Wow-effekt Archive - Page 2 of 4 - The Art of Communicating

12 angry men

In my keynote speeches I often ask people what’s so different about movies that we find them entertaining for 2+ hours while most presentations are boring as hell so that we start looking for an escape before reaching the 2 minute mark.

Among the top responses is music. And it’s true. Great music makes great films even greater. But it misses the point – if only because it would be an easy fix to include some music in a presentation.

The movie “12 Angry Men” creates tension from the first to the last second. We witness 12 men in a room. With no music! (And, of course, no special effects.) It’s pure story. It’s a great movie that grabs our attention (Well, mine at least).

If our story is great, we don’t need any music. Nor special effects.

Great stories are great because they resonate – not because we decorate them. They grab our attention and never release it because we can relate to the characters and their struggles. Music – and special effects in general – can make the experience even greater. But they are never the reason why it’s great in the first place.

And they never turn a lame story into a great story. They are an amplifier of greatness, not a rescue to lameness. If the story is lame, it will still be lame despite great music and great special effects.

Granted special effects can get you a short burst of excitement. They can wow your audience. But that’s about it. Most wow-effects fade quickly.

The thing is that – most likely – you don’t have the budget to produce special effects that do that trick for you. Effects that will provide that level of excitement to your audience.

(Not only) therefore, it’s much better to get the story right before we start working on the special effects.

How to burn a message into someone’s head

Can you plant a thought in someone else’s head? In the film Inception, Leonardo diCaprio attempts to do so by entering the dreams of his target mind. It’s the stuff that a great Hollywood blockbuster is made of.

But what if you could actually manage to get a message literally right into your audience’s head? Impossible? Not for BMW. How the carmaker used afterimages to literally burn its brand into the eyes of an audience has a simple explanation, but it’s still outstanding:

False promises

Getting attention is easy. Make it bigger, faster, louder, or crazier. And if in doubt, throw money at the problem of making it even more so.

In the past, it was the guiding principle of commercial TV and today, it is the guiding principle in wide parts of the Internet. Look here. No, no, no, don’t switch off … something exciting is about to come. The next post is going to be AWESOME. Stay a little longer, or you’ll miss this. Come on, just one more clip. Look here. STAY HERE!

That may grab your attention, it may not be boring, but it’s still a waste of time.

It’s promise after promise after promise … with the sole purpose of getting your attention. It isn’t even about keeping any of these promises. Because these people will happily promise something greater before they even come to keeping any of the promises.

Until, of course, the next guy comes along who makes an even greater noise with an even greater promise: Come here: This. Is. Going. TO BE AWESOME!!!!!

The better question to ask is: once you have the attention what do you do with it? What promises can you make that you can actually keep?

Because when you keep a promise, it builds trust. And from continuous trust follows loyalty. Which means that I don’t even have to make a noise. People will want to hear from you. People will come back. Because they are going to be tired of all the broken promises.

The art of digging deep

TED has popularised the art of presenting big ideas. What gets easily overlooked is how another art is even more essential to a great TED talk: the art of digging deep.

This is the art of not only identifying the stones but actually picking them up and looking under. The art of scratching our heads and asking further. The art of looking for answers as opposed to stopping at the questions. So that we arrive at ideas that don’t just look big but actually are big.

For this, it’s not enough to copy the looks of a TED talk: the structure, the storytelling, the stage layout, the timing. That’s just the surface.

A big idea is not in how the idea looks.

A big idea is in what it inspires. What it changes. Such as a fundamental change of perspective.

More often than not, these ideas originate in the mud and dirt. By digging deep. And getting your fingers dirty.

People on the TED stage are standing there because they have an important story to tell. One that originates from doing the work. Sweating the details. Looking beyond the obvious. Asking the questions and looking for answers.

The problem with our world of inspirational TED-like speeches is that it’s copying the looks of a great TED speech while missing the work that precedes it. These people copy the TED part but not the digging deep part.

Yet, digging deep is the most reliable way of arriving at a big idea talk. Dig deep and do the work. And then, tell a true story about what you worked out.

This is how you light the path.

Applause is seductive

Getting applause for your talk and having an impact are two very different goals for a presentation.

A good round of applause feels great. That’s for sure. But the enthusiasm of the moment is no guarantee that your message will stick. Or that it changes a mind.

Even worse: applause is seductive. When you get some, you want more. When you get a lot, you want even more. And it’s quite possible that you do because once you get the hang of it, you’ll have a good sense of what makes your audience cheer for you. The temptation to strive for that applause is not a small one.

And yet, the talks that resonate the most are often the ones that cause the audience to become quiet. Pause. Reflect upon what they just heard.

Applause and impact are by no means mutually exclusive, but they also don’t necessarily come together. Faced with the choice, I’d always prefer the talk that makes a difference rather than the one that makes for a good round of applause.

But let’s look at it from a different perspective: If the audience is still resonating with our talk a month – or a year – after … because that talk made a profound difference in their life … now, that’s a reason to be really proud of.

First things first

How can I surprise my audience? How can I make my slides more punchy? How can my gestures reinforce what I’m saying? How can I involve the audience?

No doubt, these are all valid questions. But only after we have answered an even more important question: What change are we trying to make? Where does our audience come from and where are we leading them? What do they believe before the talk and what do they believe afterwards?

Because only the answers to these questions enable me to identify what kind of surprise will grab my audience’s attention. What kind of punch will hold their attention. What kind of involvement will incite action.

A wow effect is a means to achieve an aha effect. The better you understand what exactly the aha looks like from your audience’s perspective, the better you’ll be able to identify the kind of wow that leads them to that aha.

“We need this chart to have more bang”

And so the graphics department makes a 3D version of the chart. Because 3D looks cool, you know. But the problem is that the cost for this kind of bang is clarity. And the currency is trust.

3D sounds cool and (sometimes) looks cool. But never does it increase clarity. Not a single time. Every single 3D chart is harder to read than its 2D equivalent (as long as we are talking about 2D data, of course).

In essence, there is only one reason why 3D effects in charting software exists. And that is to sell charting software. Software sells better when it has more features that sound cool. But just because a feature exists, doesn’t mean that you have to use it.

When you want a chart to have more bang, it’s much more useful to ask yourself what’s wrong with the data rather than with the visualisation. Real bang comes from relevance rather than appearance. The currency is still trust. Only this time the cost is work.

It’s the wrongness that gets our attention

We learn theory in order to be right but the coolest part that gets your attention is the wrongness. – Victor Wooten

We can give an amazing speech by doing all the right things. In fact, that’s exactly what most people strive for when preparing for an important speech such as a keynote or a big product launch. They try to get everything right.

Only that it’s not the rightness that gets our attention but the wrongness. Because all the other great speeches do all the right things, too. Because right never hurts. Because right never breaks our expectations. Right is just, well, right.

But when there’s a wrong note, our audiences take notice. Their expectations are broken. Their curiosity kicks in. Their figuring-out-what-comes-next brain-mode is ignited.

That’s why the great speeches that you recall right now, when I ask you to think of one, are precisely the ones that didn’t do everything in order.

It’s exactly like world-class bass player Victor Wooten describes it when he continues with the above quote:

When I just played the right notes, that’s “cool, cool!”. But if I want you to go “oooooh”, I stick a wrong note in there. So, the coolest notes are the wrong ones.

I urge you to watch the full interview and also listen to the musical examples (this part starts at the 5 minute mark). It’s well worth your time.

Are you unavoidable or irresistible?

A lot of marketing advice these days focuses around becoming unavoidable. Being so present in the market that people can’t avoid you because your messages are present everywhere.

But, of course, being seen in a noisy world like ours is quite the challenge. Unsurprisingly, common marketing advice is that in order to be seen, you need to publish a lot. On as many channels as you can. So, in essence, to stay on top of the noise. If others publish a lot, you publish even more.

I think it’s much better to become irresistible instead. To make each of your messages so strong that people will be drawn to it regardless of their volume.

The most important shift that happens is that it’s not about the medium anymore but about people. While you can dominate a medium on sheer volume (though it’s unlikely because the next guy who is willing to turn up the volume even more, is right around the corner), the same is not true for people. Quite the opposite. Sooner or later people will just tune out if they feel overwhelmed by volume.

Instead of more, focus on intense! At least if it’s people you care about.

The kind of presentation I would want to listen to

A lot of presentations feel like the kind of thing that the speaker didn’t want to prepare but had to.

A much better approach would be to prepare a presentation so that it becomes the presentation your audience would want to listen to even if they didn’t have to.

SEARCH

Explore

Work with me

Connect

SUBSCRIBE