How to Deliver a Great TED Talk: Presentation Secrets of the World's Best Speakers (How to Give a TED Talk) (8 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Create a Wow-Moment

If you want to be remembered, and if you want your audience to be talking about your presentations
months
after the actual presentation, you need to create a Wow-Moment. If you want to avoid your speech being completely predictable and boring, it helps to have a moment in your speech where your audiences’ jaws drop in amazement.

In his TED talk,
Pranav Mistry’s Wow-Moment
was his demo of his breakthrough sixth sense technology where he showed how the virtual world could integrate with the real world.

However, you don’t necessarily have to demo breakthrough technology in order to wow your audiences.

For a perfect example of the Wow-Moment in a business presentation, let’s examine Steve Jobs’ presentation at Macworld 2008. (
Click here
to watch the video.) During the presentation, Jobs said that the MacBook was “so thin it even fits inside one of those envelopes you see floating around the office.” Jobs then pulled the new MacBook Air out of a manila office envelope just to show everyone how thin it was. The audience roared with applause and laughed with delight. That moment became the most talked-about moment of the event – bloggers blogged about it, journalists wrote about it and fans raved about it. It was also the most common photograph of the conference. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words; this dramatic demo was worth a thousand pictures.

Let’s look at another example of a Wow-Moment, this time from a TED conference where
Dr. Jill Taylor
brings out
an actual brain
for illustration purposes:

“If you’ve ever seen a human brain, it’s obvious that the two hemispheres are completely separate from each other. And I have brought for you a real human brain. So this is a real human brain”

You can hear the audience gasp when they realize it’s an actual brain! The blogosphere was buzzing with excitement about Dr. Taylor’s Wow-Moment, which is how I originally stumbled across the talk.

What can you do to wow your audiences? Perhaps you can show a demo? Or use a prop to make your idea more concrete?

What’s your wow factor?

IN A NUTSHELL

• Create a wow-moment
  
• Demo a remarkable product or use a prop to make your idea more concrete
  
• Do something which will get your audience buzzing with excitement
  

PART 3

CONCRETE

The best presentations are concrete rather than vague. They provide specifics and paint clear images in the audience’s minds. They try to turn abstract concepts into concrete ideas.

In this section, you will learn how to make your messages concrete by learning how to:

• Use specific, concrete language
  
• Bringing your characters to life by providing specific details
  
• Turning your stories into mental movies for your audience using the VAKS formula
  
• Use analogies, metaphors and examples to turn abstract ideas into images
  

CHAPTER TEN

Be Specific

There once was a shepherd boy who was bored as he sat on the hillside watching the village sheep. To amuse himself he took a great breath and sang out, “Wolf! Wolf! The Wolf is chasing the sheep!”

The villagers came running up the hill to help the boy drive the wolf away. But when they arrived at the top of the hill, they found no wolf. The boy laughed at the sight of their angry faces.

“Don’t cry ‘wolf’, shepherd boy,” said the villagers, “when there’s no wolf!” They went grumbling back down the hill.

Later, the boy sang out again, “Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!” To his naughty delight, he watched the villagers run up the hill to help him drive the wolf away.

When the villagers saw no wolf they sternly said, “Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don’t cry ‘wolf’ when there is NO wolf!”

But the boy just grinned and watched them go grumbling down the hill once more.

Later, he saw a REAL wolf prowling about his flock. Alarmed, he leaped to his feet and sang out as loudly as he could, “Wolf! Wolf!”

But the villagers thought he was trying to fool them again, and so they didn’t come.

At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy hadn’t returned to the village with their sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy. They found him weeping.

“There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, “Wolf!” Why didn’t you come?”

An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village.

“We’ll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning,” he said, putting his arm around the youth, “Nobody believes a liar...even when he is telling the truth!”

The fable above, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” was written by Aesop. Aesop’s fables are some of the stickiest stories ever written. Some of Aesop’s other sticky stories you may have heard are “The Tortoise and the Hare,” “The Fox and the Grapes” and “The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs.” Written more than 2,500 years ago, these fables have survived the test of time.

So what makes them so sticky?

What can we learn from them about creating sticky presentations?

One thing that makes Aesop’s fables sticky is that they are concrete – they provide images that make the ideas come alive in your mind. For example, you can
see
the boy in your mind, you can
hear
him shout and you can
feel
his happiness at having tricked the villagers. The story is rich in sensory information, which makes it concrete. It provides specific details and paints vivid pictures in your mind’s eye. These details make the story memorable.

This brings us to our first tip for creating concrete presentations: provide specific details. Use specific language that paints vivid images in your listeners’ minds. Specificity aids memory. Abstract concepts are forgotten. Concrete ideas that provide specific details are remembered.

In your presentations and speeches, provide specific details. For example, instead of saying, “A couple of years ago …” say “Three years ago ...” or “In 2010 …”.

In her TED talk, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor embraces the principle of specificity by saying:

“But on the morning of December 10, 1996, I woke up to discover that I had a brain disorder of my own.”

Do you notice how much more powerful that is than saying, “But one morning a couple of years ago, I woke up to discover I had a brain disorder of my own”?

Similarly, instead of saying, “I was living in a wonderful hotel,” say “I was living in Room 201 of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Palm Beach.” Do you see how providing the specific details makes the description come alive? Do you notice how saying “Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Palm Beach” creates a completely different atmosphere than saying “a wonderful hotel”? Also, this description paints a very specific and vivid image of the Ritz-Carlton in Palm Beach – it packs in a lot of sensory information, making it memorable for your audience.

To make your presentations and speeches memorable, give specific details and paint images in your audiences’ minds.

IN A NUTSHELL

• Abstract concepts are easily forgotten
  
• The secret to stickiness is specificity
  
• Make your descriptions specific and vivid
  

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Bring Your Characters to Life by Providing Details

Great speeches aren’t just
heard;
they’re also
experienced
in the audience’s heads. Executive speech coach Patricia Fripp says, “People don’t remember what you say as much as they remember what they see when you say it.” If you want your audience to remember and
experience
your speech, you should paint mental images in their heads.

In his TED talk,
Malcolm Gladwell
brings to life the character of Howard by providing lots of specific detail about him:

Howard’s about this high, and he’s round, and he’s in his 60s. He has big huge glasses and thinning grey hair, and he has a kind of wonderful exuberance and vitality. He has a parrot, and he loves the opera, and he’s a great aficionado of medieval history. By profession, he’s a psychophysicist.

One of the things that make Gladwell such a superb storyteller is the fact that he knows how to breathe life into his characters. He does this by providing his audience with just enough sensory information to be able to picture the characters in their heads.

Another thing to learn from Gladwell is the way he follows the principle of showing rather than telling. He says that Howard “has a parrot, and he loves the opera, and he’s a great aficionado of medieval history.” This information gives you a hint about Howard’s personality – it shows you his quirkiness rather than simply telling you about it.

Similarly, if a character in your speech is an alcoholic, instead of simply saying that “John had an alcohol problem,” you should
show
this by saying “Every day after work, John would come back home and pop open a bottle of beer. He would sit at his table, alone, downing one bottle after another, until finally, around midnight, dozens of empty beer bottles later, he would fall asleep slumped over the table.”

In your speeches and presentations, provide specific, sensory details about your characters to make them come alive in your audience’s minds. Follow the principle of showing rather than telling.

IN A NUTSHELL

• Bring your characters alive by providing details about their appearance
  
• Give your audience enough sensory information to construct a mental image of your main characters
  
• Show, don’t tell