Sales Graphics Blog

After multiple years of consecutive growth, BIO has proven that they are a strong cable channel serious about story and narrative. A&E and BIO’s SVP of Marketing, Guy Slatterly, won CableFAXIE’s Marketer of the Year Award in 2009 when the channel grew an impressive 23 percent. And then there’s the fact that BIO is consistently nominated for (and is a frequent winner of) the most outstanding nonfiction series in the Emmys.

As the company that makes upfront presentations for A&E, Bio, Lifetime, and History Channel (snippet from the BIO presentation pictured above), we wish the channel and their sales team continued success both on air and in day-to-day meetings.

We’ve all suffered through it at some point in our lives –a presentation design overloaded with text, bullet points, and extraneous data. Every slide turns into a slowly-ticking hour hand, taking countless minutes of our precious time. We all know that dull, text-saturated presentations are huge pitfalls for a company, but now we’ve got proof that excellent presentation design can actually increase attention, improve cognition, and help drive your point home. Here are a few cold hard facts that show how (and why) effective presentation design makes a difference:

1. We found that moving animation enhances product recall, perceived product values in terms of the hedonic and utilitarian dimensions, and attitude toward products that are high on the hedonic dimension,” says Yee-Lin Lai Kuan in The Effects of Moving Animation on Recal, Hedonic and Utiliatrian Perceptions and Attitude.
2. According to Judy Meyers’ “The Color of Learning” in the AP Science Database, colors aid in the process of remembering.  Color also encourages specific feelings and have particular associations.  Yellow, for example, is associated with youth.
3. Graphics make apparent the things that would take much longer to discern from heavy text or sprawling spreadsheets.
4. Based on a claim made by the U.S Department of Labor OSHA Office of Training and Education, “…retention of information three days after a meeting or other event is six times greater when information is presented by visual and oral means than when the information is presented by the spoken word alone.”
5. Animations can either augment or distract, but the difference is in how the animation is executed.  Research shows that relevant stimuli that highlight points of influence are effective, while haphazard visuals tend to create equally disorganized memories in the mind.  Long story short, animation is good, but it must be integrated strategically.

We gave a 6-minute presentation at L2′s Innovation Forum on November 5th at the Morgan Library. The title was “Bespoke Presentations” and we focused first on how most corporate presentations don’t live up to the rest of the brand visually. One question to ask is, “Do your company’s presentations look as good as your advertising?”

We also discussed how making presentations look good isn’t enough. Companies need to use technology to make sure that information and brand elements are kept up to date across the organization. Sales teams need to be able to customize presentations for each meeting, and they need to be able to deliver presentations on multiple platforms such as laptop, Web, and iPad. Finally, we showed examples of how we help our customers achieve these goals.

Watch our presentation here, and check out videos of other speakers here.

USA Network: Characters Welcome

USA Network asked us to design their Upfront presentation to match their on-air brand. Using our CustomShow® presentation software, we were able to bring their characters to life inside each slide. The presentation included interactive nagivation and a wide selection of videos.

If your company uses Web meetings, you already know what would make them better: HD video, full-screen transitions between slides, mixing slides from different presentations, a preview of the next slide, no need to launch a separate application to host meetings, and lower cost than the competition. We’ve been hard at work making all of these things happen — right from CustomShow!

The new browser-based interface for CustomShow Web meetings

Here’s what makes our Web meetings exciting:

HD video: CustomShow now lets you present full-screen video to your audience over the Web.

Full-screen transitions between slides: Existing Web meeting software translates your PowerPoint slides into a low-quality experience that stutters and stalls. CustomShow Web meetings offer a high-quality experience that looks every bit as great as being in the same room.

Mixing slides from different presentations: CustomShow makes it easy to pull slides from multiple places into a single Web meeting. No more switching between applications or launching files while your audience watches.

Preview of the next slide: It’s easy to forget what’s coming next in the heat of the moment. CustomShow displays the next slide before your audience sees it, so you never have to wonder.

Single app: Part of what makes existing Web meeting software so frustrating is that it’s a separate application. CustomShow is your presentation software, and now it’s also your Web meeting software. There’s no difference, there’s nothing else to launch, and it works smoothly.

Less expensive than the competition: We’ve priced our Web meetings significantly below existing Web meeting products.

We’ll be posting more info soon, and please feel free to contact us immediately for more info.

Thank you to the Fitting Group, who is featuring our CustomShow presentation software in Challenger Brand News this week. We are indeed going up against Goliath in the form of Microsoft PowerPoint. The good news is that no one loves PowerPoint, everyone simply tolerates it.

As mentioned in the article, we’ve been able to convince major brands to switch to CustomShow. Our customers include “DIRECTV, CNN, Bravo, The New Yorker, A&E, ELLE, The Wall Street Journal and Dior. And that’s just the short list.”

Here’s what Challenger Brand News has to say about CustomShow:

Beyond being dazzling, CustomShow sports a number of boons. On the one hand, it allows control over the information being presented in a way that ensures that the company’s brand guidelines are consistent. But on the other, it allows quick and easy customization of presentations to permit flexibility.

More than anything, CustomShow is a presentation program for a world with a short attention span and high visual expectations.

And they don’t even mention our new Web meeting capability, which plays high-definition video smoothly. You can find the entire Challenger Brand article here.

Sales Graphics is proud to be the presentation sponsor for the LuxuryLab’s first-ever Innovation Forum this Friday. To register for this event, click here. Held at TheTimesCenter, the forum will host thought leaders who will share never-seen-before research, trends, best practices, and a passion for ideas. A range of speakers will give presentations which will leave attendees with a well-rounded understanding of the current crossroads between media, technology and luxury.

BusinessWeek contributor and communications coach Carmine Gallo has a interesting article and book about how Steve Jobs creates such effective and engaging presentations. Many of the tips that Gallo reveals from his study of Jobs’ presentations are things that Sales Graphics’ DesignStudio has been putting into practice for years—especially designing slides that are”devoid of bullet points”. Easier said than done, but simple, focused slide design results in effective presentations and clear communications.

Sales Graphics was honored today as a Finalist for the 2009 American Business Awards for Interactive/Multimedia Sales Presentations and Sales Videos. The projects nominated as finalists were the NBC News Upfront Presentation, the Glamour.TV Sales Video and the Glamour Reel Moments Video.

It’s nice when a institution of higher learning validates what you’ve known all along. In this case, Harvard Business School posted a short piece titled “When Video Beats PowerPoint” that pretty much makes the case for what Sales Graphics’ DesignStudio has been doing for over a decade! A presentation is a unique opportunity to engage your audience with more than written words (if all you needed was words, you could have sent an email). Video, animation, music and interactivity are all tools that can be used effectively to engage viewers and involve them in the story you’re telling.