Monday, May 24, 2010

Is it honesty or is it clarity that makes this commercial so popular?

Two respected presentation professionals, Jon Thomas and Garr Reynolds, have recently tweeted about how they think this commercial is a great commercial and they wish all advertising could be this honest. I agree that the commercial is good and it is honest. But many ads are honest. Not many are as clear as this one is.

The difference between clarity and honesty in my mind is that clarity makes things easy to understand and honesty is about level of truth. You can be honest, but be unclear and confusing. We see this often in presentations. The data is accurate, but they haven’t figured out the meaning for the audience, so what they present is unclear. These types of presentations are not effective.

Clear presentations, like this commercial, present information from the audience’s perspective. They are focused on what is going to help the audience make a decision or apply the ideas in their own life. Most people immediately recognize these as effective presentations.

I will always recommend that you be honest in everything you do. I would also ask you to be clear in your communication. When you are clear, you communicate effectively, and the audience, of one or many, understands immediately. As a business person, clearly communicating what problem I solve and who a potential client would be, is critical to attracting more business. So I recently wrote a page on my web site titled "How to know if we should chat". It is my attempt to be as clear as possible with prospective clients about how I can help them and whether we will work well together. The clearer we communicate, the more effective we will be. I’ll be discussing this business approach and many more ideas at my pre-conference workshop at the Presentation Summit. If you are a presentation consultant, you can participate in a survey that will help all of us - read more here.

Your takeaway: How can you increase the clarity of your communication?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home