is part of the specialty of a good PowerPoint agency.
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Where is the good story in your presentation topic?
There are presentation topics for which a suitable exciting story virtually imposes itself. If you present about your excavations in the South American jungle, during which you discovered an intact Inca tomb with fabulous grave goods, then a little Indiana Jones movie is almost automatically created in the minds of the audience. If your topic is from the field of molecular chemistry, the exciting story may not immediately jump out at you. There are presentation topics that actually seem soberingly boring at first glance. You may tell yourself that your own topic is rather dry, even for experts. But you should not resign yourself to this so easily.
No one holds a presentation for the fun of it. It is always connected with a goal. Either information is to be passed on, or the audience is to get a different perspective on a topic. Or you pursue a financial interest and want to sell something to your audience. Most of the time a presentation is a mixture of informative parts and changing the attitude towards a topic. But every presenter wants to achieve something specific with their presentation. In this regard, a presentation embedded in a good story significantly improves the achievement of the goal. Most of the time, an experienced, trained view from the outside is missing to find the interesting story in a rather sober presentation. But there is almost always a good story hidden somewhere that external presentation experts can find. Here lies the key to the success of any presentation.
The right dramaturgy is needed
“Dramaturgy is the study of the selection and arrangement of narrative devices to present a story,” says Wikipedia. The ancient Greek word “drama” in this context originally meant simply “plot.” Dramaturgy is about shaping a story in such a way that the arc of tension is properly built up and then maintained. For a presentation, this means creating tension from the beginning to the end. There is no point in starting your great story towards the end of your presentation. If you’re unlucky, your audience will have dozed off by then. It’s also not purposeful if you build up tension during the welcome, but release that tension after a few minutes. You need to grab the audience’s attention from the start, and you need to hold that tension until the end of your presentation.
There are several ways to build a story in the process. Most stories resemble the classic hero’s journey of antiquity. At the beginning there is a problem, the hero struggles to find the solution and at the end of the story he has won. As simple as this may seem, even the legendary Steve Jobs structured his stories similarly. For example, he presented the new Apple iPhone in 2007: He first told the audience that he had looked at the current smartphones. He discovered many weak points and found out that they were actually not very good (problem). He wanted a phone that was much easier to use and still could do more than the competition. But what Jobs envisioned seemed technically impossible to solve (struggle to solve). But even though it was almost impossible, Apple did it and can now present the iPhone (solution). Steve Jobs’ presentations used few slides with even less text. Only a few words and pictures complemented his story so perfectly that the audience was thrilled at the end of the presentation. You don’t have to be Steve Jobs to present successfully. But the targeted dramaturgy of stories, the optimal design of the slide content and the right appearance of the presenter are the keys to success.
Good story, bad storytelling? Watch out, here’s how to ruin even a good presentation
Even if you’ve developed a really compelling story for your presentation topic and the PowerPoint slides perfectly complement their story, there’s one factor that can potentially ruin your success: The presenter himself. When preparing a presentation, people often forget to properly prepare the presenter. There are many factors to consider. What audience do you need to present to? What tone should you strike? A joke to lighten things up? Yes, if it fits, and you should be able to tell it really well. Can you deliver freely? Do you speak too fast or maybe too slow? What about your posture? Before you present in front of an audience, you should take enough time to prepare properly. Otherwise, you will easily ruin all your efforts.
The PowerPoint Agency sets the course for your successful presentation
Technical developments and the increased demands of the audience make it almost impossible for companies to prepare a really good presentation on the side of their core business. That’s why they are increasingly hiring presentation professionals to really ensure success. A PowerPoint agency has experts who know how to find gripping stories and tell them properly, supported by a well-measured selection of perfectly designed slides. And they show how, as presenters, to bring these stories to life in a way that generates the desired emotions and actions in the audience.
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