What Do You Mean, No PowerPoint?

I had an interesting conversation with a coworker this morning about ways to differentiate oneself during presentations by not giving the same old text-heavy PowerPoint presentation that most people fall back on. What we started wondering was, what would one do if they were told no PowerPoint was allowed in a presentation? How would one combine the presentation styles of days of old (before PPT) with innovative approaches that would set them apart.

I'm a big fan of Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullets blog and firmly believe that PowerPoint should be a supporting tool for presentations, not simply a means to project every word one plans to say. But, I wonder how much more attentive prospects and customers would be if we dropped the PowerPoint presentation altogether and did something completely different?

Does anyone have any creative ideas for how they would drive a presentation in the absence of PowerPoint? Anything you have done, witnessed or thought of? Leave your ideas as a comment on this post and I'll summarize in a future post.

Comments

[johnza]

Something we do all the time is push for an "in-a-nutshell" slide for all the pitches we give and see. And frankly if you can figure this simple story "in a nutshell" then you can give it on a whiteboard, on a napkin, or with just words. It centers around two simple formulae - the ABCs and the XYZs. It goes like this:

THE WHY- The case for being interested
A: The situation we see
B: The opportunity/challenge inherent in that situation
C: The insight we had and the thing we are motivated to do to transcend that situation and meet the challenge/opportunity

THE WHAT - The thing that you propose/pitch
X: We are/will be the only X (category)
Y: To solve Y problem (target)
Z: In Z unique way (differentiation)

THE HOW - what is needed to get it done

THE WHEN - call to action/ask

See http://marketingplaybook.com/2004/05/12/marketing_abcstm.html for the ABCs
and
http://marketingplaybook.com/2004/05/14/positioning_xyzs.html for the XYZs

[Chris Michael]

Look at MindManager www.mindjet.com