The Art of the Pitch by Peter Coughter

The Art of the

Pitch

The Art of the

Pitch

Persuasion and Presentation

Skills That Win Business

PETER COUGHTER

An Advertising Age Publication

the art of the pitch

First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United

States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New

York, NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the

world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers

Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,

Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above

companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United

States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Coughter, Peter.

The art of the pitch : persuasion and presentation skills that win

business / by Peter Coughter.

p. cm.

“An Advertising Age Publication.”

1. Business presentations. 2. Persuasion (Psychology) I. Title.

HF5718.22.C68 2012

658.4’52—dc23

2011023387

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Letra Libre Inc.

First edition: January 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Top photo on page 144 and both photos on page 145 courtesy of Avery

Oldﬁeld; bottom photo page 144 courtesy Marc Andrew Stephens.

ISBN 978-0-230-12051-8 ISBN 978-1-137-51233-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-51233-8

For Cynthia

Contents

Foreword by Akira Kagami ix

Introduction 1

Chapter One Everything Is a Presentation 7

Chapter Two It’s Not about You 27

With contributions from Bill Westbrook and James P. Othmer

Chapter Three

How We Connect 51

With a contribution from Jeff Goodby

Chapter Four

The Power of Emotion 69

With a contribution from Mike Hughes

Chapter Five

How to Be 83

With contributions from Darren Moran,

Chris Jacobs, and Lance Jensen

Chapter Six

Authenticity 111

With contributions from Gareth Kay,

Alex Bogusky, and Hal Curtis

The Art of the Pitch

viii

Chapter Seven

Death by Deck 131

With contributions from Bruce Bildsten and Mark Fenske

Chapter Eight

Organizing the Presentation 151

With a contribution from Anne Bologna

Chapter Nine

Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse 165

With contributions from Peter Krivkovich, Darren

Moran, Pam Scott, John Butler, and Sally Hogshead

Chapter Ten

Punctuation 189

With contributions from Cindy Gallop and Don Just

Chapter Eleven

You Never Know 213

With contributions from Jeffrey Steinhour and Andy Grayson

Afterword

Standing Up 225

Acknowledgments 231

Notes 235

Index 237

Foreword

’ve never met another teacher like Peter-san.

Presentation is a skill. To advance in the skill, we often

resort to a formula of techniques. Because in one sense, to

teach is to shape someone into a model, and that at a glance is

most efﬁcient.

But Peter-san’s method is different.

What he demonstrated in our students was how to draw out

their individual characteristics and let them discover their ability

on their own.

Peter-san does not “teach.”

“Presentation isn’t only about words”—that is one of Peter-

san’s points. But can an American teacher educate a Japanese, in

a Japanese-language presentation? Impossible? The results were

amazing. The presentation skills of the Japanese participants im-

proved dramatically.

The Art of the Pitch

Peter-san’s method extends beyond country and language

boundaries.

Finally, the most important fact of all is that what we learned

from Peter-san lasts.

We easily forget what we are taught, but it’s hard to forget

what we discover on our own. Our students still retain in their

hearts what Peter-san helped them to realize.

So the way I see it, Peter-san is not a teacher, he is a guide to

discoveries. Doshi is a Japanese word for a person who guides

another, a guru.

I think the word suits him. Thank you, Peter-Doshi.

—Akira Kagami, executive ofﬁcer and global

executive creative director, Dentsu Inc.

The Art of the

Pitch

Introduction

Richmond, Virginia

October 1975

ohn Siddall, Stanley Matus, and I started an ad agency. I was

28 years old and the youngest member of the group. We were

all smart, creative, and determined to succeed. We had no idea

what we didn’t know. If we’d known how hard it was going to be,

we never would have done it. But we didn’t, so we did.

John and I were what is now known as “creatives,” and

Stanley was an account guy. He even owned a suit.

Most agencies get started with a “vest pocket” account, a piece

of business that one of the principals brings to the new agency

from his or her former employer. We had no such accounts. We

did have a couple of very small pieces of business that I had been

doing creative work for on a freelance basis, but they were tiny

and weren’t going to support three families. In fact, it was our

wives who supported the three families.

The Art of the Pitch

We had to get some real business. But we had no idea how

that was done. Cold calling companies in the Yellow Pages

wasn’t working. Sending letters to every company in the Red

Book wasn’t working. (Back in the day, the Red Book listed

client companies and their agencies, with names, titles, phone

numbers, mailing addresses, etc. The Internet wasn’t even a

gleam in anyone’s eye at that moment.) And contacting people

we knew, or had worked with, or maybe met in a bar, wasn’t

working.

But then, Reston, a new town being developed by the Gulf Oil

Corporation in Fairfax County, Virginia, decided to review their

advertising agency relationship. Because of John’s experience on

the account at his previous agency, we were given a courtesy invi-

tation to the ﬁrst round of presentations. We would be up against

the incumbent, Cargill Wilson & Acree, an agency that virtually

invented creative advertising in the South, which had earlier been

bought by Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), who virtually invented

creative advertising, period. Thrown into the mix were some big

big-name New York agencies and the Washington, D.C., ofﬁces of

yet more big big-name New York agencies. Everyone wanted this

business. We needed the business.

And that’s why we won the business.

It took several rounds of eliminations, multiple campaigns,

countless hours of lost sleep, months of work, more than a few

prayers, and a lot of presentations.

INTRODUCTION

But when the dust settled, we had won. We had beaten some

of the best in the business. All of who had considerably greater

resources than us. All of who were, presumably, a more logical

choice than three guys with no accounts, no ofﬁces, no employees,

and one suit among them.

That was the moment I learned the power of presentation.

The power of making an emotional connection with the audience,

convincing that audience that wanting the business, and the will-

ingness to do anything necessary to win the business, were reason

enough to hire us. Simply having the best work, the best ideas,

wouldn’t have been enough.

Admittedly, it took a brave client, and if it weren’t for their

regard for John, we wouldn’t have been in the room in the ﬁrst

place. But when the lights came on, we had to deliver. Being com-

petitive wasn’t enough. We had to be compelling. We had to con-

vince experienced business people working for a division of one

of the largest oil companies in the world that instead of one of the

“brand names” in American advertising, they should hire three

guys nobody had ever heard of.

And that’s what we did.

In the years that followed, we ﬁne-tuned our approach, be-

coming better and better at presenting. We knew that was the

key to our success. In fact, it’s the key to success in virtually every

business. We went on to win hundreds and hundreds of creative

awards, many of them on the Reston account, but we wouldn’t

The Art of the Pitch

have won any of them if we hadn’t ﬁrst won the business, and

then learned how to sell our ideas.

The power of effective presentation was very clear to me, and

I realized that even though I was the youngest and least experi-

enced of the partners, this was where I could make a signiﬁcant

contribution.

We became a new business machine, winning competitions for

business over agencies that were much larger and, possibly, more

qualiﬁed. Not every time to be sure, but enough of the time to

grow to become one of the signiﬁcant agencies in the Southeast.

I learned that, regardless of the competition, if we could make

what occurred in that room for two hours become the determin-

ing factor in the decision, we could beat people who should have

crushed us.

Once we had the account, we worked every bit as hard to per-

suade our clients to produce the work that we created.

I learned how to design an effective presentation and then

how to give it. Over time, we streamlined our approach to the

point where I gave most of the new business presentations by my-

self. That’s not the way it’s usually done, but it worked for us.

I learned a lot in my twenty years at Siddall, Matus &

Coughter. And I’ve never stopped learning. Today, I teach at the

VCU Brandcenter, a graduate program in communications at

Virginia Commonwealth University, and work with outside cli-

ents through my consulting company, Coughter & Company.

Insurance executives in Illinois, creative directors in Toronto, ad

INTRODUCTION

folks in Japan, or students in Richmond, Virginia, all have some-

thing to teach me.

Whether it’s a young creative director from Chicago attend-

ing one of our Executive Education programs who demonstrates

brilliantly the power of a slide show fully in alignment with the

few words he chooses to speak. Or a team of Japanese execu-

tives, who while presenting a campaign for pet food, recognizing

that the judges don’t speak Japanese and that they don’t speak

English, choose to speak “Pet,” thereby hilariously persuading the

audience that their approach will be most effective with pets. Or

a student from my class who, with only a balloon, explains the

intricacies of climate change. Or a Los Angeles-based art director

tearfully thanking me because “I’m not afraid anymore.”

Each of them has discovered the power within themselves.

They have learned that they already know all they need to know

in order to communicate effectively. They have only to unlock it

from within themselves. I’ve just helped them ﬁnd the key.

We easily forget what we are taught, but we remember what

we discover on our own.

Since 1995, between teaching, training, and consulting with

companies looking for ad agencies, I’ve witnessed 10,000 presen-

tations. Maybe more.

I’ve taught somewhere around 4,000 people. When you add

the 20 years I spent at Siddall, Matus & Coughter, I am well be-

yond Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hours Rule.” But as I said, I

keep learning, which is the key to teaching.

The Art of the Pitch

I’ve been blessed to work with some of the smartest agencies

and ﬁnest people in the ﬁeld of advertising. My clients include

Barbarian Group, BBDO, Boone/Oakley, Brunner, Butler Shine

Stern & Partners, Campbell Ewald, Capstrat, Clear Channel

Communications, Cole Weber United, Cramer-Krasselt, Crispin

Porter + Bogusky, DDB, Dentsu, Draft FCB, Erwin Penland, Euro

RSCG, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, GSD&M, Hill Holliday,

IPG, JWT, Leo Burnett, Modea, McKinney, Ogilvy, Publicis, Royall

& Company, SandersWingo, Sid Lee, State Farm Insurance, Stone

& Ward, StrawberryFrog, TAXI, The Martin Agency, Y&R, and

many others.

I’ve also been fortunate enough to work with people in eco-

nomic development, recruitment, real estate development, law, in-

vestment banking, private equity, banking, and architecture. Even

basketball coaches and athletic directors on the Nike campus.

See? Everyone needs to learn how to connect. To learn how

to make themselves understood. To persuade someone that their

ideas are the right ideas.

I believe that all great ideas deserve a chance to live.

So let’s get started.

ONE

Everything Is a

Presentation

presentation | noun

1. The proffering or giving of something to someone, esp. as part

of a formal ceremony: the presentation of certiﬁcates to new

members | the trophy presentations.

a. the manner or style in which something is given, offered,

or displayed: the presentation of foods is designed to

stimulate your appetite.

hat is a presentation? We can see how the diction-

ary deﬁnes the word above. I like “the proffering or

giving of something to someone . . .”—like a gift.

That’s a cool way to think about a presentation. And I particu-

larly like the next part, “the manner or style in which something is

given, offered, or displayed: the presentation of foods is designed

The Art of the Pitch

to stimulate your appetite.” That’s what we want people to feel,

isn’t it? Stimulated. So we want to offer people a gift. Something

that will stimulate their appetites for more.

We could say that our ideas are the gift, but I prefer to think of

it in another way—we are the gift. We are giving ourselves to our

audience. We’re giving them the product of our thoughts, efforts,

and personality.

We’re giving them who we are. We’re telling them our truth.

That’s our gift to them.

Most people don’t think about presenting, or giving a pre-

sentation, in that way. But that’s the way we should think about

it—after all, we “give” a presentation, don’t we?

Most people think about giving a presentation as a chore. As

something difﬁcult that they’d really rather not have to do, some-

thing to be avoided at all costs. In fact, part of why people think

about presenting the wrong way is that they equate presenting

with the dreaded “public speaking.” I say dreaded, because in

every poll ever taken of Americans’ greatest fears, Number One is

public speaking. Ahead of death. Every time.

But a presentation isn’t “public speaking.” It isn’t getting up

on the steps of the Forum and delivering a stentorian address. It

isn’t a debate. It isn’t making a speech. It’s a conversation. Only

you’re doing most of the talking. The trick is to understand that

you are simply talking with your audience, sharing your thoughts.

You’re not arguing. You’re not selling. You’re having a conversa-

tion. You’re giving them a gift.

EVERYTHING IS A PRESENTATION

You’re Always Being Judged

It’s all a presentation. I mean this. Sitting down with your boss

for a little “chat” is a presentation. Going out for beers with your

colleagues is a presentation. Obviously, an interview is a presenta-

tion, but so is meeting your boyfriend’s family.

In each case, people are judging you. They’re sizing you up.

There may be a lot more on the line in one situation than there is

in another, but they’re still all presentations. People are forming

opinions of you, opinions that are hard to change.

Often these opinions are formed when you least expect it.

For the ﬁrst eleven years of its existence, the VCU Brandcenter

was located downtown in a building with a fair amount of foot

trafﬁc passing by every day.

I would often stand outside and chat with a gentleman who

worked upstairs from us for the Department of Transportation.

He was a terriﬁc guy and a lot of fun to talk with. One day he

said to me, “This new crop of students seems a lot better than last

year’s.” I was somewhat surprised to hear him say that, and even

though it seemed he had no way of forming that opinion since

he had never set foot in one of our classrooms, I asked why he

thought that. “Because they don’t block the sidewalk the way the

kids did last year. If anyone is walking along, they get out of the

way. They’re courteous,” he replied.

Someone is always evaluating you. Everything is a presentation.

The Art of the Pitch

Regardless of the situation or the stakes, I suggest that you

think about presenting as an opportunity. An opportunity to

share your thoughts with your audience—to give them the gift of

you. Whether it’s one person across a table in a cubicle or a ball-

room full of automobile dealers in Las Vegas. It’s an opportunity

to share yourself with them.

In most business settings, presentations are team affairs. And

that requires a different approach—there’s a group of you, after

all, and the group is going to have to come together to ﬁrst agree

on exactly what it is that they want the audience to take away

and, secondly, how they’re going to accomplish that. Each person

on the team will be required to contribute to the total team ar-

gument. Each person should be “cast” for the particular skill or

style that she brings to the team. And while the team has to carry

the day, each individual speaker will have to pull her weight if the

team is to prevail. This is accomplished principally through the

process of rehearsal. We’ll talk a lot more about this in a subse-

quent chapter, but we still shouldn’t change our mindset of deliv-

ering a gift to the audience. It’s just being presented by the team

and not one individual. When you think about it that way, you’re

on the path to giving a great presentation.

Dollar Signs

Why is it so important to be a great presenter? What’s the big deal?

EVERYTHING IS A PRESENTATION

Why should I spend so much time and effort trying to do this

when I’m good enough right now?

Because good enough isn’t good enough. Because good

enough will leave you in the middle of the pack. It will not get

you to the head of the pack. It won’t get you noticed, promoted,

and compensated.

There, I said it, compensated.

There are lots of obvious reasons to want to get better at pre-

senting, but one thing that almost no one mentions whenever I

ask them why we’re working on presenting, is this—money.

The ﬁrst time I ever went to Crispin Porter + Bogusky, they

hadn’t yet opened a Boulder, Colorado, ofﬁce. Everyone was still

in Coconut Grove in Florida. It was a little after 9:00 a.m., and

I was starting my workshop by asking the group, “Why are we

working on becoming better presenters?”

Jeff Steinhour, then one of the agency partners and the head of

Content Management (think Account Management), now presi-

dent of the agency, was sitting in the room with 12 folks from the

agency. It was my ﬁrst workshop there, and he wanted to see what

he had gotten his agency and his people into.

I asked the group, “Why are we doing this? Why are we

spending two days trying to put on better presentations?”

I got a series of answers, all of them “right,” but none of them

the one I was looking for. So I went to the front of the room and

I drew a giant dollar sign on my ﬂip chart. I was a little bit afraid

The Art of the Pitch

of appearing to be overly mercenary with an agency known for its

creative commitment, but I drew it anyway.

At which point, Steinhour stood up and yelled, “Fucking A!”

Here’s how it works.

If we sell the idea the ﬁrst time, that work has a much better

chance of being great. I don’t care if you’re in advertising, archi-

tecture, or investment banking. If you’re dependent upon a client

approving your ideas, the ﬁrst one you show them is the one that

has a chance to be great. It’s the idea that has a chance to increase

business and win awards, which, I believe, is good for everyone

concerned.

But if we don’t sell it the ﬁrst time, if we have to go back and

redo it, that costs the agency real money. Given today’s tight bud-

gets and tough compensation agreements, it’s highly likely that

the client won’t be paying for the “redo.”

Furthermore, if we sell the work the ﬁrst time—the work that

the agency believes is the right solution to the client’s business

problem—it is very likely that the work will, in fact, work, and

the client will reap the rewards. More money.

TAKE NOTE

I believe that the most important job of the account leader, which is, I

think, the toughest job in the agency, is to convince the client that great

work is the key to success. That great work works better than good work.

And that she should insist on great work from her agency.

EVERYTHING IS A PRESENTATION

And ﬁnally, if we sell the work, we become winners. We’re

the one the agency wants out there selling more work. To more

clients. And in new business pitches. And guess what? We make

more money.

It is a fact of agency life that, with very few exceptions, the

highest paid people in the agency are the best presenters. Think of

your shop. It’s true, isn’t it?

You’ve got to get as good as you can possibly get at present-

ing. Your career depends upon it. John Adams, the CEO of The

Martin Agency, one of the industry’s ﬁnest leaders and a fantastic

presenter himself, once said to me, “I think the single most impor-

tant skill anyone can have at this agency is the ability to present.”

Every summer, the Brandcenter sends students who have com-

pleted their ﬁrst year of study to agencies all over the world for in-

ternships. The students learn up close from some of the industry’s

brightest. When I ask them about their experiences, it is remark-

able how many times I hear the following: “You know I worked

with so and so this summer, and he’s supposed to be a great cre-

ative director, but I didn’t think he was really that creative.” “I

see,” I say, “but what was he really good at?” “He was an amaz-

ing presenter,” they answer.

Do an Ad for Your Ads

Arguably the biggest complaint I hear from creatives at agencies

all over the country is, “I can’t get anything produced.” How do

The Art of the Pitch

you think you get to be a famous creative director? You get your

work produced. And the only way you get it produced is by con-

vincing the client that it’s the right answer to their problem.

Here’s a useful way to think about convincing the client that

your ideas are right: Do an ad for your ads. It just doesn’t matter

how good the idea is unless you can persuade the person on the

other side of the table to feel the same way. Whether that’s your

executive creative director, the client, a new business prospect,

or whoever. You’ve got to help them get it. Whether you’re a

writer, art director, planner, technologist, or an account person,

it doesn’t matter, you’re a creative person in a creative industry.

You and your team have spent as much time as you could get

working on your idea. Yet most agencies talk about how to pres-

ent their work in the car on the way to the meeting. It’s true. I’ve

been told exactly that countless times. But there’s a better way.

Take some time and ﬁgure out how to sell it. Apply the same

creativity and energy that went into creating the work to selling

the work. Do an ad for your ads. Give your idea a chance to

live. It’s your baby. You’ve put your heart and soul into it. You

can’t walk into a jump ball situation and leave the outcome up

to whether or not the person on the other side of the table likes

your idea. I don’t care if she likes your idea. I just want her to

understand that it’s the right idea—and that we know what it

takes to achieve the goals of the brand. You’ve got to take con-

trol of the situation and convince her of that. So take at least a

fraction of the time you spent inventing the work and create a

EVERYTHING IS A PRESENTATION

way to sell the work. Put that creativity to work in the name of

creativity. And do an ad for your ads.

What Does an Effective

Presentation Look Like?

Okay, now we know why it’s important to become a great pre-

senter, but how do we do it?

Let’s think about the characteristics of a great presenter and

the presentations she gives.

1. It’s a conversation, only you’re doing most of the talking.

A lot of people have a hard time with this idea. I see it almost

every time I work with folks at an agency. They cling to the

notion that they need to be “different” than they are in “real

life,” because this, after all, is work. And they want to appear

“professional.” What they end up accomplishing is being bor-

ing. When I sit and review presentations in one-on-one meet-

ings with the individuals from the workshops, they are often

appalled at just how boring they are. And boring is the worst

thing a presenter can be. It is the mortal sin of presenting. If

you are boring, you are wasting your audience’s time, and they

will hate you for it. Forget about being “professional,” and

start being yourself. Your authentic self. It shouldn’t feel like

an address on the steps of the Capitol or a speech at a political

convention. Nor should it sound like a lecture. It should sound

The Art of the Pitch

the way you sound when you’re sitting across the table from a

friend in a restaurant.

We’ve all been there. Sitting in a meeting, praying for it to

end while the speaker drones on about something that is ap-

parently important to him, but of no interest to us. It might

have been okay if he wasn’t so stiff, so stilted, so “professional.”

Caught up in his own world. Lecturing us.

Don’t be that guy. I can’t say this strongly enough. Just talk

with us. The best presenters know this, and that’s how they

present.

Now it goes without saying that we will turn up our vol-

ume and intensity depending on the subject and the setting. If

we’re talking with 5,000 auto dealers in Vegas, it’s got to be a

little bigger than when we’re discussing the media plan with two

people across a table. But it’s still a conversation. Just put it into

the proper proportions.

2. Be yourself.

Great presenters do not read their slides. I will talk about this

at greater length later, but let me state it now as well, because it

can’t be said enough.

Great presenters remember that we’re all just human.

We’re going to make some mistakes. There will be some slip-

ups. It’s okay. In fact, really good presenters acknowledge

their mistakes and charm the audience by being so honest

and—human.

EVERYTHING IS A PRESENTATION

In fact, since we’re trying for a conversational style, there

probably SHOULD be some mistakes. I once worked with a

terriﬁc presenter who deliberately built in a certain amount of

fumbling with his words and his props—just to make himself

seem like a “regular” guy. His name was Ace. His audiences

loved him.

I’ve also worked with presenters who were too slick, too

good, too polished, too sure of themselves. They came off as

something less than sincere. This is also a killer. What audiences

want is authenticity. They don’t want a game show host.

What audiences really want, what they will really respond

to is—You. I’ve said it earlier, but I’ll say it again. Be yourself.

The best presenters know that there is no one right way to

do this. There is only one Alex Bogusky, one Sally Hogshead,

one Jeff Goodby. But there’s also only one of you. Find your

own style and exploit it. Work it. Develop it. Find YOUR voice.

Don’t try to sound like anyone else.

A cool way to think of it is this: You’d better be yourself—

everyone else is taken.

3. Tell stories.

It’s become a bit of a cliché, but that’s probably because it’s

true—great presenters tell stories. We all love stories. Stories

that have a beginning, a middle and an end. Stories that grab

our attention right away and hold it all the way to the end. No

one wants to sit through yet another boring regurgitation of

The Art of the Pitch

everything you know about a particular subject. No one wants

to watch and listen as you read from the deck. But everyone

loves a story. It’s arguably the oldest form of entertainment

known to humankind. Since man ﬁrst had language as a means

of communication, we’ve gathered by the ﬁre to hear the sto-

ries of the day, the tales of lives both commonplace and spec-

tacular. Today, when we meet our friends in a restaurant, we

all take turns sharing our stories and we all have a great time

as a result. We need to remember this when it comes time to

present to our client or new business prospect. Make it a story.

Make it fun. Make it human. Make it conversational. Make it

personal. Make it matter.

Get yourself and how you feel about the subject into your

presentations. This is what audiences can relate to and, therefore,

relate to you. That’s the beginning of getting them to say yes.

So think of every presentation as a story and concentrate on

creating a real attention-getting opening and a powerful close.

Take them by the hand and walk them through your story to the

end. That’s where you get what you came for.

4. Know Your Stuff.

Great presenters know their stuff. They haven’t memorized it.

They just know it. They know it so well that they can go any-

where once the presentation starts and know exactly where they

are. They can wander off on a digression if it seems like a good

idea, or if they need to backtrack in order to be sure the au-

EVERYTHING IS A PRESENTATION

dience understands. Nothing will solve as many problems as

knowing your stuff.

Because she knows her stuff so well, the presenter is free to

concentrate on the reason she’s there—the audience. Great pre-

senters are so in tune with their audience that they know exactly

how they are responding. They are listening with their ears and

their eyes. They’re in the moment, right here, right now, totally

focused, yet ready to take advantage of whatever happens in

the room.

Because they know their stuff, great presenters are open

to the unexpected. They just let things happen. And the unex-

pected is often where the fun is. People will ask crazy questions,

make some bizarre statements, and, often, point out something

that is actually very useful. Go with it.

Time and again in my workshops and classroom I ﬁnd my-

self getting into stuff I never planned on discussing. And of-

ten, this is some of the best stuff said in the meeting. This can’t

happen if you’re trying to parrot back something you memo-

rized. And in the most practical sense, if you’re counting on

your memory to conjure up every single word you memorized,

you are doomed. You will forget the words and then not know

where you are or how to get out of it. But if you know the ideas,

you’ll be ﬁne and you won’t be trying to reach back into your

memory and pull out the exact word you memorized. You’ll

simply be able to rely on knowing your stuff and delivering it

to the audience.

The Art of the Pitch

5. Relax and Be Personable.

You’re just talking. Don’t be worried about yourself or trying

to impress anybody. Because you know that the reason you’re

there is to get to “yes.” Great presenters know that it’s the audi-

ence that really counts, so all they’re thinking about is the effect

their words and images are having on that audience.

Be funny. But don’t tell jokes.

Great presenters are humorous—they ﬁnd the humor in

the situations they’re discussing. If you’re really good at telling

jokes, head to open mic night and, who knows, an HBO Special

could be next.

6. Teamwork Counts.

In great presentations, teams present as if they really like one

another. Even if you don’t, ﬁnd a way to at least seem like you

do. Clients can smell it a mile away if you don’t get along, and

they will dismiss you immediately if they sense it.

Once I was serving as a search consultant, helping a client

ﬁnd the best agency for them. At one of the agencies, we got off

the elevator and were met by the CEO and the chief creative of-

ﬁcer. They seemed to be competing to see who could say hello

to us ﬁrst. They then couldn’t decide who would lead us on the

tour of the agency—the all-important Furniture Check.

We eventually got into the conference room, where we

were entertained by their colleagues with a sharp, focused, cre-

EVERYTHING IS A PRESENTATION

atively exciting presentation, complete with all the bells and

whistles.

The two top guys seemed to demonstrate a bit of tension,

but the presentation was terriﬁc. We were handed our beautiful

leave-behind books and escorted to the elevator. When we got

to the bottom, I asked my clients what they thought. Wasn’t that

a terriﬁc presentation? “Yes, it was very good,” they said.

“But if those two guys can’t get along, how are they going

to work on our business?” The apparent conﬂict between those

two individuals became more important than anything else my

clients had seen in two hours. The agency was out of it, right

then and there.

Great teams present seamlessly. The segues are designed to

set up the next presenter.

In fact, segues add to the impact of the presentation by

making it clear that this is an airtight argument that’s being

constructed.

7. Make It Personal.

Great presenters introduce a level of intimacy into their re-

marks in order to build credibility and make a connection.

People respond to people. If a speaker recounts a personal an-

ecdote, the audience often feels a kinship with the presenter

because they relate the story to something that happened in

their own life.

The Art of the Pitch

Great presenters know that, like advertising, presenting is

the art of seduction, not debate. They realize that people make

decisions emotionally. They will rationalize decisions based on

all the facts and ﬁgures, using the objective to help them justify

the decisions they made subjectively. In short, great presenters

know that it’s critical to make the audience FEEL that what

they’re suggesting is the best thing for them.

As Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen and the

blog of the same name, puts it, “you have got to be able

to stand and deliver your story with clarity, conviction and

grace.”

Your message has to be crystal clear. Your audience must

understand exactly what it is that you want them to do or learn.

Present with conviction. If you don’t believe it, why should

they? You’ve asked for the time to present your ideas. Let the

audience see the passion that you have for those ideas. No one

will care until they see how much you do.

And lastly, deliver your message with grace. Realize that it

must be a show. That to really communicate effectively, you’re

going to have to defy conventions and do what YOU believe is

right. But keep it as simple and elegant as possible.

Remember: seduction, not debate.

8. Know Your Audience.

The better you know your audience, the better chance you have

to tell them a story that persuades them.

EVERYTHING IS A PRESENTATION

So know who they are as people, what they like and don’t

like, what they hold dear, what they believe in, what they are

expecting of you and your team, and what their capacity for

courage is.

I’m not saying that you must give them what they like. Not

at all. I’m saying that you must know what they like in order to

give them what they need.

9. Show No Fear.

Everyone gets nervous. Everyone. If they say they don’t, they’re

either lying or they’re sociopaths. The trick is to use the nerves

to trigger adrenaline. Let them lift you up to a higher level. A

better you.

I’ve learned that our nervousness is never transmitted to the

audience in the same proportion that we feel it. In my work-

shops, people will say that they were dying of nerves while pre-

senting, but when the crowd is asked if the presenter seemed

nervous, they almost always seem surprised and say “no.”

People who know about such things have told me that the

physiological changes that occur in the human body when we’re

really excited and really afraid are identical. So go with really

excited. Use the adrenaline.

Forget about the nerves and get on with it.

Most audiences don’t know what to think. If you appear

to be conﬁdent and comfortable with what you are suggesting,

they are likely to feel the same way.

The Art of the Pitch

Remember: audiences tend to mirror the emotions we

express.

10. Rehearse.

You’ve got to know your material and know it cold. Not just

your part. Everyone’s part. But don’t memorize. Know it.

The team must rehearse together. Out loud. It is critical

that everyone on the team hear everything that everyone is

going to say. The team will make it better. The team will have

ideas about restructuring the presentation and recrafting indi-

vidual sections. But that won’t happen if you don’t rehearse

together.

There will be no surprises on the day of the presentation, at

least none caused by members of the team hearing things for the

ﬁrst time. That simply cannot happen.

Everyone on the team, and I mean everyone, must be pres-

ent at all the rehearsals. Don’t let the big boss or a senior vet-

eran off the hook because they’ve done a lot of presenting over

the years or they have a fancy title. If they’re in the presentation,

they’re in the rehearsal.

You’ll win a lot more if you simply rehearse.

Remember, the appearance of spontaneity is the product of

preparation.

“We practiced so much, it became natural. An ironic truth,”

says Peter Ignazi, co-executive creative director, BBDO Toronto.

EVERYTHING IS A PRESENTATION

11. Know why you’re there.

The team must agree up front on exactly what it is they are

trying to achieve with their presentation. So that every step of

the way, as each teammate stands to present, they are reinforc-

ing that purpose, foreshadowing the conclusion. Nothing is

included in any segment of the presentation that doesn’t lead

exactly to what you are there for. Keeping this in mind through-

out the crafting, design, and delivery of the presentation is of

paramount importance, both to the individual performances of

the members of the team, and the overall impact of the presen-

tation. I see way too many presentations in which it is obvious

that the members of the team, in fact sometimes the entire team

is only there to get though the deck without getting hurt. They

have clearly lost sight of why they are there. Never let that hap-

pen. Knowing why you’re there, and keeping it foremost in your

mind while delivering your portion of the presentation, will also

serve to keep you on track. Even if you momentarily lose your

way, just return to the big ideas you’re there to present. Since

you haven’t memorized the material, you won’t get hung up on

the words and can simply discuss the ideas.

TWO

It’s Not about You

he most important factor in the equation of presenting is

the audience. Most people ﬁnd this idea surprising, but

without the audience, there is no presentation. This is a

very important concept, and one that many folks fail to grasp. That

deck you put together isn’t a presentation. Your carefully crafted

speech isn’t a presentation. Nor is that pile of ads a presentation.

There is no presentation until we introduce the audience into

that equation. Whether they are there in the same room with you,

on the phone, or on a video hook-up, without the audience, there

is no presentation. You see, you have a symbiotic relationship

with the audience. Without them, there’s nothing for you to do.

Without you, they have no reason for being there. So you’re de-

pendent upon one another to pull this thing off.

But understandably enough, most people are so busy worry-

ing about themselves that they don’t think about it that way.

The Art of the Pitch

we should put ourselves

in the audience’s seats and ask

ourselves the following questions:

UÊ What do you like about presentations?

UÊ What do you hate?

UÊ What sort of thing would you ﬁnd interesting and

entertaining?

UÊ What would you ﬁnd boring?

Remember, most people ﬁnd most presentations boring.

So don’t be boring. Have some compassion for the crowd and

ask yourself, would I ﬁnd this interesting? Would this hold my

interest?

Okay, back to the audience. It’s always, always about the

audience. Don’t forget that. We’re going to exercise some compas-

sion and screen each of our ideas, indeed, everything we say and

show, through the “boring prism.” If you would ﬁnd it boring,

or if it reminds you of a presentation that you found particularly

boring, take it out. If it isn’t absolutely critical to your argument,

take it out. If you need it to build your case, but it’s boring, ﬁnd

a way to talk about it that isn’t boring. For example, instead of

discussing a demographic target for a particular product or brand

with numbers, charts, and lots of type on the screen, you could

substitute images of the target demographic that show them living

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

their lives, while you describe them in your “voiceover.” Maybe

it needs to be explained visually. Maybe you can come up with

some interesting language to explain the idea in an unexpected

way. Whatever you do, you cannot be boring. Would you like to

sit through another boring presentation? No? Then why should

your audience have to?

Ruthless Exclusion

In almost every presentation I see, there is at least one “WTF?”

moment when I am wondering why the person is talking about

a particular subject or point. It doesn’t seem to be adding to the

argument. It isn’t going anywhere, but I can tell that the presenter

ﬁnds this interesting. It isn’t helping to get the team what they

want; in fact, it’s becoming an obstacle between them and what

they want. So it must come out. We call this ruthless exclusion,

and we all need to keep it in mind all the time. If it ain’t helping,

it’s going.

We need to understand that every single thing we say must be

contributing to the argument we’re trying to make. Every thought

we utter must be a plank in our platform, a brick in our wall. If it

isn’t, it must be excised. That means edited—out.

Yet I see it all the time. Everybody has good ideas at some

point in time. But if it isn’t the right time, it doesn’t matter. Take

it out.

The Art of the Pitch

White Space

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub,

It is the centre hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel,

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room,

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore proﬁt comes from what is there,

Usefulness from what is not there.

—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

These words were written over 2,500 years ago. Yet they are as

germane today as when the Chinese philosopher ﬁrst wrote them.

This is one of the hardest lessons of all for presenters.

Artists of every kind have struggled with it for centuries.

While we’re familiar with Michelangelo’s claim that “It is

easy. You just chip away everything that doesn’t look like David,”

most of us don’t remember this from him: “Beauty is the purga-

tion of superﬂuities.”

There is where elegance lies. In the removal of everything that

is superﬂuous.

Dizzy Gillespie said, “It’s taken me all my life to learn what

not to play.”

This is the lesson we must learn now if we are going to be-

come great presenters. Maybe nothing else is as important.

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

I said earlier that my goal is for you to communicate with

Clarity, Conviction, and Grace. Perhaps the most important step

in accomplishing that is to understand the importance of what to

leave in and what to leave out. In layout and design we call what

we leave out “white space,” and the term applies here perfectly.

If we were laying out an ad, we wouldn’t use up all the avail-

able space with type and photos. We would leave white space to

create an aesthetically pleasing message.

Then why, when it comes time to create and deliver a presen-

tation do we cram so much information, data, type, images, ideas,

and slides into it?

For some reason unknown to us, when it comes time to create

and deliver a presentation, we stop being artists. We stop practic-

ing the discipline that got us where we are in our careers. This

applies to architects and urban planners as much as it does to

creative directors. Everybody does it. We turn off any sense of

creativity, any awareness of the craft we use in our jobs, and turn

into left-brained, analytical, data-dumping automatons.

I suppose this is because we actually believe that more is more

even though we all learned a long time ago that it isn’t.

For the most part, we say too much. Because we haven’t taken

the time to ﬁgure out what’s really important, but also because

we think that we need to show the audience how much we know

about a particular subject. We think the audience will like our

presentation if it’s packed with facts. It’s like when we were in

school back in the day and we labored under the belief that our

The Art of the Pitch

teachers evaluated our essays by how much they weighed. Wrong

on all counts. The audience does not care about how much we

know. The audience cares about how interesting what we tell

them about what we know is. Furthermore, the audience’s ability

to assimilate and retain information is limited. You’re only going

to be able to make two or three key points. So make them and

make them memorable. You need to do this in as simple, spare,

and elegant a way as possible. You’re not going to bludgeon the

audience into submission with a blitzkrieg of facts. It’s not carpet

bombing, it’s a surgical strike.

You need to do everything you can to help the audience re-

member what they think about what you have said, because the

audience will not remember the vast majority of what you say.

But they will remember what they thought about what you said.

And what they felt about what you said. So help them. Leave

moments in your narrative for the audience’s reﬂection. Be silent.

Give them a chance to process and remember what they think

about what you say.

It’s not inappropriate to go so far as to literally say, “Think

about this . . .” Or, “Imagine what it would mean if . . .” Or,

“Suppose you knew that . . .” Whatever you have to say in order

to get them to think for themselves about what you’re saying will

do the trick.

Some of the great role models for presenting are not what

we would think of as “business people.” They’re actors. I’m not

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

suggesting that presenting is, or should be, thought of as acting.

What I am suggesting is that we have a lot to learn from observing

some of the iconic ﬁlm stars of our time. They know that most of

acting is about listening. They know often more is communicated

with silence than with words. They know that the expression on

their faces says far more than words ever could. Think of Clint

Eastwood. A master of minimalism.

Clint terriﬁes the bad guys without saying a word. Clint com-

municates the deepest emotions silently. Going further back,

Marlon Brando, particularly in the Godfather ﬁlms. He con-

structed a character of surpassing power with relatively little dia-

logue. He did more with an orange slice than most actors could

do with a page of dialogue. Helen Mirren, in almost everything

she does. Think of The Queen. They all exhibit great economy.

By doing this, we leave the audience the opportunity to ﬁll

in the blanks. This is where they decide what they think about

what you are saying. This is what they are actually going to re-

member from your presentation. This is also where they ﬁnd a

part to play in the presentation, if you will. They are the other

side of the equation, after all. This gives them a chance to play

their role. It reminds me of what Howard Gossage, the legendary

San Francisco ad man, said about writing ads. “When baiting a

mousetrap with cheese, be sure to leave room for the mouse.”

Howard borrowed that line from the legendary British author and

humorist who wrote under the pen name Saki.

The Art of the Pitch

The Gift of Time

This notion that we have to tell the audience everything we know

starts right at the beginning. You get a call from a search consul-

tant saying you have two hours to do a credentials presentation

in a week’s time. What’s the ﬁrst thing the agency does? It calls a

meeting and tries to ﬁgure out what to do for two hours, rather

than ﬁguring out what to do that will get them the business. It

happens in everyday meetings with existing clients as well. We’ve

got two hours for the meeting and we feel as if we’re somehow

letting them down, that we’re somehow inadequate, if we don’t

give them two hours’ worth of meeting.

That’s our ﬁrst mistake. The meeting should be as long as you

need it to be to say what you need to say in order to get what you

want. No longer and no shorter.

Use half the time and give them back an hour of their lives.

They will love you for it. Time is the rarest of currencies these

days and valuable beyond belief to today’s overworked, stressed-

out executives.

I’m not arguing for brevity for brevity’s sake. Nor am I sug-

gesting that we leave out anything that is important. On the con-

trary, I’m arguing that we include everything that is important

and nothing that isn’t.

That’s the trick. Figuring that out.

Mark Twain allegedly said, “I apologize for the length of this

letter, but I didn’t have time to make it shorter.”

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

There are many other quotes to this effect, but I think you get

the idea. It takes time to ﬁgure out what’s important. It’s easy to

put in everything we know. It’s hard to put in only what will get

us what we want.

So, start at the end and ﬁgure out exactly what it is that you

want to accomplish. Whether it’s just your part of the presenta-

tion or the whole thing. What do we want, and what do we have

to do to get it?

Then you work your way back to the beginning.

This pertains to everything that you are going to say, but also

to everything that you are going to show. We discuss the dreaded

but, alas, important Deck elsewhere in this book, so sufﬁce it to say

that we need to bring the same economy to our slides. And not just

the number of slides, but the number of characters on each slide. I

believe the slides should be as visually powerful as possible, thereby

providing context and depth for your words. Get the words off the

slides. You don’t need them. As I said, we’ve discussed this else-

where, but remember what we said at the beginning of this chapter.

White space is good.

When I ﬁrst went to teach in Japan, I was searching for a

way to make this point to my non-English speaking students. I

found it in a discussion of proper eating habits. Hara hachi bu

means, roughly translated, eat until you are 80 percent full. Not

100 percent. Stop before you’re full. That turned out to be a good

way to explain the concept of white space. Don’t ﬁll it up, leave

something empty.

The Art of the Pitch

You must approach your presentation practicing the lesson of

hara hachi bu. We all fall in love with our ideas. But they’re not

all that interesting. We all think that it’s important to let the audi-

ence see how much we know about a topic and how hard we’ve

worked. You know what? They don’t care. Take out everything

that doesn’t look like David.

“Make a choice about what’s important and let everything

else go.”

—Zen Proverb

Let’s Go Dancing

Most people view the idea of getting up in front of an audience

with the same enthusiasm as they would approach three rounds

with Mike Tyson. I suggest that we embrace the audience and

acknowledge that we are in this thing together, for in fact, with-

out the audience there is no presentation. It’s just you talking to

yourself.

Here’s a different way to look at it: think of a presentation as

a dance. You’re leading the audience, but they’re participating.

And having fun.

It’s really a kind of pas de deux, isn’t it? So think of the audi-

ence as your partner, not as an adversary. Think of them as your

“other half.” They respond to your deft lead. You’re setting the

rhythm and tempo of the “music.” You’re in complete control,

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

but you’re exercising this control effortlessly, and they are re-

sponding to your conﬁdence and power. And having a great time.

This shift in thinking can change everything for you. You’re

now constructing, choreographing and delivering this presenta-

tion with your partner, the audience, in mind. If they don’t enjoy

themselves, it will not have been a pleasurable experience. Make

no mistake. We want them to have a good time. We want them to

be entertained. If you don’t think this is true, consider the alterna-

tive. This doesn’t mean that the presentation has to be a laugh riot

or a thrilling action adventure. But it has to be a show. It has to be

time that they consider well spent. It cannot be boring. When the

Dentsu executives we work with in Japan ﬁrst hear this, they are

surprised. Because it goes against everything they’ve been taught.

But once they put it into practice, they blossom. The very idea

that it’s not just okay, but desirable, to be entertaining unlocks

the door to their creativity and, sometimes, magic. And when that

happens, the audience is engaged. The audience responds. The

audience feels that they are a part of the show and they like that.

When we do it just right, the audience and the presenter become

one. Dancing together gracefully. That’s when the audience really

gets it. And that’s the only reason we’re presenting. So, if they

don’t get it, we’ve failed. Not them, us.

There are as many different ways to engage the audience

as there are presentations. Here’s a few examples: Start with

a question. Get them talking right away. They feel like a part

of the presentation and not just a passive audience. Begin by

The Art of the Pitch

talking about them. Show their products. Pay tribute to their

brand. Don’t talk about yourself—talk about them. Start with

an emotional story that makes the point you ultimately want to

leave the audience with. Make sure it’s one that the audience

can relate to. Begin with a special video presenting their brand

and its customers in a powerful, emotional way. Above all, be

yourself. Be open and approachable. Don’t try to be “profes-

sional.” People have to feel that they can relate to you. That’s

the beginning of engagement. Here’s an example from our afore-

mentioned friends at Dentsu.

We had been working with Dentsu executives for the better

part of a week. It’s important to know that most of them spoke

very little, if any, English, and that my colleague and I spoke even

less Japanese. That’s why we had four highly professional simul-

taneous translators in a sound booth in the back of the room. All

of us were wearing headsets and microphones. We had assigned

one of the Japanese teams the task of presenting a brand exten-

sion program for a pet food brand. It was critical that they dem-

onstrate a deep understanding of the brand. With that thought in

mind, a team of four stepped forward and began to speak.

“Ruff, ruff,” said the ﬁrst presenter. Then, “grrrrrr,” growled

another. Followed by “meow, meow” from the third. The fourth

cooed like a bird.

They weren’t speaking Japanese. And they weren’t speaking

English.

They were speaking “Pet.”

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

They had briefed the translators on what they were going to

do and prepared a script for them to follow along on and read as

each of the presenters made the “pet sounds” and we heard them

live along with the translated English in our headsets.

Needless to say, they captured the audience’s attention and

engagement immediately. What they said that day was very smart,

but the way they said it was brilliant.

Don’t Talk to Strangers

None of us wants to fail, so how do we make sure that the audi-

ence gets us? The ﬁrst step is to know who “they” are.

It’s a lot easier to talk with people we know, isn’t it? So try

to make that happen with your presentations. In the time before

your presentation, learn as much as you possibly can about the

audience as a whole and as individuals. What kind of people are

they? What are their demographics and cultures? Where are they

on the issue you’ll be talking about? What are their expectations

for the meeting?

That all seems pretty logical and expected, right? But I want

you to go further. I want you to ﬁnd out everything you possibly

can about who they are. That means ﬁnding the answers to ques-

tions like, what are their hobbies? What kinds of cars do they

drive? What are their favorite movies? Do they have kids? Where

did they go to school? What did they study? Are they sports fans?

If so, who do they root for? And on and on. Everything you can

The Art of the Pitch

possibly ﬁnd out. Because you never know what nugget you may

be able to mine that leads to a major breakthrough or helps you

make a warm connection with a frosty prospect. You just never

know.

TAKE NOTE

Do the same with audiences you do know. Even if it’s your boss. You may

think you know her, but you must always keep learning about her. You may

think you know your clients well, but there is always something else to

learn, not the least of which is where the votes are when you’re going into

a meeting. You may have thought you had the support of one person, but

things have changed internally and he might just have gone over to the

other side. Keep learning.

Don’t assume that you know what your audience wants to

hear. Don’t assume that they know what you’re there for. I’ve

learned this the hard way. I’ve been on both ends of this mistake.

As the presenter who assumed incorrectly what my audience was

there for, and as a member of the audience wondering why the

hell I was in the room listening to something that was of no inter-

est to me or my colleagues.

So ﬁgure all this out as well. Why are they coming to the pre-

sentation and what do they expect to hear? I’m not saying that

you must give them exactly what they’re expecting—as a matter

of fact, I suggest that you don’t—but you’ve got to know why

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

they’re there and what they expect. After all, you can’t break the

rules until you know the rules.

And then, put to use what you have learned about them.

When I worked at Siddall, Matus & Coughter, we got word

through the grapevine that a large account, Blue Cross/Blue

Shield of the National Capital Area, was in review. They had

been with J. Walter Thompson out of New York City, and had

become disenchanted with the relationship. Apparently, the New

York ad guys didn’t want to come to Washington, preferring to

have the clients ﬂy to New York for their regular meetings. We

gathered that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so

the client was looking for a new agency closer to home. I got on

the phone and called the chief marketing ofﬁcer, Ray Freson. Ray

said that yes, they were looking closer to home, but that because

of the difﬁculties they had had with their New York agency, they

wanted to work with someone in Washington, D.C. I replied,

well that’s great, we’re right here in Richmond, Virginia, just

down the road. Ray made it clear that his bosses didn’t want to

go outside of the immediate D.C. area and that Richmond was

just too far away. A two-hour drive was too inconvenient. I told

him that the two-hour drive would be our problem. We would

be happy to come to them. Ray still wasn’t moved. I began to tell

him about some of our clients, the vast majority of whom were

headquartered in the D.C. area and advertising in D.C. media.

Because Ray was paying attention to who was doing good work

in the market, he knew of our work. He just didn’t know that

The Art of the Pitch

it was us who was doing it. Now that he knew of the quality

of work we were doing, he said that he would try to talk the

four-man committee who ran the organization into letting us

into the pitch, but that he doubted they would ever actually hire

someone from outside of D.C. again, let alone some guys from

Richmond they’d never heard of.

True to his word, Ray went before the committee and recom-

mended that they at least include us in the review. They agreed.

We were thrilled, because I knew that if we could get the decision

makers in the room, our ability to put together powerful presenta-

tions would give us at least a ﬁghting chance. But we also realized

that we had a tremendous disadvantage—we were the only con-

tender not headquartered in the Greater Washington area. And to

make matters worse, the four-man committee wanted to visit each

of the contenders at their ofﬁces, and they were less than happy

about having to make their way to Richmond. We said we’d come

to them, but the process that Ray had designed called for agency

visits, so they had to come to us.

It was at this point that I asked Ray to give me all the informa-

tion he possibly could about each member of the committee. Ray,

being a very savvy guy, knew exactly what I was after. Within a

few days, he sent us complete dossiers on each of the four men on

the committee. These documents were detailed biographies com-

plete with photographs, so that we could call each of the men

by name when they entered our conference room. We were told

that we would have no access to any of them until the day of the

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

presentation and that that one day would determine whether we

advanced in the competition. It wasn’t clear if there would be

more than one round or not, but it was clear to us that this was

our only shot. So we had better make it a good one.

I handed the dossiers over to Reid Carter, our director of re-

search. Today, he’d be in charge of strategic planning. I asked him

to read the documents carefully and try to discover something

that we might be able to use to our advantage.

Reid got back to me pretty quickly, saying that there was a

pattern in the dossiers that revealed something signiﬁcant about

common experiences and interests among all four men.

One was a graduate of West Point and had served in Vietnam.

Two, one of whom had graduated from the United States Naval

Academy, had served in the Marine Corps. The fourth hadn’t

served in the military, but listed military history as his hobby.

Now we had something. Three of these men had a strong mili-

tary background and the fourth was so interested in the military

that he listed military history as his hobby. About that time, a cou-

ple of us had been reading an adaptation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of

War. Originally written in the sixth century bc, this Chinese mili-

tary treatise is considered the deﬁnitive work on military strategies

and tactics of its time and is, in fact, still one of the essential texts.

The Art of War is one of the oldest and most successful books on

military strategy. I was reading the book because its modern trans-

lation was considered a valuable guide to strategy—not just war-

fare, but business strategy as well.

The Art of the Pitch

Since our presentation was meant to be a discussion of our

credentials, we decided to present a series of case studies, each of

which would be patterned on one of the key principles of Sun Tzu’s

book. We would present each case as if it were a military opera-

tion. We chose cases from our portfolio that lent themselves to this

concept while serving to showcase dramatic success stories, or vic-

tories, in the Greater Washington, D.C., market. Of course, each of

these stories also addressed a speciﬁc client need or area of concern.

It’s important to remember that even when you’re supposed to be

talking about yourself, you should be talking about the client.

Okay, now we’ve got a theme and a point of view for the

presentation that seem pretty cool, but we’re still the lowest of

underdogs. Remember, they’ve already told us they won’t hire an

agency from outside D.C.

So we’ve got to do something more. We’ve got to grab their

attention immediately and we’ve got to hold it until they either

say yes or tell us to stop. Here’s what we did. We decided that I

would do the entire presentation by myself, using slides of our

work, as well as a few well-chosen words, projected on a huge

screen behind me.

On the morning of the presentation, the four committee mem-

bers and Ray walked into our conference room, clearly unhappy

to be there. We shook hands and called them by name and then,

dispensing with all the pleasantries, I said, “Before we start today,

I want to tell you about my favorite movie of all time.” This was

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

greeted with not just blank stares as you might expect, but actual

looks of contempt. These guys didn’t care about movies. But I

pressed on.

“The name of that movie is Conan the Barbarian.”

This elicited some expressions of mild interest, perhaps sur-

prise, and just a bit of thawing in what was collectively, a very icy

demeanor.

I went on. “My favorite scene in Conan the Barbarian is when

Conan has been invited to a feast at the camp of the great general,

a kind of Genghis Khan. Conan is seated on one side of the gen-

eral and the general’s son is seated on the opposite side. In front of

them is a huge bonﬁre with the general’s troops eating, drinking,

roasting meat, singing, and telling stories. Raucous laughter ﬁlls

the night. In short, a good time is being had by all.

“At one point, the general turns to his son and asks him, ‘Tell

me my son, what is the greatest feeling in the world?’ ‘That is easy,

Father,’ says the son. ‘The greatest feeling in the world is to ride

bareback on my steed across the steppes and feel the wind blow-

ing in my hair.’

“This response does not particularly please the general, and

he turns to Conan and asks him the same question. ‘Conan, what

is the greatest feeling in the world?’ Conan looks him in the eye

and says, ‘The greatest feeling in the world is to crush your en-

emies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations

of their women.’”

The Art of the Pitch

I waited a beat while the audience looked at me in astonish-

ment. And then I said, “And that’s what we think advertising is

about.

“And that’s why today’s presentation is called ‘The Art of

War.’”

At which point the title slide appeared behind me in red type

on a black background.

At this point, the audience was beaming. One of the men ac-

tually clapped. They hadn’t ever seen anything like this. It wasn’t

something they were expecting, but they liked it.

I immediately got into the show and kept it moving. They

were nodding and smiling throughout. At one point, the gentle-

man who had listed military history as his hobby was reciting the

St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V. That is one moment I will

never forget.

I will also never forget that they promised us the account then

and there. They said they still had to see another agency, but they

liked what we had shown them so much that they felt comfortable

promising us their business.

They were as good as their word.

We went to work shortly thereafter and did excellent work for

over ﬁve years. Ray Freson turned out to be a terriﬁc partner, and

we enjoyed a wonderful relationship with virtually everyone in-

volved in the marketing program, producing results far in excess

of their projections.

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

It all happened because we thought to ask, “Please tell us ev-

erything you can about these people.”

Here’s a story that illustrates the point in another way. It’s

from Bill Westbrook, a former colleague, and former vice chair-

man of Fallon.

Before Bill went to Fallon, he was creating great work and

leading new business teams at The Martin Agency and Earle

Palmer Brown.

The single best presentation moment I ever witnessed came

in the mid-1990s when Scali McCabe Sloves and The Martin

Agency combined to pitch for the Mercedes business.

A little background: Lexus was touted as “The New

Deﬁnition of Luxury” and was seriously kicking Mercedes’ ass.

Plus Mercedes hadn’t introduced new metal in a few years and

was seen as tired, old-school luxury, and boring. The Germans

were understandably concerned, even anguished, and called for

an agency review.

On the other side, Scali was a shadow of its former self.

McCabe had long since gone off. The agency had shrunk dra-

matically, although it still had pride. And to top it off, it had lost

Volvo recently after being accused of rigging a television spot

focusing on safety, Volvo’s core equity.

I was asked to run the pitch on behalf of the combined agen-

cies, which ran for several months and many, many meetings and

The Art of the Pitch

mini-presentations. Martin wanted to win, but Scali simply had

to win to even continue as an agency.

Presentation day arrived. I had decided that Marvin Sloves,

as the head of the lead agency, should start us off and “set the

table.” The Germans marched in wearing their Hugo Boss suits,

very digniﬁed and somber. The agency team sat at another table,

nervous and tight.

As Marvin was preparing to rise, I touched his arm to wait

a moment. Leaning in to whisper, I said, “Marvin, this is for

everything you’ve worked your whole life to create. It comes

down to this moment. You have to go out there and kill it, make

them love us right now, and inspire the team, even frighten the

team that we can never live up to what you’re about to do. Do

it, Marvin. This is your chance for redemption.”

Marvin breathed deeply and raised his head theatrically and

rose to walk to the center of the room to begin.

He said, “100 years ago there was a clown, a German

metaphysical clown named Valentine. And as part of his act he

would walk out onto a darkened stage illuminated by a single

beam of light in the corner. He would walk over to that spot and

fall to his knees and begin frantically looking for something on

the stage.”

At this point, everyone on the Scali/Martin team had their

mouths open in fear. Where was this going? But as I looked at

the Germans . . . they were nodding! They knew the story! It

was true!

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

“As part of the act, a policeman walked out onto the stage

and asked what Valentine was doing. ‘Oh, I’ve lost my keys,’ the

clown replied, and immediately the policeman fell to his knees

to help. After a few moments, the exasperated policeman rose,

dusted off his pants, and asked ‘Are you sure you lost your keys

here?’ Valentine said, ‘No, I lost them over there,’ and pointed

to the darkest part of the stage. ‘Then why are you looking for

your keys here?’ asked the frustrated policeman.

“Valentine answered, ‘Because this is where the light is.’”

Then Marvin approached the Mercedes team and said, “Now

is a hard time for Mercedes. It feels like you have lost your way.

But all that’s happened is that you’ve temporarily lost your keys

and you’ve been looking in the wrong places for them. In the next

two hours, we’re going to help you ﬁnd them again.

“Bill . . .”

I had to stand up in the midst of full-throated cheers and

applause and follow that story.

—Bill Westbrook, former chief executive ofﬁcer, Fallon

Apparently, he and his teammates followed it well, as the com-

bined Scali McCabe Sloves/The Martin Agency team won the ac-

count. The win brought Scali back to life and moved The Martin

Agency up another level in prominence.

Don’t ever talk to strangers.

Those stories illustrate perfectly the importance of knowing

your audience and understanding how to reach them. Here’s a

The Art of the Pitch

story from Jim Othmer that demonstrates what can happen when

you not only don’t know enough about the audience, you manage

to confuse them with another client.

During a major dog and pony show, in front of more than 100

franchisees gathered at the client’s global headquarters, my ex-

ecutive creative director set up my presentation by telling a long,

passionate tale about her (and the world’s!) affection for the leg-

endary ﬁgure that was synonymous with their brand. “Everyone

loves The Captain,” she began. “The Captain is one of the most

beloved characters in all of advertising, and at all costs, it is our

responsibility—no, mission!—to keep the brand mythology of

the Captain alive.” At this point the franchisees were mumbling

and shaking their heads and I had broken into a sweat. Before

taking the ﬂoor to present work that was certain to die a deep-

fried death, I looked the lead account person in the eye and said,

“Holy Shit. She confused Crunch with Sanders.” Not only had

she gotten the Colonel’s title wrong, she had busted him in rank.

Our work and our afﬁnity for the brand suddenly seemed half

as genuine.

—James P. Othmer, author of The Futurist and Adland

THREE

How We Connect

ll right, we’re dancing with the audience and we’re not

dancing with a stranger. We know everything we pos-

sibly can about them.

Presumably, they know a lot about us as well. But how do we

make the connection that will get us what we want?

First, we need to understand how the audience decides

about us and what we have to say. Well, they listen to us and

they make up their minds, right? No, not exactly. And as we

said earlier, I don’t believe they remember a lot about what we

actually say. They look at us and listen to us and begin to form

an opinion.

There has been a good deal of research done on exactly how

people take information away from a presentation. The ﬁndings

in all the studies are remarkably similar. You may ﬁnd what they

reveal to be surprising.

The Art of the Pitch

The best known and most referenced study was done by

Professor Albert Mehrabian of UCLA in the 1960s.

What Dr.

Mehrabian posited was that there are three categories of stimulus

present in human communication—the Visual, the Tone of Voice,

and the Words used (spoken or read). He suggested that 55 per-

cent of what we take away from communication comes from the

visual, 38 percent from the tone of voice, and 7 percent from the

actual words.

While the numbers he suggested might not be precisely the

same for all presentations in all settings, I do believe, based on ev-

erything I’ve seen and learned over the years, that thinking about

presentations in this way will lead to simpler, more elegant, and

more effective communication.

And his work supports my contention that people won’t re-

member most of what we say—but they will remember what they

think and feel about what we say.

It’s clear that the research is a conﬁrmation of what many of

us have suspected/feared/known for a long time: the way we say

something is more important than what we say. The tone we use

establishes our attitude, and our audience takes its cues from that

attitude. Our audience decides an awful lot of what they think

about us and what we’re saying based upon that attitude. Notice

I said that they decide an awful lot of what they think about us,

and what we’re saying based upon our attitude. What they think

about us is absolutely critical. As we’ve seen, it’s more important

than what we say. They’re deciding, “Do I like this person? Do

I trust her? Do I want to do business with her? Would I like to

HOW WE CONNECT

go have a beer with this guy at the end of the day? Do I think he

knows what he’s talking about?”

They’re deciding all that and more, based upon your attitude.

If we sound and seem conﬁdent, they will tend to believe us and

share that sense of conﬁdence. If we are enthusiastic, they will

tend to be excited about what we’re saying. In short, the audience

will tend to mirror the emotion that we establish via our attitude.

If you don’t think that’s true, here’s a story. One art direc-

tor/writer team at the Brandcenter presented their concepts to a

group of Brandcenter board members. They showed very little

emotion or excitement for their work and essentially slid it across

the table, ﬁguratively saying, “Here it is, how do you like it?”

The board members were united in their ambivalence. They didn’t

think much of it at all. They were trying to be nice to the students,

but it was clear that they really didn’t like the work.

TAKE NOTE

I believe most audiences don’t know what they like or dislike and have

to be “told” what to think. They are “told” by the way in which we show

them things whether they should like it or not. I really believe this and I

really believe it is an incredibly important thing to remember.

The same team then took the exact same work down the hall

to another group of Brandcenter board members. I tagged along

and told them to really present the work this time. To use some

of the skills they had learned in school. They presented the work

The Art of the Pitch

with enthusiasm. They presented with clarity, conviction, and

grace. The board members loved the campaign—the exact same

campaign that had left the previous group cold.

I huddled with the student team afterwards, and they said,

“You know, we thought you were right, but we just wanted to see

for ourselves. That was exactly the same campaign, but it got two

completely different reactions. It was all because in the second

group we actually presented the work. From now on, that’s what

we’re gonna do.” I hope they do.

But if you don’t believe me, let’s listen to Dr. Joel Whalen in

his 1996 book, I See What You Mean: “Your attitude is the power

that drives the most important and powerful symbols you com-

municate. To be a great oral communicator, you must ﬁrst man-

age your attitude. It’s the way you say your words that makes you

persuasive. In fact, the words you use in oral communication are

only minor parts of the message your listeners receive.”

What They See Is What You’ll Get

Before you’ve even said a word, your audience is sizing you up.

They’re looking at your wardrobe, your jewelry, your haircut,

your posture, and all the other nonverbal signals you’re send-

ing. Based on this, they make a judgment about you and decide

right then and there whether they ﬁnd you credible or not. You

haven’t even said a word. Is this fair? I really don’t know, because

it doesn’t matter if it’s fair, it just is.

HOW WE CONNECT

Your visual aids are also a powerful communicator. Be they

slides, charts, boards, props, videos, or a combination of all the

above and more, they should be chosen carefully. Above all,

they should be simple. Simplify, simplify, simplify. It’s what we

should be doing as advertising people, yet we often forget that

when we’re crafting a presentation. As we said a bit earlier, one

of the most common mistakes in presentations is the inclination

to put in everything we know about a given subject. This will

not work unless your objective is to confuse your audience. We

must use as much discretion as possible to eliminate all facts that

are not critical. And the deﬁnition of critical for me is whether

they are necessary to get what I want. If not, we must take them

out, no matter how fascinating they may be. Ruthless exclusion,

remember?

The visual presentation is critically important to the overall

pitch—but remember: make the deck as simple as possible. Use

visuals, not words. If you must use words, limit them as much as

possible. And do not read them. Never read the words on your

slides. Are there exceptions to this? Of course, as with all rules,

there are exceptions. But I can’t say this strongly enough about

this. Do not read the slides. Your audience can read perfectly well,

thank you.

Also, it’s important to remember that the visuals aren’t simply

what’s on the screen, or on boards, or props that you may use.

You are a part of the visual look of the presentation. This goes for

every person and everything that the audience sees.

The Art of the Pitch

When used properly, visuals can lend a rich emotional con-

text to the words you’re saying, resulting in powerful, memorable

communication.

Think about your presentation the same way an artist thinks

about creating a music video, or a motion picture. The images tell

much of the story. The images can convey meaning beyond the

capacity of words. We all know this, but we forget it when put-

ting together a presentation. If you’re going to use slides, let them

work for you.

One of the iconic images in the history of motion pictures, and

one that has been copied incessantly, is a scene from the motion

picture Patton, starring George C. Scott.

The screen is ﬁlled with the image of an American ﬂag stretch-

ing the length and breadth of the frame. In front of this ﬂag,

General Patton strides onto the stage and delivers his message

to the audience. That image of George C. Scott in front of the

American ﬂag speaks volumes and is the single most memorable

moment in the ﬁlm.

The image of the ﬂag perfectly complements the lines that

Francis Ford Coppola wrote for Scott to deliver. The images and

attitude work perfectly to deliver the message.

So think about what your slides say. Would they say more if

they were more visual? Would they actually “say” more if there

were no words on the slides?

We all know the ancient adage that “a picture is worth a thou-

sand words.” Yet we seem to forget it when we’re putting together

HOW WE CONNECT

our presentations. That’s because we’re lazy and often just project

the deck onto the screen. We’ll deal with that in depth in chapter

12, but let’s concentrate a bit more on visuals for a moment. If

you’re talking about a target audience, why not show me the tar-

get audience rather than use type that says “Adults 18–34”? Show

me some adults 18–34. If you’re talking about what people want

or expect from a product, show me what they want and expect. If

we’re talking about kids, show me some kids. Your audience will

respond emotionally to images and the words you say to accom-

pany those images. They will not respond emotionally to type on

a screen. If you want to win, if you want to get what you want,

you must make your audience respond emotionally. One powerful

way to achieve this emotional connection is through visuals. And

while we’re on the subject, work very hard to be sure that your

visuals are in alignment with what you’re saying. Your visuals

should be in harmony with your words. They should appear on

the screen at exactly the right moment. Not before and not after.

That’s one reason I often suggest the use of a black slide at the

beginning of a presentation and then whenever it’s appropriate

during a presentation. Let’s not have anything on the screen that

doesn’t purposefully support the point we’re trying to make.

Let’s talk about the visual impression of your presentation in

another important way. Since 55 percent of what people take away

from a presentation is visual, it stands to reason that 55 percent of

what people believe about a presentation and the presenter is visual.

If you appear to believe in what you’re saying, they will believe in it.

The Art of the Pitch

If you are slumping and staring at the ﬂoor while claiming to be ex-

cited, they will not think that you are excited. They will not believe

you. Worse, they will think you’re lying. Not good.

Lastly, what about the words we use? People often ask me,

“Do you mean to say that the content of my presentation is only

7 percent of what people take away?”

No, I don’t. What you need to understand is that everything—

your tone of voice, the way you look, dress, move, your slides,

and your words—is the content. All of it. It all works together

if we’re doing it right. Some parts of it are more important than

others, but it’s all of a piece.

And even if the words we say are of very low priority in the

decision-making hierarchy, I suggest that we choose them very

carefully. Use vivid, colorful language. Use powerful words that

create an image in the audience’s mind.

People tend to like what they picture in their own minds.

They’re seeing it their way. So they like it. That’s why I’ve become

convinced that the best way to present a television commercial is

to tell the story of the commercial rather than taking the audience

through a storyboard or using a key frame. (It also avoids the

inevitable “but on the storyboard she was wearing a blue blouse”

comment while you’re on the shoot.)

I asked you earlier to make your audience remember what

they thought about what you said. This is consistent with telling

them the story of the commercial and letting them picture it their

heads.

HOW WE CONNECT

Avoid clichés. Use interesting, powerful language that makes you

seem thoughtful. I don’t mean “considerate,” I mean full of ideas.

“I have a dream.”

“Yes we can.”

“I feel your pain.”

“You have a branding problem masquerading as an advertis-

ing issue.”

“When I was 24, I met a Spanish chef.”

“If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thou-

sand years, men will still say, ‘This was their ﬁnest hour.’”

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can

do for your country.”

So remember the power of tone and attitude and incorporate

that understanding into your presentation. Above all, remember

the power of visuals, because what your audience sees will play a

major role in what you get.

I consider the research on how people take away information

from a presentation to be directional more than literal. I think the

way people perceive a presentation varies from day to day and

show to show. Nonetheless, the importance of connecting remains

paramount.

Why It’s Critical to Connect

There’s a real temptation to take it for granted that we must con-

nect, but I’ve seen too many presentations in which it was clear

The Art of the Pitch

that the presenter(s) didn’t really place any priority on connecting.

They were there to do “their part” and return safely to their own

private world.

The advertising industry evaluates careers and agencies based

on the work that gets produced. Buildings the size of Madison

Square Garden are ﬁlled with stacks of great work that didn’t get

produced. Great ads that the client “didn’t get.” Brilliant televi-

sion concepts that “are smarter than my creative director.” Digital

concepts that are “beyond the CMO’s taste level.”

For every ten “great” pieces of advertising that get created,

maybe one is produced. And for some agencies, I’m being gener-

ous. Why do you think that is? To continue in the spirit of gen-

erosity, it’s possible that there is the occasional case of “pearls

before swine,” but more often than not, it’s the creator’s ability

(or that of her surrogate) to successfully connect with the audi-

ence that carries the day. Whether it’s internally with the creative

director, or the account team, or even an agency principal. Or,

more often, with the client. If we don’t connect, we don’t sell the

work, and if we don’t sell the work, it doesn’t get produced, so no

one will ever know how brilliant our work is and the client will

not have the beneﬁt of that work helping her company.

And don’t even begin to talk about the work that gets pre-

sented in new business competitions. In the vast majority of cases,

the work presented by the winning agency never gets produced.

There are a lot of reasons for this last instance, not the least of

which is that the work is often produced in a vacuum, without

HOW WE CONNECT

any input from the client along the way—but in some ways, this

is just an excuse.

In the last chapter we featured a story from Bill Westbrook, who

has been vice chairman, president, and chief creative ofﬁcer of some

of the best advertising agencies in the world. He has won every

creative award worth winning. But if someone were to ask any of

the thousands of people who know him to identify his most signiﬁ-

cant asset, the thing that he probably does best and is best known

for, they would cite his talent as a presenter. Isn’t it surprising that

such an accomplished creative advertising person is ﬁrst recognized

as a presenter? Actually, it isn’t surprising at all. Over the years,

I’ve learned that there is a very high correlation between creative

reputation and ability to present. This is not to imply in any way

that Bill’s reputation is based primarily on his ability to talk about

creative, because he is legitimately a creative powerhouse. I would

rather explain the correlation between Bill’s creative reputation and

his reputation as a presenter much the way he would.

Because I can tell you that the vast majority of the work Bill

presented in new business competitions actually got produced.

Why is his record any better than that of most agencies? One

simple reason: he is one of the best presenters who ever walked

into a room. He makes a connection with his audience. He and his

agency developed a reputation for brilliant creative work because

the work that they believed in, their best work, got produced. And

it got produced because of his ability to sell the work. For many

people in advertising, “sell” is a dirty word.

The Art of the Pitch

TAKE NOTE

Our friend Alex Bogusky, one of the most successful creative people of

our time, argues that he doesn’t sell the work, rather that he has a “con-

versation” with the client, and together they decide that the work is right.

I completely agree that the process should be a conversation, but the

product of that conversation is the successful sale of our ideas. And Alex

is an amazing presenter.

This aversion to selling has always struck me as odd, given

the fact that most of what advertising people do is create work

that is designed to sell things or ideas. We get paid to move prod-

uct. Whether it’s TV sets, sneakers, cell phones, or even “good

causes.” But there is still some kind of Willy Loman–like image

conjured up in the minds of creative types when one utters the

word “sell.” This is a particular problem for a lot of young peo-

ple either in, or aspiring to be in, the business. I see these folks

all the time. They think it’s somehow uncool to have to sell their

work. Until they overcome that problem, they will continue to

have their most beloved ideas rejected while they and their agen-

cies end up producing work that doesn’t please anyone (includ-

ing the intended audience.) Yet many young people shrink from

the idea of “selling” their work. They need to learn the lesson of

Bill Westbrook. They need to learn that it is cool to be a good

presenter.

HOW WE CONNECT

Speaking of good presenters, Jeff Steinhour, president of

Crispin Porter + Bogusky, is a great presenter. He is often called

upon to advise advertising students and he never fails to empha-

size the importance of presenting Here’s some important advice

from Jeff for young people who are still in school: “Volunteer to

present something in front of a group every day from now until

you graduate. For real. There’s one immutable truth to the adver-

tising business: best presenter usually wins. You can’t avoid it. It’s

like a ﬁreman being afraid to go to a ﬁre. Can’t happen. Face it

now and get good at it. Then get great at it.”

What makes anyone a great presenter? More than anything—

he has the courage to be himself. We talk about this idea else-

where in this book, but I’ll say it here as well—there is no one

right way to present. There are certain fundamentals that need to

be considered in any presentation, but there is no one right way to

be. When I say “to be,” I’m referring to the personality or persona

that we present to our audience. Just be yourself. Don’t try to be

someone else. Being someone else doesn’t work. This isn’t acting,

this is business. So it comes down to conﬁdence. The conﬁdence

to be who you are. There is really nothing so powerful as the force

of an individual’s personality passionately displayed.

This idea is completely foreign to many people. They assume

that if they are to give a “presentation,” well, they’ll have to turn

into the kind of person who gives a “presentation.” They then

proceed to try to do an impression of whomever they see in their

minds as the kind of person who gives “presentations.”

The Art of the Pitch

This results in taking the audience further and further away

from any authentic representation of oneself, and ultimately, to

the same boring, catatonia-inducing presentations that we’ve

come to expect.

You see, many of us have an idea of what the ideal presenta-

tion is—and it’s completely wrong. We’ve been taught by expe-

rience that presenters are very “businesslike” or “professional,”

words that are actually code for boring or robotic. We expect

presentations to be a certain way based upon what we’ve learned,

which, unfortunately, is usually wrong.

As we’ve said, presentations should be just like a conversa-

tion. Only you’re doing most of the talking. They should feel as

comfortable as a conversation with a friend. I say “a” friend be-

cause we want to create the feeling in the room (or on the phone)

that we’re talking to just one person. So no matter how many

people are viewing the presentation, we approach it as if we were

talking to one person. A good way to think about it is as if you

were in a restaurant with a close friend chatting with her about

what you did that day.

You wouldn’t be playing a role. You’d be yourself. If you

weren’t, your friend would wonder what you were doing. Has

she lost her mind? That’s exactly what goes on in a presentation

when we try to be someone we’re not. We’re not good at it. Most

of us are not good actors. If we are, we’re probably in the wrong

business.

HOW WE CONNECT

What we are good at is being ourselves. Being our authentic,

down-to-earth selves. That is the only platform from which we

can speak sincerely. That’s the only way we’re ever going to be

able to build genuine trust. And without trust, we will never ac-

complish anything of signiﬁcance in our business relationships.

Being who we are is interesting. As Roger Ailes said many

years ago, you are the message.

There is only one you. You are unique in the true deﬁnition

of the word.

The audience isn’t there to read the screen or look at your

boards or other visual props, they are there to hear from you.

So let them. Give them you.

Being who we are is powerful.

Being our true selves accelerates and enhances human

connection.

And as humans, we connect emotionally—soul to soul, not

mouth to ear.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

In 1992, one of the partners left our agency and everyone in

the press was speculating that we’d lose all our magic in new

business situations. This of course made us ripe for a vast over-

compensation when it came to our next pitch. Sure enough,

we got a call from Doug Glen at Sega, who told us they had

a brief window in which their 16-bit Sega Genesis would be

The Art of the Pitch

obviously superior to the 8-bit Nintendo system, so everything

had to happen quickly. Not only that, but we’d be up against

what was probably our ﬁercest competitor, Wieden + Kennedy

in Portland.

This is a story of swarming and complete involvement.

The swarming came in the form of proving out every pos-

sible competitive advantage we had. We asked tons of questions

and appeared at their ofﬁces regularly, just to show how much

closer we were, here in San Francisco, than the Oregon agency.

We prepared a video that showed people up on our roof, hitting

the Sega building (25 miles down the road) with golf balls (we

actually bounced the balls off their windows), and proclaimed,

“We’re just a short drive away.” We talked to their suppliers,

their programmers, even venture capitalists who competed

against them.

We hired 12-year-old business consultants and ran all our

ideas by them. And in the end, we even shot cheap mock-up

commercials, in a day when people didn’t do that.

Sega told us that the pitch had to take place in a Holiday

Inn in Mountain View, California. We looked at the room—a

typical convention meeting room, with folding chairs. So we

transformed it.

First, we brought in bleachers and surrounded the room

with them. We rented a sound system that the Grateful Dead

used when they played local clubs. When people entered the

room on the day, they encountered a young boy sitting cross-

HOW WE CONNECT

legged, playing the most recent Sega games on a stack of wide-

screen TVs, engineered to become one big, three-by-three screen

game system. The sound was thunderous.

When everyone was seated, I had the privilege of pointing

to the throng of people up in the stands around them. “These

are the people of our company, all of them,” I said. “You’re

probably wondering why they’re here. Well, as a matter of fact,

every one of them is now an expert in Sega. Because for the past

month, each of them was assigned the job of knowing one of

your games intimately. Every single game you’ve ever published

is represented in these stands. If you ask for a ‘Sonic II’ expert,

there is one up there. If you ask for a ‘Battletoads’ expert, there’s

one of those. ‘Ariel the Little Mermaid.’ ‘Monopoly.’ They’re all

out there. Ask a question. Go ahead.”

We passed out amazing blue and white letterman jackets

that commemorated the fact that you’d been at our pitch that

day. (I still have mine.) We gave them tapes to take home. One

of our account guys, in a Sonic the Hedgehog suit, hugged them

all before they left.

When the meeting was over, we dismantled the set and

made it back into a fuchsia meeting room. Then, we went home.

It was like we’d never been there.

They gave us the business the next day.

—Jeff Goodby, co-chairman

and creative director,

Goodby, Silverstein and Partners

FOUR

The Power of

Emotion

rue human connection is a bond that is based upon emo-

tion. In order to create this, we must be honest, open,

and sincere. We must show what we truly feel, not just

what we believe. Human connections are emotional. The power

of emotion is what bonds us together and builds trust.

Without trust, we will never achieve what we want.

Most people I know would never think of lying in a meet-

ing or an interview, yet when they try to be someone they’re not,

they’re lying, aren’t they?

The very best way to convey emotion is by being ourselves—

by showing the audience how we feel about what we’re talking

about. We can only do this if we’re telling the truth—our truth.

Getting this thought through our heads, truly believing it, is a ma-

The Art of the Pitch

jor breakthrough for many of us. We ﬁnd it powerfully liberating,

as well we should, because we no longer feel the strain of trying

to be someone we’re not, or of trying to behave in a way that is

foreign to us.

Who you really are is far more interesting than who you think

they want to believe you are.

One of the most gratifying feelings I’ve ever gotten from my

workshops—and I’m pleased to say, I’ve gotten it many times—is

from people who come up to me at the end, or email me days

later, or tell me the next time I’m back at their agency, “It’s so

great to realize that I can just be me.”

There is a wonderful creative director at Wieden + Kennedy

Brazil named Guillermo Vega. Guille is from Argentina, and

English is a second language for him. He is embarrassed by his

command of English, but he shouldn’t be because he is a mar-

velous presenter. How can this be? Because Guille is Guille. He

doesn’t attempt to be anyone else. He is funny, smart, and pas-

sionate. His love for his work comes shining through. His enthu-

siasm is infectious. It is impossible not to like Guille. And so, we

like his work. There is only one Guille. If anyone else attempted

to present like him, it would be a colossal failure. Yet Guille is ef-

fective precisely because he is who he is.

The aforementioned Bill Westbrook is a great example of the

same phenomenon. He is who he is and that’s plenty good enough.

Bill is from the “high risk–high gain” school of presenting. By

this I mean that he’s not afraid to take chances. To reach for the

THE POWER OF EMOTION

powerful moment that others might resist. Some might call him

ﬂamboyant, almost theatrical in his persona, but it never appears

to be contrived. Because it isn’t. He reaches down inside himself

and ﬁnds the absolute truth of the situation—his truth—what he

believes deeply about the subject—and presents it in a powerful,

compelling way.

Once, at a major new business presentation, standing in front

of a long table of client representatives, he began to speak to just

one woman, seemingly ignoring the rest. He spoke to her very

quietly, as if she was the only person in the room. Amazingly, he

wasn’t speaking about advertising at all. He was talking with the

woman about her personal fears and desires. About her hopes

and regrets. About how she felt about her body, her self-image.

And slowly, but surely, he began to reach her. And soon, he began

to reach the rest of the client panel who were mesmerized by this

singular focus on just one person. After a few minutes more, the

woman he was speaking to began to cry softly. Not because she

felt afraid, or abused, but because she had been so deeply touched

by what Bill had said. At that moment, he turned to the huge

screen behind him and unveiled the central theme of the presen-

tation. The entire panel of judges was eventually carried away

on the same tide of emotion that had ﬁrst gathered up that one

woman. And so, Earle Palmer Brown won the Weight Watchers

account.

That’s why I referred to his style as “high risk–high gain.”

Very few of us would have the courage to attempt such a strategy.

The Art of the Pitch

Even fewer could pull it off. But Bill knew that the key to winning,

the key to persuading the panel, was to reach them emotionally.

He had to ﬁnd a way to immediately place the group in an emo-

tional context. He changed the rules. He broke with convention.

He shifted the dialogue to the emotional side of the panel’s col-

lective brain and away from the analytical. He took the chance

of talking with a woman about her personal struggles with her

weight. And it paid off. Mind you, he had brilliant creative work

born of sound strategic insights to back him up. But at the level

he was playing, all the agencies had that. He brought emotion to

the table.

Once, my agency was presenting in the ﬁnals for the State

of Virginia Department of Tourism account. By law, the agency-

client relationship had to be reviewed every four years, and the

competition was always intense. The Martin Agency had cre-

ated the well-known “Virginia is for Lovers” campaign back in

1969 and, unlike many other states, the Virginia Department of

Tourism appreciated good creative work. So every agency wanted

the account.

I wasn’t born in Virginia, but I’ve spent the majority of my

life there. I got my ﬁrst real job in Virginia. I met the woman

who became my wife in Virginia. Our two boys were born there.

I started a company with two partners that grew and prospered

there. I cared about it very much then, and I still do. So I made

sure to say that in my presentation. I made sure that the judges

understood my feelings for the Commonwealth. I did the entire

THE POWER OF EMOTION

one-and-a-half-hour presentation by myself, but I made it clear

that our whole agency felt the same way. I didn’t talk very much

about what I thought about Virginia as a travel destination, but

rather, I talked about what I felt about Virginia as a travel destina-

tion. And I talked a great deal about the way visitors would feel

when they came to Virginia. We put together a presentation that

was simple, visually arresting, and overwhelmingly emotional. I

delivered a closing statement about how much I felt I owed to the

State of Virginia, my gratitude to the state for making so many of

the signiﬁcant moments in my life possible, and my love for the

place. I walked off the stage as a three and a half minute video

featuring beautiful images of the Commonwealth accompanied by

a wonderful piece of original music written by our friends Robbin

Thompson and Carlos Chaﬁn began to play. As the video played,

I looked out into the darkened room at the panel of judges. You

could see the emotion on every one of their faces. I knew we had

won. And we had. They hired us because of the way we felt about

the Commonwealth of Virginia. They hired us because we were

able to put into words the feelings that they, too, had for the state.

Not because of what we said we would do, but because of how

we made them feel.

What these two stories have in common is the fact that in

both Earle Palmer Brown’s case and ours, we found a way to

touch our audience emotionally. We both set an emotional tone

from the very beginning. Most agencies never do. They attack the

other side of the brain. This is a common mistake. The essence of

The Art of the Pitch

selling is emotion. Virtually nothing is sold on the rational, ana-

lytical level. Oh sure, we tell ourselves that we got a great deal on

that new car in the driveway, and that it’s one of the safest cars on

the road, with a record of great resale value, and it gets surpris-

ingly good mileage. But the real reason we bought the car is that

we like it. It makes us feel good. We feel good sitting in it. We feel

we deserve it. And it delivers a message about us that we want the

neighbors (if not the world) to hear. It’s all about feeling. How we

feel, and how we believe others will feel about us.

So we’ve got to make our audience feel something. That

doesn’t mean we’ve got to make them cry. Maybe we need to

make them laugh. Maybe we need to make them remember the

way they felt when they were in a particular situation that’s rel-

evant to the subject at hand. Maybe we need to make them feel

that we really know what we’re talking about. Or that they would

really like to spend more time with the people on our team. Or

that their careers would be enhanced by working with us. I could

go on and on, but you get the point. Facts may impress them, but

feelings will persuade them. We’ve got to make emotional con-

tact. But how do we do that?

We start by remembering that we’re all human. And as hu-

man beings, we’re emotional creatures. Regardless of our age,

race, background, education, or any of a hundred other quali-

ﬁers, there is a common human experience that we all share. It’s

our job to tap into the “collective unconscious” and extract the

artifact that strikes the right chord with our audience. Whether

THE POWER OF EMOTION

it’s a woman’s struggles with her own self-image or the feelings

we all share for the place we call home. It can be the telling of a

story, a piece of music, or an image on a screen. It can be any of

a thousand different things. There are examples of this all around

us everyday. Why are certain books popular, and others not? Why

does an obscure news story from a small town in Oklahoma cap-

ture the imagination of the country? Why does a particular movie

seem to touch all the right buttons? Because of the skillful applica-

tion of emotion.

The Secret to Selling

Creative: Framing

Most agencies and many creative people have a common com-

plaint—they can’t sell their best work. There are many different

reasons for this, among them the naïve notion that great work

will sell itself or that, ultimately, great work will rise to the top.

Anyone who’s been in the business for any length of time knows

how false these assumptions are. Great work has to be sold. And

it isn’t easy to do so, because great work is unexpected. It’s often

unlike anything the client has seen before. It’s risky, bold, and dar-

ing. It’s easy to sell mediocre work. Mediocre work is expected,

looks just like most of the other work in the category, won’t get

anyone ﬁred (at least not right away), and is, most of all, safe.

If you want to do safe work, read no further. But if you want

to do great work, learn how to sell it.

The Art of the Pitch

The secret to selling great work is to sell the idea of the work

before you sell the work.

Your audience hasn’t been thinking about the problem you’ve

solved nearly as long as you have. They just understand the prob-

lem. So you’ve got to get them to where you are by using emotion

and enthusiasm, but delivered in a logical progression. You’ve got

to sell them on the idea before they will buy the execution. The aim

is to avoid jump balls or 50/50 balls, or any discussion that could

derail your argument. Don’t rely on your audience’s taste or judg-

ment. Frame your argument in such a way that you eliminate possi-

ble solutions until the only solution possible is yours. Then show it.

Let me give you an example from one of our student projects.

If kids in grad school can do this, you can, too.

This example is from a presentation of creative work for a

manufacturer of hockey equipment. I’m not going to use the real

brand names here to avoid any legal issues. The names aren’t im-

portant. The ideas are.

I’m going to paraphrase because I can’t recall the exact words

used, but once again, the ideas are what’s important. The manu-

facturer’s representatives weren’t in the room, but let’s pretend

they were just so you understand framing.

The leader of the student team stood up and began, “You gen-

tlemen make remarkable hockey equipment. The leather in your

skates is of the ﬁnest quality, supple yet strong. The blades on the

skates are sharp and perfectly aligned. Your sticks are made of the

ﬁnest composites for maximum strength and ﬂexibility. It prob-

THE POWER OF EMOTION

ably seems like a good idea to tell your potential customers about

all this. But there’s just one problem—that’s exactly what Brand

XXX is doing. They got there ﬁrst and there’s no point in saying

the same thing as them. And besides, we’re not a ‘me too’ brand.

But what can we say about us?”

“I grew up playing hockey in northern Michigan, like most

American and Canadian kids in that thin strip of land that encom-

passes the border of Canada and the United States and runs from

New England to British Columbia. Probably like you guys.” Now

they are nodding.

“And we didn’t play indoors on rinks, we played outdoors on

frozen ponds.”

More nodding.

“We played all day outside every chance we got. Whether

there were two of us or twelve, we didn’t care, we just wanted to

play hockey.”

More nodding.

“And the thing I remember most about those days was how

cold it was.

“It was really cold. But that didn’t stop us. We kept playing. We’d

check one another into snow banks. We’d get soaking wet. And then

it was even colder. But we didn’t care, because we loved hockey.”

A lot more nodding.

“And anybody who loves hockey knows that feeling. The feeling

of being really cold, but not caring because you love playing so much.

That’s the soul of hockey. That’s what it’s all about—the cold.”

The Art of the Pitch

A lot more nodding and smiling.

“What if we could own the cold?”

At which point he unveiled a spread magazine ad with a beau-

tiful photograph of a frozen pond, the brand’s logo in the lower

right-hand corner, and the headline, “Ah, 22 Below.”

He then showed them two more executions on the same

theme. Lots of nodding and hand shaking all around. Success. A

sold campaign.

But can you imagine what would have happened had he just

walked into the room and placed on the table an ad for hockey

equipment with no equipment in the ad and just a photo of a fro-

zen pond and the headline, “Ah, 22 Below”?

He would not have sold the work. He might have been thrown

out of the room. If he was really their agency, he might have been

ﬁred.

Same work, different approach. He framed the argument.

He eliminated the obvious solution and took the audience by the

hand, leading them to a point where the only possible solution

had to be his.

Sell the idea of the work, then sell the work.

The Emotional Archaeologist

The most popular television series in the history of public broad-

casting is Ken Burns’s The Civil War. The show ﬁrst aired in

September 1990. It became a national phenomenon. More peo-

THE POWER OF EMOTION

ple watched all or part of this eleven-hour series than any public

broadcasting show before, or since. It spawned a book. A boxed

set of videos. And was repeated over and over. It generated mil-

lions of dollars, and is largely credited with making public broad-

casting viable during a difﬁcult time. It won Ken Burns countless

awards and the license to continue to make whatever programs

he wished.

But why? Why was the show so hugely successful? Thousands

of books had been written about the Civil War. Hundreds of

ﬁlms and television shows of all descriptions had mined the War

Between the States. Most of us had spent hours studying this ter-

rible conﬂict in school. So why did it capture us so?

If, in early 1990, you had conducted a poll among the

American people and asked them, “About what subject would

you like to see an eleven-hour television series, consisting almost

entirely of still photographs and mostly in black and white, pre-

sented on consecutive nights on your public broadcasting chan-

nel?” I doubt that they would have responded, “The Civil War.”

In fact, I doubt that they would have responded with any subject.

What an outrageous prospect. Eleven hours about anything is be-

yond the imagination of most of us. Let alone the Civil War. Yet,

the audience for the show grew every night.

Why?

Because Ken Burns found a way to make the Civil War an

emotional experience for his viewers. He found a way to articu-

late the events of that bloody conﬂict in such a way that we all

The Art of the Pitch

could empathize. We all could feel what it must have been like to

have fought in the war, or to have waited at home for the return

of our loved ones. He used the actual words of the participants,

via some of the most beautiful writing ever put to paper, to bring

those days to life. We looked into the eyes of a young Union sol-

dier as the narrator read the words he had written to his wife the

day before he died. We heard the ﬁery speeches of the abolition-

ists. The terse reports from the front. All accompanied by a spare,

haunting arrangement of music from the period.

Ken Burns touched us. He took four years of history, com-

pressed it to eleven hours, and made America hang on every word.

He tapped that collective unconscious. He touched that place in-

side of all of us, regardless of who we are, or where we come

from. And the key was emotion.

In an interview, when asked how he would describe himself,

Ken Burns did not answer “ﬁlm maker.” Or historian, or author,

or director. He called himself “an emotional archaeologist.” What

a beautiful way to describe his skill. I think the lesson here is clear.

Whatever the subject matter, there is a way to make it meaningful

and relevant to our audience. There is a way to capture our audi-

ence’s imagination, and persuade them to our point of view. That

way is through the use of emotion.

On several occasions during my career I did such a good job

of creating an emotional charge in the room that I became caught

up in it as well. What I was saying moved several people to tears,

and caused me to choke up while speaking. It’s not a technique,

THE POWER OF EMOTION

it’s not something you can summon up, it just happens. And when

it does, it’s very powerful. Here’s Mike Hughes, one of the most

successful creative leaders in the business, with his thoughts on

the subject:

I was honored to be invited to speak at a university’s commence-

ment. I sometimes give talks that are (to me, at least) pretty

emotional. I often get choked up. I hate it when it happens,

but it happens. As we were waiting to enter the auditorium,

one of the deans, who is a friend of my friend Harry, started

chatting with me. “Have you ever spoken to a live audience of

ﬁve to six thousand people?” “Um . . . no.” “Boy you must be

really nervous. I know I’d be really nervous.” “Well, I hadn’t

been, but now that you mention it. . . .” “And Harry tells me

you often cry when you’re speaking. Are you going to cry this

time?” Yikes.

The talk itself went ﬁne. In fact, I got what I was told was

a very rare standing ovation. I wasn’t at all nervous. I didn’t cry

once. (OK, once I got a little choked up, but that’s not crying.)

At the time, I thought the dean was being a little cavalier about

my pre-talk jitters, but maybe it helped me bring focus to my

talk. I still wish he hadn’t done it.

—Mike Hughes, president, The Martin Agency

FIVE

How to Be

n chapter 3 we discussed the importance of the attitude that

we present to our audience. So it’s natural to ask, “What

should that attitude be?” Or, more to the point, “How should

I be?”

We’re going to answer that, but before we do, we’ve got to

deal with something I encounter in my students almost every sin-

gle day—fear.

In public opinion polls, when asked their greatest personal

fear, Americans rank public speaking as number one. Number

one, ahead of death. That’s pretty amazing when you ﬁrst think

about it, but after a while it begins to make some sense. We’re all

afraid of embarrassing ourselves in front of a group of people, of

making such fools of ourselves that we’ll never live it down. Of

being naked while the whole world is wearing clothes. Whereas

we can go off quietly by ourselves and die. No one even has to be

The Art of the Pitch

around. It’s simple, it’s just over. But speaking in front of a group

of other human beings—now that’s truly terrifying. I really don’t

mean to be ﬂip about a subject as weighty as dying, but that’s

what the research indicates. I guess that may be where the term “a

fate worse than death” originated.

I had a student some years ago who felt that way. I asked her,

“Do you mean to say you would really rather die than do this

presentation?” To which she answered, “Yes.” She said she wasn’t

kidding. That it was really that hard for her. This was puzzling to

me because she was a really smart, very attractive woman. If you

were to meet her for the ﬁrst time, you would assume that she was

a very conﬁdent person. I asked her what happened to her when

she got up to speak. She said that her vision began to cloud over,

becoming increasingly like a white, milky glow that narrowed her

ﬁeld of vision gradually to the point that all she could see was

white. Wow. I made her present anyway. The only way to deal

with this fear is to take it head-on.

We tried everything we could think of to help her get over this.

Finally, she came up with the answer. The way that she was

able to speak in front of the class was to sit on the ﬂoor and invite

everyone else to do the same. For some reason, this did the trick.

The white, milky glow began to recede to the point where at the

end of the semester, she was standing in front of the room on her

own two feet. She had, of course, cured herself.

Fear manifests itself in strange ways. Not long ago, I was sit-

ting down with a creative director from one of my workshops to

HOW TO BE

look at his individual presentations on the DVD that we had re-

corded. This was a guy who also claimed to be terriﬁed at getting

up to speak. So in one of his presentations, I had allowed him to

present while sitting in a chair. At one point in his presentation, he

had become so enthusiastic about the idea he was presenting that

he jumped up from his chair and began to move around the room,

excitedly explaining his idea. When he was ﬁnished, he returned

to his seat. But when we watched the performance together on

DVD, he had no recollection of even getting up. “None?” “None.

I don’t remember anything about it at all.”

But seeing himself was powerful medicine. He watched it to-

gether with me several times. Gradually, he began to see that he

could do this without falling on his face. That he could communi-

cate successfully. I won’t say that he became the best presenter in

his agency overnight, because he didn’t. But he was now able to

get up with his partner and persuade his audience that his ideas

were good for them.

What causes this fear? From what I can tell, it’s driven by at

least four things—Feeling Safe, Being Right, Feeling Good, and

Looking Good.

If any of these conditions are challenged, we become fearful.

And in most peoples’ minds, presentations are an opportunity

to hit the Grand Slam—Not Feeling Safe, Not Being Right, Not

Feeling Good, and deﬁnitely Not Looking Good.

We can all learn to become more effective presenters. We can

learn to develop enough conﬁdence to stand up and say what’s on

The Art of the Pitch

our mind. To become more effective communicators. To persuade

our audience—whether it’s one person or one thousand—to our

point of view.

Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Taken.

The key to that is learning to accept one critical precept—the an-

swer lies within ourselves. No, grasshopper, this is not a Zen ap-

proach to presenting, it’s simply the conclusion that I’ve come to

after thirty years and thousands of presentations. There is no one

right way. Any more than there is one right way to sing a song. Or

swing at a golf ball. I know that there are people out there who

will tell you otherwise. Organizations that make a good deal of

money teaching people exactly how to behave in order to be a bet-

ter presenter. I just don’t buy it. Let me put it this way. Would we

ﬁnd it entertaining if every professional singer tried to sing exactly

like Frank Sinatra? I don’t think so. We like variety. We like differ-

ences. Some of us even like quirkiness. We would grow very tired

of listening to one singer after another doing Ol’ Blue Eyes. To

the point where singing wouldn’t even be a form of entertainment

anymore. Maybe that seems like a particularly extreme example

to you, but is it any crazier than telling everyone that they should

present in exactly the same way?

That they should stand in a certain posture, holding their

arms and hands at a particular angle, and affect a certain attitude,

emphasizing certain words, speaking at a certain volume, pausing

HOW TO BE

at all the same points, and all while very cunningly dressing for

success? No, it just doesn’t make any sense.

Which is why I’ve never told anyone, “Stand like a Pirate.”

But that’s essentially what some people who claim to know what

they’re doing tell their students.

There was only one Frank Sinatra. There’s only one Jon Steel,

or Jeff Goodby, or John Adams. They’re very, very good at what

they do. They’re very, very good presenters. But that doesn’t mean

we should model ourselves after them. They each possess much

to emulate, and much to learn from. But maybe the most impor-

tant thing to learn is that each of them has their own distinct

style. Each of which is highly effective. In their own way. None of

them tries to be someone they’re not. Why, therefore, should we

as lesser mortals attempt to be someone we are not? Of course we

shouldn’t. The simple truth of the matter is that each of us has it

within us to be the very best us we can be. The best Bob Smith, or

Sally Jones. No one is as good at being you as you.

We all have attributes that are just waiting to be used. We only

have to summon up the conﬁdence to use them. To get it through

our heads once and for all that it isn’t necessary to be like some

great speaker we saw at a conference or on television. In fact,

it would be a mistake. Because isn’t a big part of what we liked

about that speaker the fact that she was unique? That we hadn’t

seen anybody quite like her before? That there was just something

about the way she took control of the audience, knew what she

was talking about, and delivered her message effectively?

The Art of the Pitch

TAKE NOTE

According to scientists, the physiological changes that occur in humans

when they are afraid and when they are excited are identical. So the way

we feel and the way we appear to the audience are exactly the same when

we’re afraid and when we’re excited.

So why not choose to be excited? Actually, the way to deal

with those nervous feelings is to channel them into adrenalin. Let

the feelings pump you up. Enjoy the feeling of being excited.

In every workshop and class I have conducted for the past ten

years, someone will ﬁnish their presentation, return to their seat,

and claim that they were terriﬁed. Each time, I ask the audience if

the presenter appeared to be terriﬁed. And every single time, the

answer is “No.” We don’t appear to be afraid, we just appear to

be excited.

We need to understand this—the feelings of nervousness that

we are experiencing simply do not transmit to the audience to

anywhere near the degree with which we feel them. That’s a long

way of saying the audience can’t tell that we’re nervous.

Unless we’re holding a ﬂimsy piece of paper and our hand is

shaking like a leaf. If you tend to shake, don’t hold paper. Have it

mounted on foam core or let someone else hold the paper.

The process of ﬁguring out your individual style can take some

time and a lot of practice. Take every opportunity you can ﬁnd to

present. Internally, at your workplace, perhaps at organizations

HOW TO BE

outside work where you may volunteer, or even at Toastmasters.

Most cities in North America have multiple Toastmasters Clubs.

The purpose of the clubs is to bring professionals together on a

regular basis and have the members present to one another. It’s

designed to help you become better, and a lot of people have ben-

eﬁted from it.

The most effective tool you can use is video. You can get help

from a friend, or you can even do it by yourself. Today’s light-

weight video cameras have excellent quality and are easy to use.

You can even use your phone.

Get into a room and record yourself delivering a presentation

that you have prepared. Look at the playback. Are you happy with

it? Does the person in the video resemble anyone you know? Many

times, my students are shocked to see and hear themselves. Not just

because we all think we need to lose weight, but because without

seeing ourselves, we have a hard time realizing what impression we

are delivering when we stand up in front of the room to present.

Analyze your performance. If you’re coming off as too stiff, or

too “professional,” loosen it up. You might even ask a friend to

take a look and share her thoughts with you.

Then do it again. And again. It takes hard work.

But over time, you will begin to see what works for you and

what doesn’t.

If you’re naturally funny, being humorous will work, but that

has to be tempered. If you’re very good at delivering a quiet emo-

tional message, then try that style.

The Art of the Pitch

Some people really beneﬁt by moving around the room.

Others are more comfortable standing in one place.

Try different things. Keep experimenting. Eventually, you will

discover what works for you.

Once you’ve arrived at a style, stay with it. Don’t change it.

Of course, if you are talking about a speciﬁc subject, you will tai-

lor your delivery to an attitude that is appropriate to the subject.

Likewise, if you’re in a huge room at a convention center, you’ll

address the audience differently than if you were in someone’s of-

ﬁce. But don’t change your style. It’s what makes you—you. And

that’s what we’re after.

Know Everybody’s “Stuff”

The surest defense against nerves is this—know your stuff.

Nothing will cure as many presentation ills as knowing your

stuff.

And by “your stuff,” I don’t just mean your part of the pre-

sentation. If you are presenting with teammates—and that’s the

way the vast majority of presentations go down today—know ev-

erybody’s part. Know the entire presentation.

You may have to bail out a teammate who forgets an impor-

tant point. If you don’t know the point she was going to make,

you can’t bail her out, can you? And by the way, if what she for-

gets to say isn’t critical to the idea you’re trying to sell, let it go.

It’s better to just move on and not look like you guys don’t know

HOW TO BE

what you’re doing, or that you are somehow undermining your

teammate by pointing out that she missed something. Audiences

hate the appearance of dissidence within a team. They run from

it. So when you are presenting as a team, at least act as if you like

one another.

Suppose your teammate doesn’t make the plane? Literally. It’s

happened thousands of times. You’ve got to be able to stand up

and deliver her part. So you better know it.

But even more importantly, there may be a time during the

presentation when things don’t go exactly as planned. Maybe the

client says, “Look, we already know all about that, what we want

to hear about is what you’re going to do about it.” You’d better

be able to adjust what you rehearsed and deliver what the client

needs. The entire team has to be so well prepared and know the

material so well that they can switch on the ﬂy to cover something

that they hadn’t planned on doing.

VCU Brandcenter students learn this lesson early in their ﬁrst

year at school in Professor Don Just’s class, “The Business of

Branding.” Don assigns a team of ﬁve a case study to be presented

one week hence. The day of the presentation all ﬁve are there,

ready to go. Don gets them all pumped up, and then tells two of

them to sit down. “You missed the plane, and your wife had a

baby. You two didn’t make the trip. You three do the presenta-

tion.” The rest of the class gets the idea very quickly.

Knowing the material will ﬁx whatever ails you, but more

than anything, it will eliminate one of the major reasons for fear—

The Art of the Pitch

fear of forgetting what you’re supposed to say. You won’t forget,

because you know it.

Notice I say “know it.” Do not memorize. That will lead you

to trouble. You will forget a key word from one of the sentences

that you memorize. And you won’t be able to move on with the

presentation, because you don’t really know the material, you

only know the words you memorized. It may as well be in French.

And now you’re stuck, mon ami. It happens all the time. I see

people rummaging around in their memory for that perfect word

or phrase that they “memorized.” Only they really didn’t.

Also, memorizing typically comes off exactly like memorizing.

It appears that the speaker is repeating what he memorized. So it’s

stiff and unnatural.

Watch a good actor sometime. He appears to be saying what

has just occurred to him. He’s expressing an idea. A bad actor ap-

pears to be repeating what he memorized. It doesn’t seem in any

way genuine.

So don’t memorize. Know the material. Make it yours. And

then deliver it in your words and your own style with CLARITY,

CONVICTION, AND GRACE.

Here’s Darren Moran describing his personal style:

By solving one of my greatest presentation weaknesses, Peter

inadvertently created my unique style of presenting. Like 98

percent of the rest of the world, I had a nasty habit of ﬁlling

the empty spaces between the actual words of my presenta-

tions with “ummms.” Peter beat that out of me pretty quickly.

HOW TO BE

But what he couldn’t solve was my terrible memory. No matter

how hard I try, I just can’t memorize speeches or presentations.

When I know the material I’m presenting well . . . when I’m

in my comfort zone . . . it ﬂows ﬁne. But when presenting new

material or ideas, I have to search my mind for what I was plan-

ning to say next to actually create a coherent presentation. And

that searching sometimes takes time. Absent the “ummms,” this

situation creates long silences, abruptly punctuated by a rapid-

ﬁre patter. Rather than sounding hesitant or unsure, it has the

curious effect of making it seem like I’m pausing for very, very

dramatic effect, inveighing even the lowliest conjunction with

incredible importance. The cycle of hitting the brake every time

I get up to 60, then stepping on the gas again after sitting idle

gives my presentations an eerily similar quality to a NYC cab

ride: you may not always enjoy the journey, but you’ll never fall

asleep, and you’ll be thrilled to arrive in one piece at the end.

—Darren Moran, executive creative director, DraftFCB

The Thin Line

In trying to explain to people how to do this thing called presenting,

how to do it without fear, I grasp for whatever it is that connects

with that particular student. Different people respond to different

stimuli, and if I’m not careful, I can cause someone to adopt a per-

sona that really isn’t them. We quickly solve that problem, but it

has caused me to realize how delicate the balance is between one

persona that is perfectly effective and one that is ineffective.

The Art of the Pitch

For example, it’s become clear to me is that there is a ﬁne line

between conﬁdence and arrogance. It is critical that we not only

be conﬁdent, but that we project that conﬁdence. It doesn’t do

us much good if we feel conﬁdent but appear to be nervous, or

unsure of ourselves, or distracted, or any of a thousand other not

so useful things. Remember, people tend to believe what they see,

so if we’re conﬁdent (and we’d better be), then we need to project

that conﬁdence.

So we’re conﬁdent and we project it. But we don’t want to cross

that ﬁne line between conﬁdence and arrogance. It’s easy to do. And

once you’ve done it, it isn’t easy to come back. Your audience will

most likely have dismissed you as a jerk by then. Most people will

catch themselves before they’ve gone too far, but I’ve seen more than

one presenter turn himself into a game show host. It isn’t pretty.

Then we’ve got the guy who is good at presenting. But maybe

a little too “good.” “What now?” you’re wondering. This book is

all about becoming a great presenter, and he’s complaining about

someone being “too good?” Let me explain. It isn’t unusual for

me to encounter a presenter who is conﬁdent in his ability, knows

his stuff, and has been very successful in the past. At least, in his

own mind. What he doesn’t realize is that what he thinks of as

“polished,” is actually coming off as “slick.” Audiences don’t like

“slick.” “Slick” is a synonym for “inauthentic.” And “inauthen-

tic” really is deadly. So it’s got to be stamped out.

This is, as you might expect, rather unpleasant for me as the

facilitator of the workshop, and usually less so for the slick guy.

HOW TO BE

Here’s a guy who’s doing all the stuff I’ve been talking about, he’s

just doing too much of it in too “big” a way. The audience knows

it. If I don’t call him out on it, I lose credibility with the workshop.

I try to be as positive as possible in my comments, but I do the

guy a disservice if I don’t call him out. So I do. I ﬁrst had to do

that many years ago with a gentleman who was part of the top

management team at the agency I was working with. He was the

most senior guy in the room.

He thought that all of the junior folks in the room admired his

sterling presentation abilities. He didn’t realize that they thought

he was a fraud. Difﬁcult stuff. The easy thing would have been

to compliment him and move on. But I wouldn’t really have been

helping him if I had, and I’d have lost the respect of everyone else

in the room at the same time.

So, with some trepidation, I brought up the idea of him being

“too good.” At ﬁrst he was taken aback, but slowly he began to

get the idea. I have always insisted on video recording every pre-

sentation by every participant, but up until that day I hadn’t been

doing private, one-on-one analyses of each participant’s video.

Once this gentleman and I were able to look at his video and talk

about it in private, he really appreciated what I had been saying

and determined to adjust his performances accordingly. He would

be conﬁdent, just not “too conﬁdent.”

It’s interesting that we are drawn to conﬁdence. We follow

conﬁdent people. But turn the conﬁdence dial up a little too high,

and the audience is turned off.

The Art of the Pitch

The way I usually describe the presenter who’s crossed over

the line is as “a game show host.” You know how those guys are

inevitably smarmy, oily, slick, self-absorbed, sometimes even con-

descending? They think they’re funny, so they laugh at their own

jokes. They make facial expressions worthy of a silent ﬁlm actor.

They don’t pay any attention to what anyone else in the room is

saying or thinking. Don’t be that guy. Almost no one I work with

is capable of turning into the “game show host,” but by being

aware of the possibility, they are assured that they will not.

Which is why, I think, a little self-deprecating humor goes a

long way.

“No one likes a perfect creative director.”

I think most creative directors would agree with that state-

ment. Yet most creative directors (including myself) approach a

presentation with the desire to make ourselves look perfect. Our

delivery. Our ideas. Our jokes. I guess it’s just natural instinct

that we believe the clients want us to be “perfect.”

But I think if you can ﬁnd some simple ways to make

yourself more human—more imperfect—then there is a better

chance of warming up clients. And at least building a little em-

pathy before presenting these great ideas you’ve worked so hard

to polish into perfection.

So here’s one little trick I’ve used over the last year or two

that I think has helped in some meetings and pitches. Before

showing the ﬁnal work, I quickly (very quickly) touch on the

HOW TO BE

creative process of getting to this work. I start by explaining

how “the creative teams really had fun exploring a lot of op-

tions.” (Then I click to a slide showing quick unposed shots of

teams working and typing. This simple slide says there are hu-

man beings behind these ideas.) Then I say, “And after a week

or so, there were a ton of options and ways at this strategy.”

(Then I click to a photo or two of a giant long wall ﬁlled with

papers and scraps. I even show a tight shot of something crude

or a bad drawing. It’s best to show the true ugliness and raw

nature of a wall like this. Showing a wall ﬁlled with imperfec-

tion says a lot about the open-mindedness of the CD present-

ing.) And then I will follow that by saying, “But ultimately we

had to edit all of this down and get to the work that really

hits our strategy.” (At this point, I click to a slide that shows a

few photos of work lying all over the ﬂoor, in the trash, under

tables. These are real scenes every day in a creative department,

so capture them along the way with a little phone camera. And

by showing this death all over the ﬂoor, the CD is kind of saying

that it’s OK to kill ideas. That visual statement is comforting to

clients. They are more receptive to buying an idea when they

start knowing that it’s OK to kill an idea.)

In the end, I’ve found that if the images are truly authen-

tic, then you have a chance to convey yourself and the creative

department as imperfect. And that’s a great place to begin the

process of selling work.

—Chris Jacobs, executive creative director, Cramer-Krasselt

The Art of the Pitch

Humor vs. Jokes

Most of us have a sense of humor. We may not be the funniest peo-

ple in the world, but we’ve got a sense of humor. We use it to great

effect in our lives, helping us to make points, soften the impact of

bad news, or simply helping people see who we are—and like us.

Yet when it comes time to give a presentation, many of us de-

cide to unplug that sense of humor. Because this is a professional

situation and it calls for Professional Behavior. Right? Yes, but it

doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be funny or humorous. It doesn’t

mean that we shouldn’t use our natural sense of humor.

And one of the best ways to do that, to humanize ourselves,

if you will, is to be self-deprecating. People like people who don’t

take themselves too seriously. We should take what we do seri-

ously, and what we’re there to talk about in the presentation is

doubtless a serious subject, but we can still show that we aren’t

overly impressed with ourselves by being self-deprecating from

time to time. Don’t overdo it, though. You want them to think

you’re modest, not incompetent.

Humor can play a major role in making the emotional con-

nection that we’re striving for.

The people in your audience use the left side of the brain, the

analytical side, to rationalize decisions, but they make decisions

with the right side, the emotional, intuitive side. So use your sense

of humor. Being funny is great, but what we should not do, under

any circumstances, is tell jokes.

HOW TO BE

The humor we use should come from real-life situations. This

can be an incident that occurred in the room before you went

on, or a funny thing that happened while you guys were putting

together the presentation. It can be a funny story about one of

your colleagues, or something funny you heard about the subject

you’re discussing.

It’s the way in which you tell a story or make a point that can

be funny. For example, when I’m demonstrating eye contact for

workshop groups, I often use the following demonstration.

When you were in school, your teacher may have told you to

just look at the back wall of the room and everyone in the room

will think you’re looking at them. I say this while staring at the

back wall. I then ask, “Does anyone think I’m looking at them?”

Of course, no one does, and they laugh every time. Okay, it’s not

the funniest story in the world, but it makes the point in a humor-

ous way.

Thoughtfulness

In one of the more bizarre chapters in my New Business Presentation

experience, our agency presented for a large business-to-business

account on a stage in front of a large live audience. It was like

something out of a television show. The company’s auditorium

was full of people watching the competing agencies present and,

from time to time, an audience member would wander up to the

stage and snap a photo or two. The CMO of the company had

The Art of the Pitch

100

decided that he wanted to open up the process to anyone in the

company who was interested. So he invited all the employees.

But he didn’t stop there. At that time in the Washington, D.C.,

Metro area, there was a very popular business magazine called

Regardie’s. The CMO invited a writer from the magazine to sit

in on all the presentations and do a story based on what he saw

and heard.

The CMO asked if we would object to having a reporter in

the room. We said we didn’t since he was determined to have the

guy there anyway.

This was the kind of situation that many people would have

found paralyzing. “Oh my God, not only do we have to present

in front of a theater-size audience, we have to do it in front of a

reporter who’s going to write about how horrible we are. Oh my

God, Oh my God.”

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that we didn’t feel

that way. I thought it was a very interesting wrinkle and just

maybe an opportunity for some great publicity about our agency.

The bottom line was this—I knew that we had a great presenta-

tion and that I really knew the material. So I wasn’t afraid.

As it turned out, we won. And it was a great PR opportunity.

Regardie’s ran a major story on the presentations, with particular

emphasis on ours. They even ran a photo of my partner and me

on the cover. It was really cool.

But there was one aspect of the piece that I found more than a

bit disturbing. In describing my partner and me, he characterized

him as “the more thoughtful of the two.” That really stung. I later

HOW TO BE

101

asked the writer about it, and he claimed that “Well, you do all

the talking up there on the stage, in front of everybody, and you’re

like the star of the show, and he doesn’t ever say much and takes

his time before he says anything.”

Well, it was true that we had won and that, as I said, I did

all the talking. But in the interview that accompanied the article,

my partner and I took turns answering the writer’s questions. In

fact, I deferred a bit to my partner because I wanted him to have

a piece of the spotlight as well.

The writer went on to say that he was really trying to build

up my partner and meant no disrespect to me, but I took it very

seriously indeed.

Never appear to be anything but thoughtful. Thoughtfulness is

one of the most important attributes we can possess. Particularly in

new business and client meetings. This is extremely important for

young people. If you appear to be young, people may assume that

you are inexperienced, less than savvy, and not really in any posi-

tion to be telling folks what to do. But all of that can be overcome

if you appear to be thoughtful. Choose your language carefully.

Don’t come off as someone on a reality television show sitting in a

hot tub. Use a vocabulary of achievement and victory. The words

you choose, and how you deliver them, say a lot about you and

your organization. Say things once and say them with power. Don’t

appear glib. Don’t answer too quickly. Take your time and answer

in measured sentences. Don’t diminish yourself because you’re the

most junior person in the room. You’ve learned a lot in your time.

Think of it as being wise beyond your years. And be thoughtful.

The Art of the Pitch

102

Please understand, I’m not talking about writing thank you

notes or being considerate of others. Although that secondary

deﬁnition of “thoughtful” is very important and I believe in it

completely.

I’m talking about the quality that certain people seem to have

that communicates intelligence. Wisdom. Knowing your stuff. It’s

not necessary to do a lot of talking in a meeting or presentation

to seem thoughtful. It is only necessary that the things you say are

smart. Insightful. Cogent. Even brave. And if you’re really good

at it, your ideas will be so thoughtful, and so well expressed, that

they can’t be refuted.

Mike Hughes of The Martin Agency once said, “The four

things clients want the most are Insight, Conviction, Wisdom,

and Courage.” Notice Mike didn’t mention cool ads. Which

isn’t to say he doesn’t believe in them, because he certainly does,

but he was explaining the things that are most important to cli-

ents. And Mike knows that if the client doesn’t think those four

key attributes are present in his agency, and in the people who

work on his business, there probably won’t be any cool ads done

anytime soon.

The key to communicating those key attributes is thoughtful-

ness. Clients want to work with smart people who care about their

business. Not people who want to do cool ads. So it is critical that

we present ourselves in a thoughtful way. That our arguments are

structured in a precise, logical manner. And that each statement,

while built on the last, leads into the next. Segues are critical.

HOW TO BE

103

Non sequiturs, verboten.

This isn’t to say that you’ve got to come off like a Harvard

B-School professor. This doesn’t mean that you should be bor-

ing. Quite the contrary. You should be inspirational. Use all the

creativity you’re planning on putting into those cool ads to win

over your prospect/client. Because unless you win them over, no

cool ads.

From time to time, I’m asked to help a client ﬁnd the right

ad agency for them. One of the most exciting moments for me

in that process is encountering someone who has a fresh take on

things, a point of view I haven’t heard before, or even a new way

of talking about stuff I have heard before. Those are the kind of

people I try to get in front of my client, the new business prospect.

Because those are the kind of people who I believe the prospect

deserves to meet.

Those are the kind of people I would describe as thoughtful.

Those are the kind of people who stand out from the crowd

and win.

The Way We Say Things

Let me give you an example of a team of presenters distinguishing

themselves from the competition.

For a couple of years, The Martin Agency operated an inter-

nal training program called The Martin Workshop. They asked

me to organize the program. With a lot of help from other folks,

The Art of the Pitch

104

we managed to put together a six-month program covering all the

essentials that anyone would need to master in order to succeed at

The Martin Agency, or at any agency, for that matter.

The young folks chosen to participate in the program were

recommended by their supervisors as “rising stars.” They came

from every department and discipline within the agency and they

were an impressive group, to say the least.

At the end of the six-month “semester,” the participants were

split into two teams and asked to develop a Communications Plan

for an actual agency client and present it to a panel of judges. The

panel was made up of the top management of the agency, and

representatives of the client would often come to see the show as

well. Needless to say, this was a wonderful opportunity for the

teams to strut their stuff in front of folks to whom they would

normally have very limited, if any, access. Throw in the presence

of actual clients, and you’ve got a crucible of anxiety that is about

as close to real life as you can come.

I was involved with the program for three or four “semesters,”

and the winning team in these competitions was always the team

that gave the best presentation. Not the team with what might be

called the “best ideas,” but the team that presented their ideas the

best. And that is almost always the way it is. Everywhere. All the

time.

Why? Because no one knows if one idea is better than another

if it isn’t presented in such a way that it is clear to the audience

that the idea is better.

HOW TO BE

105

TAKE NOTE

William Goldman, the noted screenwriter and novelist (Butch Cassidy

and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, The Princess Bride) wrote a wonder-

ful book about Hollywood called Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal

View of Hollywood and Screenwriting, in which he adamantly proclaims that

“no one in Hollywood knows anything.” What he means by this is that no

one—studio heads, producers, directors, writers, agents, actors—none of

them have any idea what will be successful in the marketplace and what

will not. That’s why we see so many expensive failures and surprising small





their predecessors.

The same can be said about advertising. No one knows anything. Oh,

there are certain obvious “rules” about good design and writing, and lots

of people think they know a good strategy when they see one, but the

truth of the matter is, this is a subjective activity. It usually boils down to

whose opinion is the most powerful in the room. Clients have an opinion

and the agency has an opinion. Sometimes, they can reach an accord. A lot

of the time, they can’t.

I see this subjectivity demonstrated time and again at our school. A

student can take an idea to one professor and get a very well-reasoned

opinion on the work. That student can then take that same idea next

-



Neither one of them is wrong.

(continues)

The Art of the Pitch

106

-

ally knows what will work in the marketplace. We can make some pretty

good educated guesses, but we can’t be sure. Which is why so much of

the work produced by advertising agencies is tested before it runs. This

could lead to another long rant, so I’ll stop with the digression now. Just

remember that it’s all subjective.

The last competition at The Martin Workshop that I was in-

volved in brought that notion into even higher relief. There were

two teams involved in the “ﬁnals.” Both groups worked com-

pletely independently, although they received the same brieﬁng

from the actual account supervisor who worked on the account

for The Martin Agency.

In their presentations, both groups presented virtually identical

ideas. Yet one group was unanimously chosen as the winner. In the

deliberations with the panel of judges prior to rendering the deci-

sion, several judges pointed out the “great ideas” that the winning

team offered, although the other team presented exactly the same

ideas. How can this be? It’s simple, and as I said earlier, it happens

all the time. The winning team presented their ideas with language

that was colorful, powerful, unusual, even exciting. Their vocabu-

lary, as presented orally and in their PowerPoint slides, was mark-

edly different from that of the runners-up. Their choice of words

was thoughtful and action oriented, and their ideas were presented

with a creative ﬂair that was lacking in the other team’s presenta-

HOW TO BE

107

tion. And it was that choice of vocabulary used to describe their

ideas and their approach to problem solving that so distinguished

their work from that of their competitors that day.

Here’s an important point I want to make: while it’s true that

the audience will likely remember less than 10 percent of what

you say orally, you must give them exciting and powerful words

to hang onto. If they only remember a few, make them great.

And don’t forget that, even though they will forget much of

what you say, they will remember what they thought about what

you said. So be sure to make them think.

I’m convinced that that’s what happened in the minds of the

judges that day at The Martin Agency. The judges remembered

what they thought and how they felt when they were listening

to the presentation. Everything they heard and saw made an im-

pression—or it didn’t.

Always remember that the way in which we present our ideas

is every bit as important, if not more important, than the ideas

themselves. When we are selling our ideas, the audience must ﬁrst

buy us.

And as we said earlier, if we want them to buy “us,” we have

to show them who “us” really is. Not some caricature of “us,”

but the genuine article. Because it is this genuine representation of

ourselves that our audience will ﬁnd authentic. And authenticity

is what we seek.

Authenticity comes from the heart. Find what not just you,

but the team believes in its heart. And tell your truth.

The Art of the Pitch

108

The Volkswagen of America pitch was the most memorable

pitch I have been involved with. Arnold was the dark horse.

We felt like underdogs. USA Today was following Donny

Deutsch around during the pitch and we were this cobbled-to-

gether agency in Boston. My creative partner at the time, Alan

Pafenbach, and I raised our hands. I had owned many VWs

over the years and felt like I knew what made them so special

to their owners. We were both the target market, so to speak.

They were coming into town to visit the agency, and we

thought we would make a video. Alan and I went down to the

bar below the agency and the ﬁrst thing we wrote down, on a

napkin no less, was that on the road of life there are passengers

and there are drivers. We wrote a bunch more lines, which even-

tually became the TV spots, pretty fast.

That weekend we drove around in my Jetta with my friend

Joe Fallon, who has since become a writer and creative director

who we hired at Arnold. We basically just acted like we always

do, having stupid conversations in cars. Not slick at all.

We cut that footage into whatever else we could ﬁnd and

put music we liked on it the night before they arrived and played

it for them the next day. We learned later that we basically

won the account right then. Of course, we didn’t know that

at the time and spent the next month trying to get all clever.

Ron Lawner kept pushing us back to the spirit of the video. He

wrote the words “Drivers wanted” and stuck it up on the wall,

and that was that.

HOW TO BE

109

On the road of life, there are passengers, and there are driv-

ers. Drivers wanted.

The words looked good next to the logo.

This was the ﬁrst really big pitch I was ever involved with.

We were all very, very nervous. I wore a suit. The clients asked

if it was the same suit I got married in. It was. They cracked up.

And that put everyone at ease. I asked if they were at the wed-

ding. I guess it was obvious I wasn’t a suit-and-tie kind of guy.

We had all the pitch work-up on black walls behind us. We

had the words set big, above all the work.

Kristen Volk, the planner, recovered fast when the power

went out because someone kicked the cord out of the laptop or

something. She knew her stuff, so it didn’t matter, and I think

the clients appreciated the human aspect of that. We all just

spoke from the heart, the words just poured out. We were a

team that spoke in one voice. We really did believe that we had

captured the spirit of VW. Still, I couldn’t believe it when Ron

called me and told me the news.

It was the largest account ever won by a New England ad

agency at the time.

—Lance Jensen, executive creative director, Hill Holliday

111

SIX

Authenticity

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is

translated through you into action, and because there is only one

of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it,

it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”

—Martha Graham, pioneer of modern dance

ertain presenters seem to win all the time. They seem

to always get what they want. Why is that? Are they

smarter than everybody else? Are they just “better pre-

senters?” Are their agencies just better?

In a few cases, the answer to all three of these questions is

“Yes.” But it isn’t always the case, and even when it is, that isn’t

the real reason certain presenters always win.

A handful of presenters always seem to win because they have

mastered one important skill. They have learned how to be authen-

tic. The dictionary deﬁnes “authentic” as “of undisputed origin;

The Art of the Pitch

112

genuine. Made or done in the traditional or original way, or in a

way that faithfully resembles an original.”

My New Oxford American Dictionary goes on to say “based on

facts; accurate or reliable—an authentic depiction of the situation.”

And an authentic depiction of the situation is characterized

as reliable, dependable, trustworthy, authoritative, honest, and

faithful.

That’s why we need to be authentic. Because people believe us

when we’re authentic. Because people trust us when we’re authen-

tic and because people will do what we ask when we’re authentic.

Additionally, behaving in an “original way” is seen as authentic.

So who wouldn’t want to be seen as authentic?

Okay, ﬁne, I want to be authentic, but how do I do that?

Simple. You’ve already got everything you need. You. Just be

yourself.

Unfortunately, this idea is completely foreign to most people.

They assume that if they are to give a “presentation,” well, they’ll

have to turn into the kind of person who gives a “presentation.”

They then proceed to try to do an impression of whoever they see

in their mind’s eye as the kind of person who gives “presentations.”

As we said earlier, this is exactly the wrong choice. It causes

us to behave in an unnatural way, striving to emulate some model

presenter who we’ve conjured up for the purposes of the presenta-

tion. It’s hard enough to stand up in front of a room and speak as

ourselves, but trying to present material as someone else, which is

essentially what this amounts to, is just too much for most of us.

AUTHENTICITY

113

We’re afraid to stand “naked” in front of the room, so we cloak

ourselves in some phony persona. And then we compound the

problem by projecting a litany of copy-heavy PowerPoint slides

up on the screen, reading them verbatim to the audience, who

by now has most likely checked out and is either busily checking

their emails on their smartphones or wishing they could.

What we are good at is being ourselves. Being our authentic,

down-to-earth selves. That is the only platform from which we

can speak sincerely. That’s the only way we’re ever going to be

able to build trust. And without trust, we will never accomplish

anything of signiﬁcance in our business relationships.

Yet people continue to believe that they have to become some-

one else in order to “present.” In one of my workshops at Goodby,

Silverstein & Partners, a broadcast producer was included in the

group along with writers, art directors, account people, and plan-

ners. As we went around the room and introduced ourselves, he

said that unlike his colleagues, he never really gave presentations

and really didn’t have any idea how to do it. Though he was

happy to give it a try. I told him to not even try. Just pay attention

to what we were talking about and try to apply those lessons to

what he was going to do.

Of course, you can guess what happened. All he did was be

himself. He spoke from the heart. He talked about his young fam-

ily. He passionately explained the innovative production techniques

behind a brilliant campaign for the National Basketball Association.

And he charmed us all. He was the most natural presenter in the

The Art of the Pitch

114

room. And therefore, the most authentic. And even though these

workshops aren’t competitions, he was the best.

Being who we are is powerful.

Use that power to make an emotional connection. We do that

by telling our story in an authentic, emotional way. It isn’t neces-

sary to have a slick slide show or technological wonders to win

an audience. In fact, those things can get in the way. And often,

technology doesn’t work.

What some people fear the most, being betrayed by their pre-

sentation equipment, can actually be a blessing, because it forces

us to put ourselves front and center. Listen to Gareth Kay:

My presentation nightmare is one I’ll never forget. For lots of

bad reasons but also because it taught me the lesson of what

really matters.

It was my ﬁrst pitch as a newly promoted board member

of an agency in London called dfgw that sadly no longer exists

(anything good I do in my career is mostly down to my boss

there, Gary Duckworth). We were pitching a whisky brand that

was trying to make itself relevant to a younger audience who

saw it, literally, as “the drink my dad drinks.” So we had the

brilliantly (perhaps stupidly) simple strategy of doing lager ads

for whisky—inject a bit of humor and sociability into an overly

serious, solitary category. The ads were funny and relied on a

brilliant branded mnemonic that was a catchphrase of an old

English actor and comic, Leslie Phillips, who had become in-

AUTHENTICITY

115

credibly popular again. For the pitch we got Leslie to record this

catchphrase, and idiot that I am, I decided that seeing I knew

a bit about PowerPoint, I’d embed it in the charts so we could

play the catchphrase throughout the presentation.

All went well in the rehearsals, and we ran off to the pitch

at the client’s brand consultancy with a laptop and some speak-

ers. We had ten minutes to set up. The laptop powered up and

then nothing. A black screen. We tried to restart. Nothing. The

client arrived. Still couldn’t get it started.

And we had no backup on another ﬁle or an external drive.

All the drama had gone from the pitch. I was red in the face

and angry with myself (and also probably at Bill Gates). The

creative director couldn’t believe we called in a favor and it was

not going to be used in a big pitch.

That’s the nightmare piece and I now tend to travel to

pitches with thumb drives, backup decks in the cloud, and so

forth (especially as Rich Silverstein has a reputation of being

the equivalent of kryptonite to AV technology). But, despite the

nightmare, it actually led to one of the best pitch performances

I’ve ever been part of. I knew that we had no charts, just some

printouts and ﬂip charts. We knew the story we wanted to tell

and I think we gave it in a more engaging, human and “loose”

way than we had planned. We told stories, and to paraphrase

David Ogilvy, we didn’t lean on technology like a drunk leans

on a lamppost, for support rather than illumination. Maybe

that’s an important thing for us to all remember nowadays in an

The Art of the Pitch

116

era where anyone can make beautiful charts and most agencies

rely on “shiny objects” to win—the most memorable stories are

the ones that are well told. By people, not presenters. And that

human connections are always more powerful than technologi-

cal ﬁreworks.

—Gareth Kay, director of Brand Strategy,

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

Being who we are accelerates and enhances human connection.

And that’s what we’re after. As we’ve said, we need to make a hu-

man connection—a bond that’s based upon emotion. In order to

make that connection, we must be honest, open, and sincere. We

must show what we truly feel, not just what we believe. Human

connections are emotional. The power of emotion is what binds

us together and builds trust.

Without trust, we will never achieve what we want.

As I suggested in the last chapter, most people I know would

never think of lying in a meeting or an interview, yet when they

try to be someone they’re not, they’re lying, aren’t they? And on

some level, the audience knows it. That’s why the liar loses and

the authentic person wins.

Getting this thought through our heads and truly believing

it is a major breakthrough for many of us. Like my art director

friend in Los Angeles who learned not to be afraid to be herself,

we ﬁnd it powerfully liberating, because we no longer feel the

strain of trying to be someone we’re not, or of trying to behave in

a way that is foreign to us.

AUTHENTICITY

117

I’m in no way suggesting that we behave in any way that’s

less than professional. We have to treat each presentation with

the respect that it deserves—yes, presentations deserve respect.

When we respect the presentation, when we treat it as some-

thing that’s important, the audience sees that and realizes that

what we’re talking about is important to them. And by associa-

tion, we’re demonstrating that we think the audience is impor-

tant as well. We’ve all attended presentations in which it was

clear that the presenters didn’t really treat the opportunity to

present as signiﬁcant. They’re poorly prepared, their visuals are

sloppy or incomplete, their thinking is mundane—and we re-

spond negatively.

That said, while we must be professional, we don’t want to be

“professional.” We don’t want to put on our “presentation per-

sonality” and turn into the Robot Presenter from Another World.

Not long ago, I was working with a pair of executive cre-

ative directors on their presentation skills. Several of their recent

presentations hadn’t gone very well, and their boss suggested

they get some help, which they welcomed with enthusiasm. But

they really couldn’t pinpoint the reason for their poor perfor-

mance. Until they looked at the video recordings of the work

we had been doing together earlier in the day. I always start off

workshops by asking people to get up in front of the room and

talk about anything they like. What they did that weekend, their

kids, their hobbies—anything—but not work. We record these

discussions on video. Then we record presentations from their

work life. In the case of these two, we worked on the set-up and

The Art of the Pitch

118

creative work from various campaigns. Then we looked at the

videos. When these guys looked at the ﬁrst videos, the ones in

which they weren’t “presenting,” but were just chatting, they

saw themselves. Their authentic selves. When they looked at the

videos in which they were presenting work—they asked me to

turn the playback machine off. Why? Because they couldn’t un-

derstand the people they were looking at. Each of these guys

turned into their idea of “a presenter.” They were apoplectic. “I

suck.” “I’m terrible.”

“Worst of all, I’m boring.”

I asked them why they thought that was the case. They both

blurted out, “I don’t know who that guy is. It sure ain’t me.”

I asked them why they changed into Presentation Robots. They

said they thought that was the way they were supposed to be.

These guys aren’t unique. People everywhere think that who

they are isn’t good enough. But when they see themselves being

their true selves and then see themselves impersonating someone

giving a “presentation,” they get it. They change. They commit

to being themselves. And at that moment, they begin to become

powerful presenters. In the case of the two executive creative di-

rectors, we decided that from now on, we were going to call what

they do “conversations,” not “presentations.”

Whatever works.

As with just about everything else in this book, I learned these

lessons the hard way. The stuff I’m talking about in this book is

not theoretical. It is the product of years and years of writing,

AUTHENTICITY

119

designing, delivering, critiquing, and teaching presentations. With

real prospects, real clients, and live ammo.

Many years ago, my agency was in the midst of a new business

presentation. For some reason, we turned off the projector, turned

up the lights in the room, and just started to talk with the client.

This same thing happened several times before and after this par-

ticular incident, but that was usually because of some “technical

difﬁculties.” In this case, the visual aids were working just ﬁne.

But the client asked us to turn off the projector. I can’t even

remember why.

What at ﬁrst seemed like a disaster turned out to be a blessing.

The client had done us an enormous favor and taught me a lesson

that I’ve never forgotten.

Without the slides, which we were at least partially using as

a teleprompter, we were forced to rely on our knowledge of the

subject matter. We had to speak in real English as ourselves. We

couldn’t be “Presentation Robot.” We were forced into a conver-

sation. It was terrifying. But it was great.

He forced us into a conversation and that conversation helped

him decide that he not only liked us, he trusted us and wanted to

work with us.

We weren’t selling, we were just having a conversation and

being ourselves. Which is, of course, the best way to sell. We saw

Gareth Kay’s take on the subject above—if we needed more proof,

here’s a story from a man many people called the creative director

of the decade, Alex Bogusky.

The Art of the Pitch

120

Many years ago, we were doing a presentation comparing the

low-budget stuff we were doing to this high-budget Pepsi pro-

duction with Michael Jackson. Back in those days you brought

⁄4 inch video when you brought video so they had it in the

control room ready to roll on my cue. So I opened up my talk

and when I gave them the sign, they hit play and played some-

thing completely different. Apparently my people had loaded

the wrong spot on the tape. As it was running, I was trying to

piece together how I could use this other spot to make the same

presentation and there was just no way. Sweat began to bead

on my brow. The tape ended and I just decided to explain to

the crowd what had happened and then act out the spot I had

expected to run. That was very interactive and live and real and

during the rest of the talk, it was fun to refer to the spot “that

didn’t run.” I think that, in the end, it turned out to be a success

because it got me more engaged with the audience; since then

when things go wrong, I worry less and ﬁnd a way to make that

stuff into a positive.

—Alex Bogusky, activist and former chief

creative ofﬁcer and co-founder, CP+B

Knowing Who You Are

“They know who they are.”

That’s what one of my clients said when I asked him what he

thought about a ﬁrm with whom we had just met. It was my job

AUTHENTICITY

121

to help him and his colleagues ﬁnd the right ﬁrm for a particular

assignment.

His assessment was right on the money. The people we met

with that afternoon really did know exactly who they were, what

they did, and what they didn’t do. They didn’t try to tailor their

presentation to us, aside from showing us some case studies that

seemed germane to the assignment. They didn’t try to be “just

what you’re looking for.” They were just who they were. We had

met earlier with other ﬁrms that tried to be all things to all people.

Whatever subject came up in the discussion, they would launch

into their unique capabilities in that area. It didn’t come off as

credible. More importantly, it didn’t seem as if they stood for any-

thing. Or maybe that by claiming to stand for so many things,

they didn’t stand for any.

My clients unanimously liked the people who knew who they

were. The people who had a point of view and could articulate it

with clarity, conviction, and grace. They decided to hire them on

the spot. And they turned out to be exactly who they said they

were, exceeding my clients’ already ambitious expectations.

A Point of View

I learned an important lesson about how not to present my ﬁrst

year in advertising.

I had just gotten a marketing degree from SMU and a job at

the Richards Group in Dallas. We were pitching a giant hospital

chain, and I was asked to present background research on the

The Art of the Pitch

122

category to kick things off. Boy, did I kick things off. I wasn’t

prepared, I stuttered and stammered my way through ﬁve unin-

telligible minutes, and thoroughly embarrassed myself and the

agency. My boss, Brad Todd, even kicked me underneath the

table about halfway through. He should have punched me.

The lesson?

For me, if I don’t feel strongly about the subject matter and

understand it in my bones, I can’t stand up in front of people

and persuade them to my way of thinking. Know what you

want to say. Have a point of view. Feel passionately about it.

Absent that, go home.

Looking back, the only good that came out of the experi-

ence was it helped me decide to go to art school and give the

creative side of things a go. I was a terrible account guy.

—Hal Curtis, creative director, Wieden & Kennedy

We tell all of our students that they have to have a point of

view. Regardless of their particular discipline, they need to bring

a point of view to the table. The same goes for agencies. I believe

that one of the principal reasons clients pay agencies is for their

particular point of view. In fact, it really doesn’t matter what busi-

ness you’re in—you’ve got to have a point of view. But you know

what? Most organizations, in fact most individuals, don’t have a

coherent point of view about much.

Do you doubt me? Okay, ask someone a really mundane ques-

tion, like “Why are you a fan of the so and so’s?” They can’t really

AUTHENTICITY

123

tell you. Or they give you a generic, garden-variety, off-the-shelf

answer. And that’s the way it usually is with presentations. I can’t

tell you the number of times I’ve heard essentially the same thing

from one agency after another.

Maybe that’s why in an industry poll of 300 client respond-

ers, 75 percent said, “All agencies are interchangeable.” In other

words, three quarters of all clients believe there is no difference

between ad agencies. That’s staggering. What do people say about

your company?

I love people who start their own companies. I particularly

love people who start their own ad agencies. That’s why I was de-

lighted to meet with a group of young people who had just started

a brand new agency. I really had only one question for them.

“Why are you doing this?” As each of the four folks from the new

agency took turns answering the question, it became clearer and

clearer to all of us that the wheels were already coming off their

brand new organization. None of them said anything that I hadn’t

heard many times before. None of them said anything particularly

interesting or compelling. Most importantly, none of them said

anything that made me think that they would succeed in their new

enterprise. All of them are smart and very good at their particular

discipline. But they lacked a true point of view or a clear vision of

what was new and different and good about their company. None

of them could tell me why I should be excited about their new

company. Here they are, risking essentially everything they have,

putting their lives on the line, and they can’t articulate anything

The Art of the Pitch

124

that communicates the passion they feel or the unique service they

plan on delivering.

This is far from the ﬁrst time I’ve encountered this phenom-

enon. I see it almost every time I’m asked to help an agency grow.

Without naming names, I consulted a few years ago with an

agency that had been around doing pretty good work for years.

They’re a group of smart, talented people. But when we sat down

to analyze their brand by reviewing their promotional materials,

it became apparent to me, and very quickly to them as well, that

the stuff they had just didn’t say anything. Oh, there were plenty

of words. But no meaning. It didn’t give me a reason to believe. It

certainly didn’t give me a reason to want to contact them if I was

looking for an agency to include in a review. And, just like the

young people starting their new agency, they realized right away

that the stuff was just lying there on the table like a three-day-old

ﬁsh. That’s the really scary part. They realized that the material

was terrible, but they didn’t know what to do about it.

The answer? Have a point of view. Have something to say. Say

it in such a way that I get excited. The key to this is the language

that you use. Frame your ideas just as carefully as you would craft

the copy in an ad. Have a headline. Have some body copy that

supports it. And have it all stand for your brand. The expression

of your brand is your point of view. It’s what differentiates you

from all other ad agencies. Or individuals. It’s what will make

your presentation stand out from all the rest.

AUTHENTICITY

125

In order to do this, you have to develop your own lexicon.

Whether it’s your agency talking, or just you, I suggest that you

speak in your own language.

Great agencies all have their own language. Some use terms

for their departments that are completely unique to their agency.

Years ago, when Fallon was winning just about every new busi-

ness pitch they entered, they had their own way of talking. They

never used the word “advertising.” Internally, the people never

spoke about “advertising.” Long before it was fashionable, they

talked about “brands.” Growing brands. The elasticity of brands.

It was all about brands. And why did they do that? Because they

had a point of view.

Discover Your Core Ideology

All organizations should have a point of view that is based on

their core purpose and core values. Some call it a mission state-

ment, although I prefer to work with people to develop a core

ideology comprised of core purpose and core values, as ﬁrst de-

lineated in Jim Collins and Jerry Porras’s excellent book Built to

Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.

Regardless of

what it’s called, every organization needs to have a set of beliefs

that inform everything it does.

And I mean everything. What accounts you pitch. The people

you hire and ﬁre. The kind of work you do. The way you decorate

The Art of the Pitch

126

your ofﬁces. The look of your letterhead. And not least, the lan-

guage that you use to express who and what you are.

Until your business decides to get serious about who it is,

and why it is, and what it believes in and stands for, and ﬁnally,

how it expresses itself, you will continue to struggle in the mid-

dle of that great undifferentiated pack of sameness. Your pre-

sentations will be essentially generic, wandering from one tired

idea to another, with your audience unable to differentiate you

from the group that went before you or the ones who came later.

You’ll lose a lot more than you’ll win. And, maybe even worse,

you’ll win accounts that aren’t right for you, costing you time

and money and ultimately leading to hard feelings all around.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Discover who you are. No

one can tell you. Look deep inside your organization to ﬁnd the

answer. Your people know who you are. They know what you

stand for. And it usually isn’t what’s nicely framed and hanging in

the lobby. Take that down and sit down with your people and ask

them. They know.

As Collins and Porras explain in Built to Last, the trick is to

work from the individual to the organization. The people we in-

volve need to ask themselves,

UÊ “What core values do you personally bring to your work?”

(These should be so fundamental that you hold them regard-

less of whether or not they are rewarded.)

AUTHENTICITY

127

UÊ “What would you tell your children are the core values that

you hold at work and that you hope they will hold when

they become working adults?”

UÊ “If you awoke tomorrow morning with enough money for

the rest of your life, would you continue to live those core

values?”

UÊ “Can you envision those core values being as valid for you

100 years from now as they are today?”

UÊ “Would you continue to hold those core values even if at

some point in time one or more of them became a competi-

tive disadvantage ?”

UÊ “If you were to start a new organization tomorrow in a dif-

ferent line of work, what core values would you build into

the new organization regardless of its industry?”

Those last three questions are particularly critical because

they make the crucial distinction between enduring core values

that should not change and business practices and strategies that

should be changing all the time.

Be aware that this process probably isn’t going to start and

end in one pleasant three-hour meeting in the conference room.

It can take months. It doesn’t have to, but I’ve been involved in

engagements that lasted for six months before the agency was sat-

isﬁed that they had it right. Sometimes it happens more quickly,

particularly in smaller organizations. But the premium isn’t on

The Art of the Pitch

128

getting it fast. It’s on getting it right. It’s critical that you get it

right, because you’re going to be living with this for the rest of

your professional life. It’s going to determine the direction for

your business going forward. The way you present your company,

the clients you seek, the people you hire, the people who quit, the

decisions you make in every aspect of your business. So take the

time to get it right. After all, you’re not going to be changing it

anytime soon.

Visit the ofﬁces of GSD&M down in Austin sometime. You’ll

ﬁnd that their core values are carved in the ﬂoor of the atrium

through which everyone enters the building every day. That’s

commitment. And if you talk to the former CEO, Roy Spence,

you’ll also ﬁnd that he credits his agency’s commitment to the dis-

covery, and subsequent “living” of those core values, as the key to

his agency’s meteoric growth in the last ﬁfteen years.

Pick up a copy of Roy’s recent book, It’s Not What You Sell,

It’s What You Stand For: Why Every Extraordinary Business Is

Driven by Purpose.

It’s all right there.

And while you’re at it, buy a copy of Built to Last and read it.

Buy copies for your key people. And begin the process. Because

it’s impossible to tell people who you are until you really know

who you are.

Once you know, you can tell others. And the language you use

will be your own. It will set you apart from the competition. It

will be crisp and powerful. More than anything, it will reﬂect an

AUTHENTICITY

129

uncommon thoughtfulness. And you don’t have to use the word

“advertising.”

Maybe you didn’t expect to hear a rant like that in a book

about presenting, but if you aren’t clear on just who and what

your organization is, why should anyone care what you think

about a speciﬁc issue?

131

SEVEN

Death by Deck

s I travel the country visiting ad agencies and companies

that have nothing to do with advertising, I encounter

one alarming characteristic over and over. No matter

how different the companies are, or how different the businesses

they’re involved in, they’re all slowly but surely killing everyone

they come in contact with by PowerPoint. Okay, maybe they’re

not killing anyone, but they are certainly boring people to within

an inch of their lives.

Not long ago, I was working on presentation skills with some

folks at one of the largest ad agencies in the country. I asked each

of them to bring in several presentations that they had presented

or would be presenting to their clients or colleagues. Every single

one of them—save one—brought in their trusty laptop and ﬁred

up the PowerPoint.

The Art of the Pitch

132

These were extremely bright people, yet they seemed resigned

to their fates, and worse, resigned to imposing this “Death by

Deck” on their various audiences.

Let me make it clear that the medium of PowerPoint isn’t

to be blamed here. Nor is its younger, smarter sibling, Keynote.

When used creatively, it can be brilliant. When used the way most

business people do today, it’s lethal.

People seem to believe that they need to ﬁll each and every

screen, or slide, with as much type as possible. With charts and

graphs. Statistics, facts, and ﬁgures. You’d think that they had

bought the space at a very high price and needed to use it as ef-

ﬁciently as possible. Which, in a way, is true, but they were using

it as inefﬁciently as possible.

Not only were there way—and I mean way—too many words

on each slide, but the presenters all felt that it was their job to

read each and every one of these words to their audience.

They had so much information they had to communicate that it

had to all be packed onto the screen. What about the old rule about

outdoor advertising—a maximum of eight words on a billboard?

They hadn’t heard about that—apparently it is an old rule, and

these folks were specialists in a particular area. The principal rea-

son that this horrible state of affairs has come to be is—The Deck.

The Deck—to paraphrase an old Saturday Night Live skit—

it’s a ﬂoor wax, and a dessert topping.

People produce The Deck, which is meant to be the ofﬁcial

document regarding the particular issue at hand.

DEATH BY DECK

133

The problem is that while it may be a fairly comprehensive

document explaining the problem and the author’s solution to

same, it is not a presentation. It is a recitation of (seemingly) every

fact the agency can think of regarding the subject.

There is no story. No drama. No entertainment. No life. It

just sits there on the desk or on the computer. When it is projected

onto the screen it will induce narcolepsy among the most alert

viewers in the room.

I have countless examples of stripping decks down to a rea-

sonable number of words resulting in a compelling presentation.

People doubt that it can be done, but it really isn’t terribly difﬁcult

to do, and they are amazed at the different reaction they receive

when they make the screen’s message simple.

Simplicity is what we seek. In the visual as well as the oral ex-

pression of our ideas. Maybe more illuminating, and shocking to

many people, is this: oftentimes, they don’t even need the screen.

They are far more interesting and compelling than the words on

the screen will ever be.

My workshop participants never cease to be amazed by this,

but they see it to be true every single time.

How can this be?

Because you are the message.

You are the star. Or at least you should be. I want you to be

what the audience remembers. I want you to be persuasive and

powerful. I want you to impress your audience with your com-

mand of your material and your skill in presenting it. Because I

The Art of the Pitch

134

want them to trust you. Without trust, you will never sell any work

of any real worth or importance. Trust is critical to every business

relationship, and one of the most effective means of building trust

is via presentation. In the beginning, when you don’t know one

another so well, the presentation is the principal way your client

will get to know you. It’s from this successful interaction that the

client decides, “I like her. I’d like to hang out with her.” And the

relationship builds.

The words on the screen are usually a distraction to the au-

dience. If you’re reading the words, by the time you’ve gotten

around to mouthing the words, the audience has ﬁnished reading

them and is getting bored by hearing you say them.

Research conducted by a group at the University of New

South Wales has conﬁrmed that there is a scientiﬁc reason that

your eyes glaze over as the speaker reads the bullet points on the

screen. It is more difﬁcult to process information if it is coming at

you in the written and spoken form at the same time.

John Sweller, from the university’s faculty of education, devel-

oped the “cognitive load theory.”

“The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster,”

Professor Sweller said. “It should be ditched.”

“It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents in-

formation in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the

same words that are written, because it is putting too much load

on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is be-

ing presented.”

DEATH BY DECK

135

Amen. Thank you, Professor Sweller.

We all knew this, we just didn’t have empirical proof.

There was a time when the various forms of visual support

were called visual “aids.” Today, most PowerPoint shows are like

throwing an anchor to a drowning man.

Once, after I had railed against the evils of PowerPoint for

most of the previous day, a workshop participant got up in front

of the room and proceeded to read, word for word, what was on

the screen. While looking directly at the screen the entire time.

Her colleagues stared at her uncomfortably.

I was beside myself, and remembered the words of the woman

who had booked me for the engagement, “You’ve gotta be tough

on them.”

And so I was.

When the woman was through reading to us, I suggested that

the same presentation could have been given as effectively by a

cab driver who I could have recruited off the street. No knowl-

edge of the topic or particular skill other than the ability to read

English was required to duplicate her performance.

She wasn’t happy, but she got the idea.

One of her colleagues said to me, “That was mean. Mean, but

awesome.”

The estimable Jon Steel, former head of planning at Goodby,

Silverstein & Partners, and author of Truth, Lies & Advertising,

as well as Perfect Pitch, is one of the all-time great presenters.

The Art of the Pitch

136

As a favor, he spoke to one of my classes. I asked him to give a

PowerPoint presentation that he and his partners had actually used.

He chose a new business presentation, which was over one and a

half hours in length. It consisted of six slides. That’s all. Five of the

slides had one word on them. One of the slides had many words and

numbers. It was a compilation of statistics that the client wanted to

see. Jon did an hour and half with that as his visual arsenal.

Needless to say, he was brilliant. Each of those one-word

slides triggered a wonderful piece of information or insight that

allowed Jon to logically build an airtight argument for his point

of view. Often, Jon never actually said the word that was on the

screen. It appeared and remained there, underscoring everything

he was saying, or in some cases, actually being the point of what

he was saying. But always, the slides advanced the story that Jon

was telling. Jon understands better than just about anybody that

the best story wins. It doesn’t even have to be the “right” story.

It doesn’t have to have all the answers. It doesn’t even have to be

factually correct. (There are about a thousand examples of this.)

It just has to be the best story. The story that is most enjoyable to

hear. The story that entertains. The story that allows you to show

just how passionate you are about the subject. And maybe most

importantly, the story that you believe.

This last point is critical.

Dick Sittig, the brilliant creative leader of Secret Weapon

Marketing, once answered my question about the characteristics

of a great presentation by saying, “Tell the truth.”

DEATH BY DECK

137

I loved that then, and I still do.

Tell the truth. Your truth. Don’t tell the audience anything

that you don’t believe.

At this point, most people in advertising are rolling their eyes

and saying, “But we work in advertising.”

And that’s part of the reason most people in advertising give

such lousy presentations.

They talk about what they think the client wants to hear or

what their group came up with, but it’s seldom what they person-

ally, passionately believe.

Which is why the presentations are so gray and lifeless.

They approach the problem in the conventional way. Crank

up the deck. Fill it with everything we know about the subject and

project it on the screen while we take turns reading it.

And that’s one of the reasons why most presentations, all over

the world, suck.

In an Executive Education program at the Brandcenter, I asked

the group of agency account managers in the session the following

question: “What’s the ﬁrst thing you do after you’ve been given

the assignment?” (This pertains to new business as well as to an

existing client presentation.) One woman answered, “Get started

on the deck.”

“Really?”

I was ﬂoored. I suggested that they might want to ﬁgure

out what they were going to do ﬁrst. And maybe then actually

sit down and ﬁgure out the answer to the assignment. After

The Art of the Pitch

138

which, they could decide on the best way to deliver that an-

swer. If it was to be a deck, so be it. But it’s the last thing you

do, not the ﬁrst.

Several of the people in the session found this to be revolu-

tionary thinking.

And that’s another reason why most presentations, all over

the world, suck.

Whenever you have a choice between complex and simple—

choose simple. In the way you demonstrate your idea as well as

the way you explain it. One of the most signiﬁcant campaigns in

the digital era was presented on paper boards.

When we ﬁrst presented BMW Films we were nervous. David

Carter, who was as much the project’s original author as any-

one, had created these big wonderful boards that laid everything

out in a very graphic way. It was a presentation device we had

used often before: Circles and lines that showed how all the

pieces ﬁt together. But David did a masterful job with these. The

whole idea was a bit convoluted to explain (remember, no one

had ever done anything like it before.) But the boards made it

all seem so simple and logical. It took us 30 minutes to present

it, and 30 seconds for them to say yes. Never underestimate the

power of simple, clear visual aids. God, I wish we had saved

those boards.

—Bruce Bildsten, executive creative director, Fallon

DEATH BY DECK

139

Keep it simple.

Never underestimate the power of simple, clear visual aids.

How to Do It

Let me be really clear about this. I am not suggesting that you

leave anything truly important out of your deck. I am suggesting

that you should decide what is truly important about the material

you’ve assembled and include only that in your deck. In fact, I’m

suggesting that you must ascertain the most concise way to com-

municate that message and that the most concise way may be for

you to talk about the truly important material while information

that supports your argument is on the screen. That information

may be words, or it may be visuals or a combination of the two.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

As I said, this isn’t terribly difﬁcult to do, but it does require

us to spend the time necessary to determine what is critical to

our argument, rather than putting everything we know about the

subject up on the screen. Please understand—you’ve still got to

pull together all the facts and data necessary to craft your argu-

ment, you just don’t have to show all of them. Many people seem

to think that if we show the client everything we did, they will

see how much work we’ve done and, therefore, like us. No, they

won’t. Unless the purpose of the presentation is to literally show

the client how much work we’ve done. It seldom is.

The Art of the Pitch

140

When we don’t take the time to edit the information, we are

abdicating what I believe is one of our most important responsi-

bilities as an agency—using our experience, intellect, and talent to

decide what’s important and what isn’t. In other words, having a

point of view.

They want an answer to their business problem.

As I said, we’ve got to do all that work, assemble all that data

and consider it carefully before deciding what to put into the deck

and, therefore, into the presentation. All of that data doesn’t be-

long in the presentation—it belongs in the leave-behind.

Here’s what we need to do. Assemble all the data, informa-

tion, facts, ﬁgures, and anything else you need to explain and jus-

tify your argument.

Write it up as a leave-behind. Then go through that docu-

ment and create a deck that simply, clearly, and—dare I say?—

elegantly presents your argument. In order to do that, you need

to decide what each slide in the deck will look like. Is it words,

visuals, or, as I suggested earlier, a combination of the two?

Some of the smarter agencies I know get an art director involved

at this point to make sure that the slides are uniformly appeal-

ing and consistent with our overarching message. Whatever you

do, don’t use clip art. It’s boring. And go easy on the animation.

Better to stick to some dissolves and/or cuts and forget about the

ﬂaming ﬂip transition. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean

you should.

DEATH BY DECK

141

And then, you’ve got to sit down and write what I call the

“Voice Over” for each slide. You’ve got to decide exactly what you

will be saying as your audience is seeing the slide on the screen.

Your words and the slides should be in perfect harmony—one sup-

porting the other. Never put a slide on the screen before you are

ready for the audience to see it. If the slide has type on it, they will

read it. And they will stop paying attention to you while they’re do-

ing that. They can read faster than you can speak, so there will be

yet another disconnection between you and the audience.

Remember, this is about making a human connection. And as

Professor Sweller told us earlier, people have less chance of un-

derstanding your point if they are reading the same words you’re

saying.

People often complain that yes, this sounds great and makes

sense, but it’s more work, isn’t it? Yes, it is more work. But aren’t

you willing to work a little harder to succeed more often and pro-

vide more value to your client?

Aren’t you willing to work a little harder to sell your work

and get what you want?

And ultimately, what happens is that it becomes easier and

more efﬁcient to do it this way because the meetings get shorter

(you’re giving them the Gift of Time) and you spend the time talk-

ing about what’s truly important.

In chapter 1, we introduced the concept of doing an ad for

our ads.

The Art of the Pitch

142

That’s what the deck and ultimately the presentation should

be. Use some of the creativity and story-telling ability that went

into creating the work (regardless of what it is—creative, strategy,

media recommendations, marketing initiatives, etc.) into selling

the work. That’s what the presentation is really all about and the

deck is only there in service of that purpose.

If you follow this method, you will differentiate your ﬁrm

from most of the other organizations in the world, you’ll have

shorter, more effective meetings, you’ll sell more work, and you’ll

win more business. How does that sound?

Before and After

Take a look at the slides on the following pages. There are six

pairs of slides. The slide on the left in each pair is a representa-

tion of what teams typically present on a daily basis around the

world. The slide on the right of each pair is the result of a VCU

Brandcenter team determining the most powerful, simple, and yet

elegant way to support the speaker presenting that material.

Cindy Gallop, the founder and CEO of IfWeRanTheWorld.

com assigned the teams the task of helping the beleaguered city

of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Braddock had been a thriving com-

munity, but times, and the economy had passed Braddock by. The

city was now in a well publicized battle for survival. An earlier co-

operative venture with Levi’s had produced some buzz, but little

DEATH BY DECK

143

in the way of results. Cindy’s assignment was to develop a corpo-

rate partnership with an appropriate ﬁrm and use the power of

IfWeRanTheWorld.com to leverage the partnership.

In comparing the Before and After slides, I should point out

that as bad as the Before slides are, I’ve seen far worse. I’m sure you

have, too. None of the Before slides looks like a projection of a page

of the New York City phone book, for instance. There is at least an

attempt to minimize the number of bullet points on each slide, but

why use bullet points when we’re telling an emotional story?

Before After

The slide on the left, above, is typical of the evils perpetrated by peo-

ple misusing PowerPoint. Not only is it ugly and boring, it’s up there

while the presenter is trying to begin her presentation in an interest-

ing, engaging way. But the audience is reading the slide rather than

connecting with the presenter. Far better to use a black slide as your

ﬁrst slide (above right). That way the audience is focused on you and

not on some distracting information that isn’t interesting in the ﬁrst

place.

The Art of the Pitch

144

Before After

“Finding the Opportunity” is the sort of cliché we see regularly. It’s in

a different font than that used on the previous slide, probably because

it was taken from another show or document. The timeline is hard to

understand and confusing. The slide on the right is visually appealing

and serves to support the presenter as he takes his audience through his

story, with the presenter, not the screen, as the star.

Before After

Yet another font (above left) and a chart that is as incomprehensible

as it is complicated. The point of the slide is to identify the audience

for craft beers. The slide on the right shows the audience and allows

the presenter to explain who these people are. The visual is far more

powerful than any chart.

DEATH BY DECK

145

Before After

What is a “genuine” space? Another font is introduced and we feature

two typos. Did you ﬁnd them? The slide on the right is a wonderful

encapsulation of the idea of a craft brewery in the American landscape.

Remember, we’re trying to make an emotional connection. The slide

on the right does that.

Before After

Once again, bullet points and a “table of contents” approach, rendered

in yet another font. I don’t need a listing of the work I’m going to see.

I want to see the work. It’s far more exciting and persuasive. This slide

would ideally be preceded by a black slide, allowing the presenter to

“frame” the work.

The Art of the Pitch

146

Before After

Audiences crave endings. Give them one. Not a boring bullet-point list

of what they just saw. (“Thank You!” is a crutch and the exclamation

point is unforgivable.) The slide on the right is representative of the

closing video, evoking patriotic feelings for the virtues of small town

life, while summing up everything this team presented. The video was

beautifully produced, with a powerful emotional voice over that was

taken directly from copy found on the Rolling Rock website. When it

ended, people in the audience were crying.

As the screen went to black, Cindy Gallop, president and

founder of IfWeRanTheWorld and former CEO of the advertising

ﬁrm BBH New York, stood up and said just one word, “Wow.” I

probably don’t have to point out that Cindy has seen her share of

presentations. She then proceeded to talk about how this one was

so brilliant because it was dramatic, powerful, and elegantly simple.

The next time you’re putting together a presentation, sit down

with the entire team and ﬁgure out what it is that you’re trying to

say. What’s the big idea you want to leave with the audience? Then

build your show from that idea backwards to the beginning. If we

want to leave the audience with the idea that Rolling Rock is the

DEATH BY DECK

147

perfect partner, every slide that leads up to that conclusion has to be

consistent with that idea. Never, ever lose sight of the big idea that

you’re trying to communicate. It will help you make the right deci-

sions every time and will ultimately lead you where you want to go.

Be Careful what you Wish For

It is important to always know what we want to achieve in a

presentation. It’s not enough to just want to win, to get our way.

We should have more on our minds than that. We should be there

to win a piece of business by convincing the prospect that our

answer will solve their problem and lead to economic success for

their organization. Or we should be there to convince an existing

client that the work we’ve prepared for them will not only be ef-

fective in the marketplace, it will enhance their brand’s reputation

over the long term. We want to become the very best presenters

we can be—but we want to use this talent to serve our clients and

our organizations. We should only be presenting work that we

will be proud of. I’ve seen great presenters sell lousy work. In the

long run, no one wins.

My colleague, Mark Fenske, founder of The Bomb Factory

and legendary creative talent makes the point in this story:

There is one outcome in making a presentation that almost no

one thinks is a possible danger. And that is: You might get what

you’re after.

The Art of the Pitch

148

Winning sounds good, but it can be the worst outcome pos-

sible if you’re not prepared for it. This is how I know: There

was a time when I was not ready with new work when it was

time to present to a client. I had the beginnings of an idea but I

hadn’t nailed it down.

Suddenly, the phone rang. The client was in the conference

room.

I took out a yellow pad and put my rough thinking into as

polished a ﬁnished product as ﬁve minutes allows.

To my compromised judgment it looked great. So I went

into the meeting and presented the work I had just written.

The client bought it. At once, with hurrahs.

Everyone agreed it answered their problem. We all thought

we were on the right track.

The meeting ended with smiles. Sounds like a success,

doesn’t it?

Meeting over, clients happy, where’s the problem, eh?

Here: The ad sucked.

It had the outward appearance of lovely work but none of

the inner structure.

It was glib instead of showing intelligence. It promised, it

didn’t prove.

It wasn’t true enough or bold enough, it wasn’t anything

enough.

I had fallen into the trap of meeting the deadline but not

meeting the standards of greatness. I solved the meeting, not

the problem.

DEATH BY DECK

149

So we ended up producing a piece of work we all could tell

was a turkey.

We were lucky, in that the ad was small and ran in a maga-

zine no one read.

But it easily could have mattered. Don’t be fooled.

A good meeting is not the goal.

Great work is. Eyes on the prize.

—Mark Fenske, professor, VCU Brandcenter

151

EIGHT

Organizing the

Presentation

ell, if the deck isn’t the ﬁrst thing we do, how do we

organize our thinking into a powerful presentation?

Fair question.

What I suggest you do is yet more work. Sorry, but if you

want to be good at something, you have to work at it.

At this point you and your teammates should have decided

what the presentation is supposed to accomplish (believe me, that

is never simple), and you’re ready to begin. But do not begin to

organize the presentation until you have unanimous agreement on

what you’re trying to accomplish and how you’ll do it. So ﬁgure

that out ﬁrst.

Then, sit down and write the presentation. Or your part of

it. I think it’s good if the presentation speaks with one voice, so it

The Art of the Pitch

152

may be best for one person to write the whole thing, if possible.

This does not mean that you are writing the words that you and

your teammates will speak. Rather, it means that you are formu-

lating the argument, complete with support points that will be

necessary to make your case for your ideas.

One excellent way to wrestle the presentation to the ground

is to lay it out on a series of Post-it notes, in the manner of a sto-

ryboard. You can put them all down in front of you or stick them

on a board and move them around until you’ve got them in the

order that brings the show to life.

In working with my students on speciﬁc presentations, we

always get into a room with a whiteboard and some markers.

We draw frames on the wall that represent each individual point

we’re trying to make. It’s like the Post-it notes, but on the white-

board. It’s very helpful to the students to see the different com-

ponents of the presentation laid out before them. Many have said

that it helps them focus their thinking. Whatever works is what I

believe in using.

Ideally, each of these frames representing one idea builds on

the last frame and foreshadows the next frame. When you get

good at this, every single frame (or slide in the ﬁnished show)

will lead directly and logically to the next, taking your audi-

ence by the hand and walking them through your story to the

end—where you get what you want and they are happy to give

it to you.

ORGANIZING THE PRESENTATION

153

When crafting each of these frames you should ﬁgure out

what the segue is from one frame to the next. You don’t have to

create the actual language at this point, but you do want to think

through how the ﬁrst slide sets up the second, which leads into the

third, and so forth. This way, you are ensuring that there will be a

sustainable logical ﬂow to your story. If the frames don’t lead into

one another, the audience will get lost. I think of these disconnects

as bumps in the road, and too many bumps will cause your audi-

ence to fall off the truck. We want to build a smooth road with

no bumps.

The next step is one that most people omit. Design the visu-

als. What does each slide look like? They might be words, or they

might simply be visuals. Or, they might be both. Figure out what

will help you and your team make your case most effectively. You

might not use slides. However you decide to go, determine what

visual support is consistent with the points you’re trying to make,

accurately reﬂects the material you’re presenting, and ampliﬁes

what you’re going to say.

This is where you might want to get an art director involved.

If there’s one on your team, great; if not, go ﬁnd one in the

agency. Show her the presentation as you have it laid out and

explain the story you’re going to tell and the conclusion you’re

going to reach. She can then create a “look” for the show that

holds it all together and reinforces the ultimate point you’re try-

ing to make. When combined with your words, the look of the

The Art of the Pitch

154

show will magnify the impact of your message. One and one

should equal three.

And lastly, write the voice-over. These are the actual words

you’re going to say as you go through your visuals and tell your

story to your audience.

This is different from Step One, writing the presentation. In

Step One, you’re laying out the ideas you want to present and

their most effective order. In writing the voice-over, you’re lay-

ing out the actual words that will communicate those ideas. But

you’re not necessarily writing a script. It’s more like an outline.

It’s not necessary to repeat these words as ﬁrst written. What is

necessary is that you and your teammates are able to express the

ideas these words represent rather than each and every word as

written. Many people will lay out a series of “marks” they want

to hit, or points that need to be made, and let the actual language

ﬁll itself in around each of those points. That’s why I don’t recom-

mend that the author of the presentation insist that each person

in the show deliver the lines as written. One complaint that many

people in agencies have voiced to me is that they are told to read

lines verbatim and not to deviate from the script as written, usu-

ally by the “boss.” This is a mistake. The people on the team need

to read the written words and make them their own. They need

to ﬁnd a way to express the written ideas in their own language

and style. Only then will they be their authentic selves, which, as

we’ve said, is what we’re seeking. If forced to read someone else’s

ORGANIZING THE PRESENTATION

155

language, it won’t come off as their own thinking. It will come

off as false. And that will be the end of any emotional connection

with your audience.

Once the words are written, each individual needs to make

them their own. They need to know the material. And they need

to know everyone’s part, not just theirs. Notice I didn’t say memo-

rize them. Don’t. As I said earlier, memorizing will get you in big

trouble. You will forget and you will then get completely derailed

because rather than knowing the ideas you’re trying to commu-

nicate, you know the words. So you’ll be trying to remember the

precise word you memorized, and when you don’t come up with

it quickly enough to satisfy yourself, you’ll panic. I’ve seen it time

and again. So don’t memorize. The only exception would be when

you are trying to communicate an important quote or a salient

fact, such as a particular date that must be delivered accurately.

You might consider having that quote on the screen in type rather

than relying solely on your memory. Reading a quote off the screen

is one of the very few times that it’s acceptable to read the words

that are on the screen. The other big problem with memorizing is

that your presentation will sound like you memorized it. We’ve

all seen that. It’s like a bad actor in a movie. It isn’t authentic, and

your audience will dismiss what you’re saying.

It’s far better to speak from the heart, to search for your

words, even make the occasional mistake, than it is to deliver a

perfect, memorized speech.

The Art of the Pitch

156

Let’s remember that this is about persuasion, and some-

one who appears to be regurgitating memorized material is not

persuasive.

The ACTION Format

My friend Sheila Campbell invented a format for planning presen-

tations. It’s an acronym, so it’s cheesy, and this one is particularly

cheesy, but it’s smart and it will be very helpful if you use it.

Sheila calls it the ACTION Format, and here it is:

A is for Attention. Every good presentation begins with an at-

tention-getting device of some kind. This can be something you say

or show. It could be a video that starts the show before anyone has

said anything. Or, if you’re using a deck, the ﬁrst slide might be an

arresting image on the screen. It’s why rock bands still have smoke

bombs. Ideally, the ﬁrst thing out of your mouth will be something

interesting or compelling. Something other than “We’re really ex-

cited to be here today.” Say something that makes us want to lis-

ten to what follows. It should be a simple declarative sentence. It

shouldn’t be, “So, okay, so, here we are, um . . .” If you can just

train your teammates and yourself to eliminate the “so” and all

the other space-holder jargon from their speech, your presentation

will be inﬁnitely more powerful. Start clean and strong.

One day in a workshop, a senior-level planner told me that

she had never tried to do that before, but that today she was go-

ing to begin with something that she hoped would be interesting,

ORGANIZING THE PRESENTATION

157

personal, and make everyone want to pay attention. She stood up

in front of the room and said, “When I was twenty-four, I met a

Spanish chef.” I clapped immediately.

C is for Capsule. The capsule is two or three sentences that

sum up the entire presentation. They should ﬁt on an index card.

In Perfect Pitch, Jon Steele writes of a time when he was ﬁrst

working in the UK. His boss asked him to write a two-hour new

business presentation. Jon wrote the presentation and gave it to

his boss, who read every word. Then his boss handed him an in-

dex card and said, “Now write it on that.”

This is a great way to get a handle on what it is that you re-

ally want to say. I frequently see student presentations that rush

over important ideas to get to one that isn’t really very important.

It’s critical that a presenter understands what she has to say that

is truly important and that logically explains her position in such

a way that it is impossible to misinterpret it. So write down the

three big ideas. Your presentation should be so simple that you

can boil it down to just a few sentences. And notice that I said

simple, not simplistic. Please understand that this capsule won’t

necessarily be part of the show, but it sums up the entire show.

Accordingly, you won’t be able to write it until you’ve laid out the

organization of the show, but it will serve as a decision-making

guide during the writing of the show because you will know ex-

actly where the show is going and what it’s about, and you will

be in a great position to eliminate any ideas that aren’t consistent

with the capsule.

The Art of the Pitch

158

T is for Theme. All good presentations have a theme that

holds them together. You need to decide on the theme and then be

sure that all of the ideas and thoughts you present are consistent

with that or can somehow be brought back to the theme.

When the folks at Cramer-Krasselt are organizing and writing

their presentations, they continually interrupt one another and

ask the question “Is it on theme?” It may be a cool idea, but if it

isn’t on theme, it’s out.

This is why theatrical productions begin with an overture.

The musical themes you will hear in the show are introduced

in the overture, then repeated throughout the show and then

reprised once more at the end. What would any of the Indiana

Jones ﬁlms be like without the rousing John Williams theme that

swells regularly throughout the movie? How about the menac-

ing notes in Jaws?

A recent presentation to Sony was held together by the theme

of “magic.” Sony’s own mission statement talks about their belief

in the magic of technology, so the student team began their pre-

sentation by talking about magic and the role that it had played

in the life of one of the presenters. She then went on to talk about

Sony’s belief in magic and the fact that the new product they were

introducing just wasn’t magical. But that if it were positioned dif-

ferently, opposing different competition and offered to a different

target audience, it could indeed be magical. In presenting the cre-

ative work, they said that in order to do it properly, a little magic

would be required. They then showed an extremely clever stop-

ORGANIZING THE PRESENTATION

159

motion animated video that showcased the product in a magical

light.

Are you getting the point? Simply practice this idea and your

presentations will be instantly better.

I is for Information. This is the stuff you have to tell and show

them. This is the data, the strategy, the business plan, the ideas,

the work. Everything you need to have to convince them of the

brilliance of your point of view.

O is for Open to Listen. Admittedly, this is a bit of a cheat,

but it’s important advice. During a presentation, you must always

be listening with your eyes as well as your ears. You’ve got to be

constantly aware of what’s going on in the room. Is your client

following your argument? Does he understand each point you’re

trying to make? Often, the only way you’ll be able to know the

answer to those questions is to watch the way he reacts. In cer-

tain situations, someone may say something at some point that is

critical to your success. They may reveal something that you can

use to bolster your argument. Or they may tell you that they’re

already on board and want you to move forward. If you don’t

pick up these cues, you will lose all credibility.

This happens more often than you might think. When my

partners and I had just started our agency, we were invited to

pitch our services to a local bank. This represented a great oppor-

tunity for a new agency, so we took it very seriously. At that time

we hadn’t yet ﬁgured out what roles we should be playing. We

decided that Stanley, who had actually been an account executive

The Art of the Pitch

160

on a bank account at Doyle Dane Bernbach, and who was further

qualiﬁed by owning a suit, should serve as the principal presenter

in the pitch.

Stanley was seated to my left with our third partner, John, to

his left. The people who held at least a portion of our fate in their

hands, Lee Mumford and Steve Garnett, sat directly across the

table from us.

Stanley was cruising along, recounting all of his experience

and the wonderful creative thinking we would bring to the ac-

count, when Lee, who was the director of marketing said, “I’m

convinced. You’ve got the business.”

Needless to say, I was really excited by this, but unfortu-

nately, Stanley didn’t hear Lee. So he just kept going. It wasn’t

as if Lee had whispered his comment. He said it at a perfectly

audible level. But Stanley, God bless him, was so into what he

was saying that he never heard Lee. So he kept going. To my

horror and Lee’s chagrin. Lee let him go on for a while, and then

said to me, “Peter, if you don’t shut him up, I’m going to take

the account back.”

That was all I needed to hear. I immediately placed my left

hand over Stanley’s mouth. He did a spit take and was shocked.

“What!?” he shouted.

“We won, Stan, we got the account and now it’s time to leave.”

Everyone had a bit of a chuckle and we agreed to leave and get

back to them the following day.

ORGANIZING THE PRESENTATION

161

This story is true and it’s only one, admittedly dramatic, ex-

ample of what can happen when we’re not Open to Listen.

But believe me, the same thing happens every day in one form

or another all over the world. Don’t let it happen to you.

N is for Next Steps. This is what you want to accomplish as

a result of the presentation. We must ask ourselves, “Why are we

doing this? What do we really want them to say or think or do?”

You and your teammates must come to an agreement on a simple,

clear statement of purpose for the presentation. This may strike

you as obvious, but I assure you that based on the number of

presentations I’ve seen over the years that do not have any clear

point, it is not.

Now what we just went through is not the order in which I

would complete these steps. It just happens to be the order of the

letters that spell ACTION.

The order isn’t all that important except for the beginning.

Start with Next Steps. Before you do anything, establish what it is

that you want out of the presentation. And not just something as

easy as “We want them to buy our campaign.” That isn’t speciﬁc

enough. I want you to agree not just on the idea that they will buy

the campaign, but why they will buy the campaign. Make it spe-

ciﬁc and clear so that it leaves no room for equivocation or doubt.

That may take a good deal of discussion with your colleagues, or

it may not, but it must be done. How can we determine how to get

somewhere if we don’t know where we’re going? And remember,

The Art of the Pitch

162

we’re discussing how to organize the presentation, not the order

in which we will deliver the presentation.

This ﬁrst step is critical for several reasons, paramount among

them the rule that nothing will be included in the presentation

that isn’t on point. We start with what we want and work back-

wards to the beginning. Then, when we’re building the presenta-

tion, we must be diligent in determining if each element leads us

to precisely what we want, or if it has been included because it’s

cool or we like what it says about us, or it gives our teammate

Marlon a chance to show off, or any of a thousand bad reasons

for its inclusion.

This is why we won’t have Marlon play “Layla” on his elec-

tric guitar. The seven-minute version with the birds tweeting at

the end. Yes, it’s still a cool song, and he plays it really well, but

it has nothing to do with what we want out of the presentation.

Okay, it’s a metaphor. And you may think I’m exaggerating.

I am, but only a little bit to make my point. Time and again I

see agencies and individuals present elements and ideas that have

nothing to do with why we were all there. The purpose of one

or more of their elements was incomprehensible. But they did it

because they could. Or, maybe more frequently, they fell in love

with their idea. We all fall in love with our own ideas. The trick

is to know when to fall out of love with these ideas and get out of

the presentation.

Sometimes “Layla” slips into presentations as a way to take

up time. Many agencies believe that if they’re given two hours,

ORGANIZING THE PRESENTATION

163

they should use two hours, regardless of whether or not their

ideas require that amount of time to be compellingly presented.

Only use as much time as you need to present your thinking. No

more, no less. Give them back half an hour and they will love you

for it. Almost all presentations are too long anyway. So ﬁgure out

what you want and exclude anything that doesn’t get you there,

no matter how brilliant or cool it might be. Remember the con-

cept of ruthless exclusion.

Then you are free to proceed. A likely scenario could be that

once you’ve agreed on what you want, the Next Steps, you then

begin to assemble all of the Information you will need to make

your argument. Then, you establish a Theme that will hold it all

together and create an Attention-getting device. By the way, this

device may very well foreshadow the ultimate purpose of the pre-

sentation. Toward the end of the process, you should be able to

write the Capsule, and you must always be Open to Listen.

So there it is. The ACTION format for organizing presen-

tations, not delivering presentations. It works. Thank Sheila

Campbell. And while we’re thanking Sheila, we should also thank

Anne Bologna for her explanation of how she puts her presenta-

tions together.

In preparing for a presentation the ﬁrst step is to ﬁgure out

the main points I want to get across, but that’s only the begin-

ning. The next step is ﬁguring out how to bring those points to

life in the most compelling and interesting way possible. For

The Art of the Pitch

164

example, I may show a provocative image and talk from that

for the entire presentation. Or, I might use a handful of head-

snapping “fun facts” to shake up an audience’s perceptions.

On rare occasions where no audio or visual aids were avail-

able, my presentations were usually best because I was forced

to internalize my point of view and express it in a completely

personal, human way—which is the essence of good storytell-

ing. Regardless of having access to visual aids, I always try

and make a presentation personal as much as possible. I might

share an experience about a client’s product or service. Or I

may tell a self-deprecating story about something related to

the topic. Humor isn’t right for every occasion, but more of-

ten than not it tends to make my message (and myself) more,

not less, credible. It also happens that humor is in character

for me, so I use it whenever I can. I’m also a big believer in

the rule, “Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em, tell ’em, and

then tell ’em what you told ’em.” I’m obsessed with clarity.

There’s nothing worse than listening to an interesting speaker

and walking away wondering, “What was the point, again?”

Last and not least, I always try to ﬁnish earlier than expected.

It’s a pleasant surprise for the audience and the Q & A part is

generally the most satisfying for the listeners.

—Anne Bologna, general manager, Cramer-Krasselt

165

NINE

Rehearse, Rehearse,

Rehearse

o one idea, tip, or technique will cure as many ills as

knowing your material. And the only way to do that

is to rehearse. You may see a contradiction in that

statement. Namely, that you know the material so well you don’t

have to rehearse. Well, that’s just wrong. We’re talking about two

things here—being familiar with the material you’re planning on

presenting, and knowing the story you’re going to tell in order to

convince your audience that your material is the answer to their

problem.

You must ﬁrst make yourself completely familiar with the ma-

terial, and then you must develop and learn the story you’re going

to use to sell it. We talked about the dangers of memorization in

earlier chapters, but based upon what I see in my workshops, it

The Art of the Pitch

166

bears repeating. Memorization will get you in trouble. You will be

in front of the room trying to remember the exact words that you

memorized, eventually you will fail, and then you will be stuck.

Because you’re not familiar with the ideas of the presentation, you

only learned the exact words.

Another problem with memorization: your delivery will sound

memorized. Remember, we’re telling a story here. We’re painting

a word picture for our listeners. It should seem as if we’re think-

ing of these words for the ﬁrst time as we say them. In fact, it

should feel as if we’re telling this particular story for the ﬁrst time.

It should not sound like a regurgitation of facts you memorized.

When we see a bad actor in a movie, it sounds as if he’s repeat-

ing the lines he learned. When we see a good actor, it sounds as if

she’s saying words that just popped into her head.

Big difference.

Particularly because we’re striving for authenticity.

Since most of the presentations that ad agencies give are

team presentations, it’s critical that the team rehearse together.

But as I travel around the country working with agencies, the

people who give these presentations tell me that they rarely re-

hearse together for anything but new business, and even then

not all the time. The chief marketing ofﬁcer of a large interna-

tional agency told me that he couldn’t get the top management

members of a team working on a very big pitch to rehearse at

all. They lost to an agency that I know had been rehearsing their

pitch for a week.

REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

167

Not rehearsing isn’t just setting yourself up for failure, it’s

idiotic.

This is appalling to me, and yet another reason why so many

presentations are just terrible.

It’s not enough to let the individuals on the team go off on

their own and prepare their own parts. Yes, they should do that,

but the team needs to come together to craft the ﬁnal presentation

together. And not just in new business. It may not be as sexy, but

agencies need to realize that virtually all presentations are new

business presentations. Even existing clients are evaluating the

purchase decision they’ve made, no matter how long ago. Many

of these clients have other brands or other budgets that could be

awarded to your agency without even going through a pitch. If

they are consistently impressed with your presentations, there’s a

good chance that you could gain some new business organically.

And don’t think for a minute that your competitors aren’t actively

courting all of your existing clients. I assure you that they are.

Another reason for rehearsing presentations to existing cli-

ents—clients want to feel that you care. Not just about your

work, but about the relationship. Presenting a smooth, entertain-

ing, thoughtful discussion of your work is, in a way, a compliment

to your client. Just as in a personal relationship, you cannot take

the other party for granted.

If we want to sell our very best work to our clients, we need

to be persuasive and in order to be persuasive; we need to craft

our argument skillfully. That is accomplished through rehearsal.

The Art of the Pitch

168

Never let one of your teammates off the hook with regard

to team rehearsal. Even if his name is on the building. Everyone

must hear everyone else speak. Each member of the team needs to

know what the other is going to say because in the heat of battle,

it’s likely that someone will leave something important out, and

you’ll be there to pick up the ball and make that critical point.

Likewise, you can’t let the “old pro” in the group off the hook

either. Okay, he’s done a thousand of these presentations. I don’t

care. I want him in there practicing with the team.

Also, by rehearsing together, you will make the presentation

better. You’ve got four or ﬁve smart people in a room listening to

everything and critiquing as they go. That’s how it gets better.

So appoint someone to be in charge of scheduling all the pre-

sentation meetings, including the rehearsals. She doesn’t have to

be the senior person on the team, but she has to have ultimate au-

thority to call meetings and expect people to show up. Everyone

on the team must acknowledge her as The Pitch Ayatollah, and

abide by her schedule. If people can’t make the meetings, they’re

out of the pitch. If they don’t come to rehearsal, they won’t be in

the pitch.

If you establish some of these basic rules in your organization,

your presentations will get better immediately. It will probably re-

quire changing not just the way you do things, but some cultural

changes as well. Which is ﬁne. Just lay down the law and stick to it.

By rehearsing together, you’ll not only know each others’

parts and ultimately make the presentation better, you’ll build a

REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

169

real sense of teamwork, of the kind of camaraderie that clients

love and are instinctively drawn to.

Often the failures in this business were not about content as

much as they were about style—particularly how well the

team interacted within itself. The issue is not merely chemistry

with an audience, but since we always present as a group, it is

equally about chemistry between the presenters. Clients sense

team. If it’s stilted or not interactive in a genuine, relaxed way,

chances are greatly reduced. If it is clicking, it’s infectious, and

likability can at least diminish some content shortcomings if

there are any. When we are clicking, we have almost always

won—of course, good work and thinking have to be above av-

erage to begin with.

What I think is often forgotten in presentations is that they

are not solo performances—they are troupe performances.

—Peter Krivkovich, president,

chief executive ofﬁcer, Cramer-Krasselt

People in the business spend a lot of time creating their work.

And then almost no time ﬁguring out how to present it.

Agency creatives tell me that they talk about what they’re going

to say and do in the cab on the way to the meeting.

This is ridiculous. They’re not giving their work a chance.

Their work, that expression of themselves that they have slaved

over day and night, is slid across the table and right into what I

The Art of the Pitch

170

call a “jump ball.” It could go either way, and the decision is out

of the agency’s hands. Great work deserves a chance to live. The

way to ensure that is to rehearse the way in which you sell it.

An important step in organizing the presentation is deciding

who should be on the team. Your ﬁrst thoughts on this subject

may change during rehearsal when the group has the opportunity

to hear one another deliver their parts and observe the chemistry

or lack thereof in the room. You may also discover that while the

people you’ve chosen for the team are the logical choices, they

may not be the right choices to build the emotional connection

we’re seeking.

During the course of a project I hold several “casting ses-

sions.” The ﬁrst is designed to get the right minds working

against the problem so that we end up with the most creative,

surprising, and effective ideas. The second casting session

gets us to who will present those ideas to the client, because

the team who came up with them may very well not be the

right one to sell them and get them produced. Some creative

teams don’t like that, thinking they should represent their

own work. To them I always say, “What will make you more

proud at the end of the day: the chance to hear yourself talk

for an hour or the chance to hear yourself talked about for

years?

—Darren Moran, executive creative director, DraftFCB

REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

171

We talked earlier about the need to create an “ad for your

ads.” Just spend a bit of time bringing the same level of creativ-

ity to selling the work as you brought to creating the work. That

doesn’t seem like too much to ask, does it?

In order to do that, you’ve got to rehearse. I’ve had people at

agencies tell me that they don’t like to rehearse because they don’t

want to “lose my spontaneity.” To which I say, “horseshit.”

The appearance of spontaneity is the product of rehearsal.

The best presenters in the business rehearse as much as they

can. Steve Jobs spends a minimum of three weeks rehearsing his

MacWorld addresses. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

spend hours rehearsing segues between songs that they’ve been

playing for 30 years.

Let me quote from Carmine Gallo’s book, The Presentation

Secrets of Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs spends hours rehearsing every facet of his presenta-

tion. Every slide is written like a piece of poetry, every presenta-

tion staged like a theatrical experience. Yes, Steve Jobs makes

a presentation look effortless but that polish comes after hours

and hours of grueling practice. Steve Jobs has improved his style

over time. If you watch video clips of Steve Jobs’ presentations

going back twenty years (available on YouTube) you will see

that he improves signiﬁcantly with every decade. The Steve Jobs

of 1984 had a lot of charisma but the Steve Jobs of 1997 was

The Art of the Pitch

172

a far more polished speaker. The Steve Jobs who introduced

the iPhone in 2007 was even better. Nobody is born knowing

how to deliver a great PowerPoint presentation. Expert speakers

hone that skill with practice.

Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse and then rehearse some more.

And, if possible, rehearse in the room in which you’ll be giv-

ing the presentation. Feel the space; get an idea for what it’ll be

like with people ﬁlling it. Rehearse where everyone will sit. Use

everything in the room to your advantage. If you don’t like the

way the furniture is arranged, change it. Just put it back the way

it was before you leave. If too much light comes shining through

the windows to suit you and your visuals, put up some temporary

drapes. Do whatever it is that will contribute to the success of

your presentation. One of your objectives is to be memorable, so

don’t be afraid to change the room to suit your purposes and add

drama to your story. Remember Jeff Goodby’s Sega story?

And rehearse with the actual projection equipment that will

be used in the presentation.

This may seem like an unimportant detail, but as Pam Scott

explains, failure to do so can be a devastating mistake.

Once I was asked to give the keynote address to an auditorium

of about 3,000 creative types. The day before my speech, I went

for an AV check put on by the conference. By the time I arrived,

the AV team was so worn out they were adamant about not

REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

173

hooking up my computer for a run-through of my slides. They

insisted that they knew exactly how to make my slides work.

“No worries,” they said. Because my presentation was hugely

reliant on visuals, I pushed back. We bickered for about 20 min-

utes, less than the time it would have taken to do the visual

check, until I ﬁnally relented.

The next day I showed up for my speech. I was the second

of two keynote speakers. The ﬁrst guy was killing the audience.

About ﬁve minutes into his speech, I heard someone scream “We

love you, man!” from the audience. Then other people started

offering other enthusiastic cheers. The applause throughout his

speech was nearly deafening but it was especially so during his

standing ovation. He left the stage pumped up like Mick Jagger.

Who wouldn’t have? Then it was my turn.

I hopped up on stage full of as much positive energy as I can

muster (which is a pretty darned healthy amount) and looked

behind me and saw nothing. No slides. I made a few comments

about the previous speaker, turned around and, still, nothing.

My positive energy started to turn to anxiety as I tried to wing

it without my slides. Sweat started to bead up on my face and

was beginning to drip from my hands. Five minutes later (still

no slides) all the crazed energy the last speaker had generated

was almost completely dead. I had killed the room in the exact

opposite manner.

Finally, after about 8–10 minutes, my slides magically ap-

peared. I found my footing and made it through the speech. Not

The Art of the Pitch

174

my best performance, but it ended better than it started. What

I found out later was that my then-boyfriend Tim had jumped

onstage to ﬁx the problem. The know-it-all AV folks actually

didn’t know so much after all! When I found this out, I knew I

had met the man I was going to marry!

What I Learned

Even if you have to go nut-ball on a reluctant AV team, always

insist on an AV check and set-up of your slides.

Never go on stage without seeing your slides projected ﬁrst.

Make the AV team (not you) sweat it out.

Marry someone with terriﬁc AV skills so you always come

packin’. ;-)

—Pam Scott, founder, The Curious Company

Own It

Once you have developed the presentation and are fully rehearsed,

know the material backwards and forwards and are ready to go,

you’ve got to do something else that most people never think

about.

You’ve got to commit to it.

You’ve got to own it.

It’s not just yours, it’s you.

You may very well be part of a team that developed the pre-

sentation and you’re actually presenting just a part of it.

REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

175

But it is all yours. You are responsible.

You must be accountable.

You can’t settle for knowing your part.

You’ve got to know everyone’s part.

You have to take personal responsibility for the success or fail-

ure of the presentation. Not just whether or not you look good.

You’ve got to know the whole thing. Every idea. Every slide.

Every segue. Someone will forget something. Someone may have

an emergency at the last moment and not be able to be there. Even

if everyone is there, you’ve got to know the whole thing.

And you have to commit to it.

You have to give it just the way you rehearsed it.

With heart and soul.

With Clarity, Conviction, and Grace.

You must stand and deliver.

This does not mean that you are not ﬂexible and open to the

reactions of the audience. You must be in complete harmony with

the audience, sensing their level of understanding and comprehen-

sion. You must be able to make adjustments on the ﬂy. If they’re

not getting something, you’ve got to make the point in a way that

they do get before you move on to the next point. Because that’s the

way great presentations work—they are built step by step, point by

point, until the argument that has been constructed is irrefutable.

It’s easy to be comfortable and conﬁdent when things are go-

ing well, but a lot harder when they aren’t. That’s when your com-

mitment will truly be tested.

The Art of the Pitch

176

Time and again in my advertising career I was in presentations

that were clearly headed south for one reason or another. You

must do everything you can to stop that slide to the south. Change

gears, ask questions, shake up the meeting. But do something.

Sometimes, it just requires being calm. Things are seldom as

bad as they seem, and if you just hang in there and project an air

of cool and calmness, you’ll probably be okay. Remember, the

audience doesn’t know what you and your team are supposed to

be saying.

But other times, things are as bad as they seem.

What Won Kim Said

The most uncomfortable presentation I have ever been a part of

was back in the early days at BSSP. We were called Butler, Shine

& Stern back then. This was long before we had proved our-

selves to the consultants, so of the many reviews we did, some

were legit, but most were not. Daewoo came snifﬁng around in

the mid-to-late 1990s, and a number of West Coast agencies, all

about our size, ran to the trough. We were introduced to Won

Kim, a young Korean/American who spoke ﬂawless English,

who was to be our main contact. We put together a pitch and I

ﬂew to L.A. with Stern and an account supervisor. Five minutes

before show time, our account supervisor tells us that she isn’t

feeling well. But she seems to power through it like a pro, and

we don’t really think much more about it.

REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

177

We walk into the room, and Won Kim greets us charismati-

cally. Behind him sit at least a dozen Korean men, in various

stages of seniority, and we notice almost immediately that most

do not have anywhere near the proﬁciency in the English lan-

guage that Won Kim does.

Stern opens our meeting, and then the account supervisor

stands up to deliver her bit, and after a few short sentences, she

does a face plant onto the table. I don’t remember much of a

commotion around this, and that might have been because Stern

and I were in her face, shaking her and trying to make certain

she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t, and we got her up into her seat,

where she stayed, clutching a water bottle for the duration of

the presentation.

The next memorable bit of that pitch, and the only other

thing I do recall beyond our not winning it, was presenting

the work to the room, and noticing midway through reading

my scripts that more than one of them were out as cold as our

account supervisor. I counted at least four of them doing that

“heads back, mouths open” brand of sleeping. But I didn’t want

to be disrespectful, so I soldiered on without a word. When the

meeting was over, they all woke up and clapped enthusiastically.

After the pitch, Won Kim told us how amazing our presen-

tation was. He said that to a man, his associates all enjoyed the

meeting immensely.

I said, “Won Kim, they were out cold.”

The Art of the Pitch

178

“Sleeping?” he said. “No, this is cultural, John, they were

simply resting their eyes, but they heard every word.”

“Won Kim, they were lights out in London, doing that

Three Stooges ‘e-bee-bee-bee’ sleeping noise. I put the room into

a coma,” I said.

But he vehemently disagreed and assured me they were at

rapt attention. We left believing that we had lost, and we had.

—John Butler, partner, creative director, BSSP

If you’re in the business for any length of time, you’re going

to ﬁnd yourself in a meeting similar to John’s. The thing to re-

member is that even if things seem to be heading south, you still

might win if you stay committed and soldier on. My agency won

a presentation once simply because we “showed grace under pres-

sure,” according to the client.

One thing I am sure of is this—if you give up, you won’t win.

Getting Started

The hardest part of presenting for a lot of people is just getting

going.

We see this all the time. People stumble and fumble their way

into an opening. Which usually isn’t much of an opening.

This is typical: “So, I’m going to talk to you today, about like,

you know, how we kinda think we can sorta, you know!”

REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

179

If I had a dollar for every presentation that begins with the

word “so” there would be a New Big Three of wealthiest men in

the country—Gates, Buffet, and Coughter.

I realize that “so” is a staple of the current lexicon, but it is

amazing how much more interesting presentations are when they

begin without the word “so.”

Or the recently popular, “Okay, so.”

Or any of the crutches that are sprinkled throughout discourse

today.

That doesn’t mean that we should all use it.

Let’s call it the “so language.”

This is a serious problem for young people. Perfectly intelli-

gent, competent individuals with ﬁve or six years on the job and a

couple of promotions under their belt are not juniors. Yet every-

where I go, I see people who ﬁt this description but who come off

as juniors because they speak in this strange dialect.

Whatever the reason, get rid of it, because if you speak “so,”

you will forever be labeled a junior.

I am often reluctant to point this out to the people in my

workshops because I don’t want them to think that I’m picking

on them for something trivial. Yet I’m pleased to report that in

almost every case (of hundreds every year) they embrace my com-

ments and agree that it sounds terrible. When we sit together and

watch a video recording of their presentations, this becomes viv-

idly clear. Most people are appalled to discover that they speak

The Art of the Pitch

180

“so.” And they swear that they will work to rid themselves of

what I think is just an affectation.

“So” is a perfectly good adverb and an even better conjunc-

tion. Use it in those ways. Just don’t start your presentation

with it.

Start clean. No “so’s,” “um’s,” “like’s,” etc.

I have had CEOs say, “I’m begging you. If you can just get

them to stop saying ‘sorta’ and ‘kinda’ I will be eternally grateful.”

There is another affront on spoken English abroad in the land.

I call it the Attack of the Adverbs. “Actually,” “basically” and

“essentially” are now liberally sprinkled throughout the content

of presenters every day. Usage of these words, often incorrectly

by the way, has become an epidemic on the scale of Val Speak.

I’ve seen a presenter use “actually” three times in one run on sen-

tence. It doesn’t necessarily make the speaker sound like a junior;

it makes the speaker sound unintelligent (I thought that was a

nicer word than “stupid”).

And while we’re at it, no “probably’s” or “coulda’s” or

“shoulda’s.” I have seen several presentations in which the pre-

senter, going into her big impassioned close—trying to sell us the

work—actually said, “So, we think this work will probably ac-

complish what we want.” “Probably.” There’s a powerful state-

ment. A real ringing endorsement.

There is no room for “probably” in a presentation, or in any

kind of persuasive argument, for that matter. The audience wants

certainty, conviction, and conﬁdence. They don’t want “prob-

REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

181

ably.” They don’t need a guarantee, but they want to be assured

that you at least believe your recommendation will be successful.

If you don’t think so, why should they?

How should we begin?

By saying nothing.

That’s right. When it is your turn to speak, simply look at

the audience. Make eye contact with someone. Smile. And be si-

lent for a few seconds. Everyone in the room will be staring at

you. Which is exactly what we want. By being silent you are ac-

complishing several things. As we just said, you’re getting their

attention without really doing anything. You’re providing some

punctuation, which is necessary because we need to give the au-

dience the idea that something new is about to begin. What just

occurred is over. Now it’s your turn.

And we are showing the audience that we are in charge of the

room. We’re comfortable with the situation and in our own skin.

You might even walk around a little bit.

Because most people are terriﬁed of silence, they tend to ﬁll

up all the available airtime with noise. That’s what the audience

is used to experiencing. When you give them something different,

something fresh, they like it. And they are one big step closer to

liking you, which is what we’re after.

When the room is silent and you have everyone’s attention—

you should begin.

Begin with a simple declarative sentence. Preferably one that is

interesting and/or provocative. Something that gets the audience’s

The Art of the Pitch

182

attention. “Good morning, it’s great to be here,” has probably

been said a few times already. Even if you’re the ﬁrst presenter of

the day, skip the “Good morning, it’s great to be here,” and say

something that makes the audience believe that it’s great to be

here. That you are going to be delivering one interesting, maybe

even entertaining, presentation.

As we said earlier, this is why rock bands still use smoke

bombs.

Why movies now get right into it and save the credits for the

end. Why things blow up as soon as possible in summer block-

busters. Why James Bond movies all start with some fantastic

action set piece. Why the ﬁrst sentence in a good novel is often

powerful and therefore remembered for decades. If not longer.

Grab your audience’s attention right at the beginning. And

don’t ever let it go.

Remember our “When I was 24, I met a Spanish chef” story?

Start clean and strong.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of this point. The ﬁrst

sound out of your mouth is what the audience will remember.

They will immediately formulate an opinion of you based on the

ﬁrst sound you make. (They’ve already got an opinion of you

based upon the way you look, so this is your chance to conﬁrm

that or change it.)

It may be that your attention-getting opening isn’t even some-

thing you say. You might want to open with a powerful image on

the screen behind you. Or a stirring, provocative quote. Russell

REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

183

Davies kids around with a musical fanfare to make the point that

something important is about to happen. You get the idea. Get

their attention.

When using images on a screen, no matter what the program,

please remember this—nothing should be on the screen until it

suits your purposes. Nothing should be there until the image is

perfectly aligned with what you are saying and results in an im-

portant point being made.

Sometimes that point isn’t even stated. It’s the sum of the im-

age on the screen and the words you are saying combining to

produce yet a third, more signiﬁcant concept. When this happens,

things can be really exciting. You are like a medieval wizard creat-

ing some powerful alchemy out of words and images to produce

magic.

Failing that, and most of us will, keep it simple. Maybe the

magic should come later.

Start with a black screen. Let the ﬁrst slide fade up at precisely

the moment it is aligned with your idea, producing the result you

are seeking.

And don’t be afraid to go back to black (or white, if you

choose) after you’ve made your point. If what’s on the screen isn’t

in alignment with the point you’re trying to make, let it fade away.

This is another form of punctuation and one that the audience

will understand completely.

How many presentations have you seen that begin with a slide

up on the screen stating the title of the presentation, the subtitle

The Art of the Pitch

184

of the presentation, the logos of the organizations involved in the

lower left and right corner, and right in the middle of the two (or

more) logos—today’s date?

That slide sits there while the speaker fumbles along, sliding

into a beginning using the word “so.” I’ve seen literally thousands

of presentations like this.

You know, having the date up there on the screen is so help-

ful to everyone in attendance, I’ve often suggested to presenters

that they put a real-time running digital clock in the corner of

the screen so that everyone in the audience will know exactly

what time it is as well as the date. It might also give them an

indication of whether or not they have any chance of making it

to the end.

Start strong and clean.

Remember—Clarity, Conviction, and Grace. Starting Strong

and Clean is the way to begin.

The Little Voice

Does this ever happen to you? You’re presenting your material,

but you’re having trouble focusing on what you’re saying and

doing because you can’t seem to stop thinking about how you’re

doing. You’re convinced that the audience doesn’t understand a

word you’re saying. You think your hair is a mess, or your glasses

make you look dorky, or any one of a thousand other things that

aren’t going to be of any help to you.

REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

185

If so, take heart, you’re not alone. A very high percentage of

the people I work with suffer from what I call “the little voice.”

Little Julio (or Little Marie, or Little Kate) is up in our heads of-

fering all kinds of not very helpful commentary. “This isn’t going

well,” “They hate your ideas,” “Go faster and get this over with.”

We’ve got to quiet Little Julio down. Eventually we need to tell

him to go wait in the car. The trick is to concentrate. Commit

and concentrate. You’ve rehearsed your material. You know your

ideas are sound and you’ve got a convincing argument that you

know will carry the day. So just do it. Commit to what you’ve pre-

pared. Believe in yourself. Believe in all the hard work you’ve put

into developing your ideas and then ﬁguring out how to present

them. You’ve worked hard to get to this point. Now the idea is to

just relax and deliver. And one other thing—have fun.

If you’ve done everything we’ve discussed here, and you

really know your stuff, you can overcome some pretty daunt-

ing obstacles. Even the one Sally Hogshead encountered in this

story.

Sitting in LA morning trafﬁc, I felt like an antelope being di-

gested by a python. Slowly, slowly being constricted through

a long tunnel of freeway. I was ﬁnally deposited at my client’s

doorstep, approximately ten seconds before the start of the new

business presentation.

This was still early in my career, but my partner and I had

worked for weeks on the presentation, so I felt conﬁdent about

The Art of the Pitch

186

the outcome. At least, I felt conﬁdent until I reached into the

back seat for the portfolio case. . . .

Wait. The portfolio case . . . Where’s the frikkin’ portfolio

case?!! As icy water ﬂushed through my blood, I realized exactly

where the portfolio case was: on the kitchen counter.

Um, yeah.

Lesson #1: Don’t forget the stuff you’re there to present.

Most of us spend a lot of time on the material in the pre-

sentation, and very little on the presentation itself. But dumping

your notes into PowerPoint slides is akin to serving Bobby Flay

cuisine on dirty paper plates.

For anyone working in an idea-based business, coming up

with ideas doesn’t mean squat if you can’t sell them. We sell

ideas in presentations—whether those presentations take place

in a boardroom or a coworker’s cubicle—which means that pre-

sentations form the very building blocks of our careers.

In today’s marketing environment of chaos and insecurity,

you have to fortify your ideas to face the most hairy decision-

making moments. Below, a few tips for turning great hypotheti-

cal ideas into great produced ideas.

Think of the client’s concerns before they do.

Ahead of the meeting, be brutally honest with yourself and

your team in pinpointing the weak spots in your ideas. That way,

you can address those if the client brings them up. Consider all

the aspects of your client’s needs, concerns, insecurities, politics,

and biases that you’ll have to overcome in order to earn their

REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

187

genuine consideration. The point isn’t to defensively ﬁght for

your work, but rather, to avoid being caught ﬂat-footed by a

tough question.

Be able to articulate every element of your recommendations.

Don’t send your ideas out alone and defenseless into the

meeting. Be able to clearly explain every element of your work,

why you did things the way you did, and the reasoning behind

it. Odds are that you didn’t develop your recommendations by

randomly shooting darts at a spreadsheet; make sure the client

understands why you did what you did.

If the presentation starts sucking wind, don’t wait to ﬁnd

out what’s going wrong.

Instead of nervously pushing forward to make it out alive,

try to rustle the pink elephant out of the bushes. Acknowledge

the situation with a little diplomatic honesty: “I could be wrong,

but by those veins throbbing in your temples, I’m sensing that

this isn’t working for you.” Only once they express their con-

cerns can you then redirect attention to solving them.

Finally, check the kitchen counter before you walk out the

door.

(Just to be safe.)

—Sally Hogshead, speaker, writer, brand consultant, author

of Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

Sally forgot her case, but she nailed it anyway, because she

was ready.

The Art of the Pitch

188

She knew the material and had worked on the presentation

for weeks with her partner.

She stayed committed.

And, oh yeah, she’s Sally Hogshead.

189

TEN

Punctuation

f you were to write someone a letter, you would use punctua-

tion, right?

When we speak, we use punctuation of a different sort.

The commas and periods are heard, not read. But that doesn’t

mean they’re not there—they deﬁnitely are.

In a presentation, they have to be there. It is critical that we

punctuate what we are saying in order to maximize the under-

standing of our words. Furthermore, if we are speaking for any

length of time upwards of a few minutes, it is very difﬁcult to hold

an audience’s attention without practicing precise punctuation of

our words. Put another way, I believe that we must have empathy

for our audience. We must recognize that listening to anyone for

more than a few minutes is difﬁcult, and damn near impossible if

they don’t punctuate effectively. So we’ve got to help the audience

stay with us.

The Art of the Pitch

190

How do we do this? What do we have at our disposal to punc-

tuate our thoughts?

The answer is: a lot. Let’s run down the list and explain a bit

about how to put some of them to use.

Pause. What happens in the room when we pause? The room

becomes silent. For most people, this is terrifying. Most of us are

afraid of silence, which is why we speak too fast and attempt to

ﬁll all of our allotted airtime with sound. This is an amateurish

mistake and makes us look nervous and afraid. Not conﬁdent

and powerful. People usually don’t want to work with folks who

are nervous and afraid. I see this a lot with young people. Many

young people speak way too quickly to begin with, but then they

compound the problem by jamming all the words together into a

series of run-on sentences that turn into run-on paragraphs until

no one has any idea what they’re saying. When I call them on this,

they almost invariably say, “Well, I wanted to get it over with.”

There’s a great way to approach a presentation, huh? Why not

just skip the whole thing in the ﬁrst place? That would be even

easier. This is, of course, so absurd it hardly merits discussion, but

I see it all the time all over the country. These folks would be so

much better if they would just slow down and pause from time

to time. Don’t change anything else. Just stop talking for a beat

or two. Silence will help you. Silence will make you appear to be

conﬁdent and in command. So don’t be afraid of silence.

Silence is our friend.

By pausing after each important thought or sentence, we are

showing that we are conﬁdent.

PUNCTUATION

191

But, the most important fact about the use of silence: people

tend to remember the last thing we say before we become quiet.

So, make one of your key points, and be quiet. Wait a beat or

two, and then go on to your next idea. This is a very important

technique to master, because it tells the audience exactly what we

want them to think about.

Using silence for punctuation is one of simplest techniques

you can use to instantly appear to be a better presenter. More

importantly, you actually will be a better presenter, because your

judicious use of silence is letting the audience know which ideas

are the key thoughts.

The key thoughts should be spoken as if they were your head-

lines. In fact, I try to speak only in headlines. No body copy. Now,

I will break that rule time and again when I sense the potential of

a digression to help me make my point, but I will quickly return

to headlines. Watch a Steve Jobs’ MacWorld presentation online.

He speaks almost exclusively in headlines. Your use of silence is

giving the audience relief from non-stop noise, and is telling them,

however subtly, that you are conﬁdent in your ideas.

It’s one of the key techniques to communicating with Clarity,

Conviction, and Grace.

Volume. From time to time, change the volume of your voice.

You should not stay at the same level throughout your presenta-

tion. Punctuate by going up and down in volume. There are times

when you will want to shout out a particular thought because it’s

so important or you’re so excited about it, or any number of other

reasons. Go ahead and do it. If you don’t shout, at least raise your

The Art of the Pitch

192

voice a few decibels. At other times, you can use quietness to great

advantage. Perhaps to convey a sense of intimacy, or to make a

point that is particularly emotional for you. We all remember

wonderful storytellers who could virtually whisper key sentences

to us and, at other times, would nearly be shouting. Have you

ever read a children’s book to a kid? Or had one read to you?

Remember how the reader changed her volume based on what

was happening in the story? It’s the same thing with presenting.

Think about a wonderful homily you heard given at church. Or

listen to a really skillful politician. They change volume regularly.

One tried and true technique is to barrel along picking up momen-

tum and volume. And then deliver what seems to be the key line

with the loudest volume you can muster. Followed by the next line,

which might truly be the most important, in a very low volume. You

see it all the time and it works all the time. You can do the same.

TAKE NOTE

We can all learn from the people around us. Whether it’s at a place of



that powerful communicators are using to make their points. As we’ve said

elsewhere, do not copy their style.

!"-

fective for you. But do pay attention to what great speakers do. There’s a

lot to be learned.

PUNCTUATION

193

Pitch. Staying on one note is monotonous, the root of which

is the word “monotone.” It means one note. Use as many notes

as you can. Think of it as music. I have worked with several folks

with musical backgrounds who have found that advice very use-

ful. So play different notes. If you don’t, your audience will tire

quickly. You don’t want that. You want them to be eager to hear

more even after you’re though. So vary your pitch.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

It is critical that you!

Tone of voice. We know how important this is in the over-

all impression you make on your audience. So don’t leave it to

chance. Think about it in advance. Decide what tone will work

best for each particular section of your presentation. Should you

be playful at this point, deadly serious at this, quietly excited here,

etc.? What tone is appropriate for that section of your message?

In fact, what should your voice be for this particular presenta-

tion? Years ago, visiting a friend at Leo Burnett, I walked into

his ofﬁce and asked what he was doing. He said that he “was

trying to decide what my voice should be for the presentation

to Miller Light.” He would never change his style, and neither

should you, but you should think about the appropriate voice for

each situation.

The Art of the Pitch

194

For example, are you going to be the ﬁery orator, outraged by

the wrong done to your client by other agencies? Or the avuncu-

lar, quiet voice of a trusted advisor? Maybe you’ll be the cham-

pion of the people.

You get the idea.

Facial expressions. Use your face to advantage. Smile. Smiling

works. Not like a model at an automobile show, but when it’s ap-

propriate. Change to quizzical when asking a question. Become

somber when delivering bad news. Your face is one of the most

powerful tools you have.

Ask questions. It’s a great way to get the audience engaged,

which, as we know, is what we want. It breaks up your mono-

logue and creates the illusion of conversation, which is particu-

larly desirable. Get people involved. Get them thinking about the

subject matter. Make them a part of the presentation. This will

create a more memorable experience for your audience than just

sitting there. Because if you let them just sit there, they’ll listen

for a while and then, eventually, they will drift off to their own

thoughts. You know, you’ve been there.

One technique that I continually use is to start with a ques-

tion. The very ﬁrst thing I say, the thing I want to use to get their

attention is a question. “Why are we here today?” “Why is it im-

portant that we do this?” These kinds of questions get their atten-

tion right away and cause them to begin to think, which is good.

They usually ﬁgure it’s a trick question of some kind, so that gets

them double-clutching and trying to outguess one another, and

PUNCTUATION

195

me. It’s a good way to get things going and to let people know

that today’s presentation isn’t going to be business as usual. And

people like that.

Movement. Moving with purpose can be a powerful way to

punctuate our words. Finish a sentence or phrase in one part of

the room, and then become silent while moving to the other side

of the room to pick up the next sentence or thought. Many speak-

ers use this technique to great advantage. But many misuse it.

Remember the key phrase: “moving with purpose.” Just moving

will provide relief for the audience, but moving with purpose will

underscore your ideas and make it clear to the audience what you

want them to retain.

Some wonderful presenters never move, preferring to deliver

their thoughts from one powerful position. But these folks are in

the minority.

Moving with purpose doesn’t have to involve covering a lot

of real estate. I frequently have workshop groups tell me how

much they appreciated one of their colleagues’ use of movement

when the person in question might have traveled the width of a

conference room table. It’s not important that you cover a lot of

ground—it’s important that you move around.

Moving with purpose communicates a sense of conﬁdence

and relaxation on the part of the speaker. It says he’s in charge of

this space, he’s comfortable with it; in fact, it says, not so subtly,

this is his space. I’ve used masculine pronouns in this last sentence

because moving around the room seems to be a guy trick. Men are

The Art of the Pitch

196

much more likely to move around than women are. I’m not sure

why this is, but I’ve theorized that, just as a dog marks his terri-

tory, guys mark their space in rooms. Most women don’t. Which

is why it is very powerful for a woman to use the technique of

moving with purpose. It’s seldom done and it really works.

A longtime friend of mine, Nina DiSesa, is a tremendous pre-

senter. One of Nina’s techniques, which I’ve seen her use time and

again, is to move around the room, purposefully, with a warm,

friendly smile on her face. It’s very hard to say no to Nina. Which

might have something to do with why she became the ﬁrst female

chairman of McCann Erickson.

Gestures. We’ve got arms and hands, and God knows, we’ve

got to do something with them. Use them to make your intentions

clear. Gesture at the appropriate points in your talk. They will

serve to provide meaning and relief to the audience. I believe that

almost any gestures are helpful until they become distracting. At

that point, stop. Watching yourself on video is a good way to see

exactly what you might be doing a little too much or too little of

with regard to gestures. Failing that, have someone watch and

listen to your rehearsal. They can be a big help.

Use your body to communicate. People often ask me about

body language, and they’re right to do so. I’m not a big believer in

the “unspoken messages” of body language, but certainly move-

ment, facial expressions, gestures, and just about everything else

we do with our bodies is going to help us make a connection.

Remember that 55 percent of the information people take away

from presentations is Visual?

PUNCTUATION

197

Visual aids and props. Anything on boards, the screen,

cards, ﬂip charts, or props of any kind can provide punctua-

tion by attracting the audience’s attention for a moment or two.

But remember when using any of these devices that you are the

message. I want you to be the star. Not the screen. (At this point

someone may be thinking, “but it’s the work that’s the star.”

Not really. Selling the work may in fact be why we’re doing the

presentation, but in order to buy the work, they’re going to have

to buy you.)

It is critical that you buy into this simple understanding. You

are the message. No matter how good the work is, if they don’t

believe you, if they don’t trust you, they won’t buy the work. One

of the important functions of the presentation format is that it

serves as a device to allow people to form an opinion of us, to

evaluate us and ultimately decide if they trust us.

Week in and week out, all over the country, I ﬁnd myself say-

ing, “You are really good. Your slides suck.” Over and over, all

the time. We’ve talked about the problems with decks elsewhere,

but it can’t hurt to repeat it. The slides are meant to be visual aids,

not to compete with the presenter for the audience’s attention.

When we put something up on the screen, what is the audience

going to do? They’re going to read it. And if you’ve got a lot of

words up there, they’re going to try to read them and will ignore

you. Even worse, they will read the slides long before you get

around to talking about the ideas on the screen. So there is now a

huge disconnect in the room and the whole thing has jumped the

rails. It happens every day.

The Art of the Pitch

198

It’s the same effect as handing out material for people to look

at while you speak. They will read the material. They will page

ahead. Those interested in what the thing costs will ﬂip ahead to

try and ﬁnd the budget page. They will cease listening to you. So if

you want to break off any human connection with your audience,

be sure to hand out stuff for them to look at, or project a series

of slides with a lot of bullet points and type all over them. They’ll

tire of you quickly.

Eye contact. One of the most powerful techniques we have,

both for making an emotional connection with our audience, but

also as punctuation, is eye contact. If we are going to connect with

our audience, and we had better if we want to persuade them of

anything, we need to make eye contact with each person in the

room. If there are 5,000 in a ballroom in Vegas, this may be im-

possible. But you must still look out into the crowd as if you are

making eye contact with individuals.

Start each of your sentences by looking directly into some-

one’s eyes.

Switch to someone else when you have ﬁnished the thought.

Or, you can switch to someone else at the end of a phrase.

Doing this will make an enormous difference in how you are

perceived as a presenter. And that’s the whole idea, isn’t it?

Another important beneﬁt in making legitimate eye contact,

eye contact that we use for punctuation, is that it enables us to

read the room. Remember, even though you may be doing most of

PUNCTUATION

199

the talking, you need to listen to the people in the room with your

ears and your eyes. What you see could make a big difference

in the outcome of the presentation. Here’s Cindy Gallop talking

about something that she saw while presenting to a client.

When presenting, it is critically important that you read your

audience—via body language, facial expression, mannerisms,

etc.—to get a sense of how what you are presenting is being

received.

If it becomes increasingly clear that something is not being

well received, never be afraid to go “off-piste” rather than get

through the presentation at all costs.

Back in the early days of BBH New York, we were pitching

a client, and it became increasingly apparent to me that what we

were saying was going down about as well as a cup of cold sick.

I stopped the presentation halfway through and said,

“Guys—you’re clearly not happy with what we’re saying. Let’s

just stop here and talk about it.”

It transpired that there had been a disconnect in the brief-

ing, and we were way off track in terms of the approach we’d

taken. We didn’t get the business, but we did at least end the

presentation on amicable terms having sorted out what was

wrong.”

—Cindy Gallop, founder, IfWeRanTheWorld,

former chairman, BBH New York

The Art of the Pitch

200

Here’s an example of how simply making effective eye contact

can change the way people perceive you. I was working with a

group of creative directors one morning in Toronto.

The CEO of the agency sat in just to see what we were up to,

since it was my ﬁrst time at the agency. He had to leave for some

meetings midmorning, but he came back in the afternoon when

his people were presenting their work. At a break, he took me

aside and said, “Wow. Thank you so much. They’ve improved

tremendously. How did you do it?”

All I had done was get the people to practice effective eye con-

tact. They were looking the CEO in the eye when they presented

their work. That was the only difference.

It’s not necessary to be looking at someone the entire time

you’re presenting. That could get a little weird. It’s ﬁne to look to

the heavens for inspiration, or out the window to brieﬂy admire

the view. It’s natural to look around. But when you have some-

thing important to say, you must be looking at someone.

We’ve said repeatedly that presenting effectively is all about

making an emotional connection. That emotion is the key to per-

suasion. Well then, we’ve got to make effective use of our eyes be-

cause, as we’ve all heard, the eyes are the window to our souls. It’s

true. People look directly into one another’s eyes when they want

to connect. Another thing that happens is this—you will see that

by making effective eye contact, you are causing your audience

to pay closer attention. Because the folks in the audience see that

you are making eye contact with their colleagues, they will stare

PUNCTUATION

201

at you, anticipating the moment when you get around to making

eye contact with them. And then you’ve got them.

I keep referring to effective eye contact. What do I mean?

Making eye contact for a sufﬁcient length of time. Not too long

and not too short. You’ll be able to feel it, particularly if you are

coordinating what you are saying to the length of your eye con-

tact and are using it for punctuation.

It will feel natural and good to you.

Another important beneﬁt of making effective eye contact is

that it says to your audience that you know your stuff and that

you’re conﬁdent.

As we’ve said elsewhere, people respond to conﬁdence.

You must avoid shifting contact from one person to another

quickly. I call this Panning and Scanning and it doesn’t say any-

thing except, “I’m nervous and not sure of myself or what I’m

saying.” Not what we want.

Don’t glance at people and then quickly look away and make

eye contact with someone else. Subconsciously, what you’re do-

ing here is telling the ﬁrst person that they aren’t important and

therefore not worthy of your precious attention (eye contact). So

once you get on someone, stay on them long enough to make ef-

fective contact.

Speaking of the relative importance of people in the room, I’m

often asked how to divide your attention among the several peo-

ple from the client organization. My answer is, spread the love.

You may start on the boss, but be sure to give plenty of love to her

The Art of the Pitch

202

minions. It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to

do. Unless the boss is a complete megalomaniac, she’s watching to

see if you respect her people. Which is exactly what her people are

doing as well. They want to see if you respect them. If you some-

how indicate that you don’t—and not looking at them is a pretty

clear indicator that you don’t—they will make you pay for it later.

The same thing goes for an internal audience. There may be

people who are several levels above you in the organization as

well as peers and underlings scattered around the room. Share the

love.

Speaking of client meetings, what do you and your colleagues

do when one of you is presenting? Model the behavior you want

the audience to emulate. That means sit there attentively, nodding

and smiling while your teammate does his thing. It is great sup-

port for your teammate and shows the rest of the audience how to

behave. It’s important for them to see that you like your teammate

and agree with what he’s saying. If they don’t see that very clearly,

they begin to wonder, and a client that begins to wonder is one

step closer to saying no.

Using effective eye contact is one of the quickest ways to be

seen as a better presenter, but it’s important for another very big

reason: credibility. It says you’re telling the truth. That’s why they

are looking you in the eye and deciding that you believe what you

are saying.

Another beneﬁt of making strong eye contact for some pre-

senters is that it tends to slow them down and focus on each in-

PUNCTUATION

203

dividual in the room. I’ve seen presenters go from scattered fast

talkers to powerful presenters simply by using eye contact.

Invest in a remote that will change the slides on your deck

without your having to reach down and push “forward.” I know

this sounds elementary, but you would be surprised by the num-

ber of otherwise credible ad agencies that don’t have a remote in

their conference rooms. Without a remote, you must look down

and push the buttons.

This breaks eye contact with the audience at the two most

important parts of your slide—the ﬁrst sentence and the last. It

doesn’t really get any better if we have a colleague “drive” the

computer for us. So buy a remote. Learn to work with it. Learn

to walk around the room and change the slides without looking

at the screen. This will make you appear to be a form of wizard

to your audience since most presenters spend a good deal of their

time checking to see exactly which slide happens to be on the

screen at any given time. And then they keep looking back at it

even though it hasn’t changed and still says exactly what it said

the last time they looked at it. This is disconcerting to the audi-

ence and makes the presenter look like a nervous person who

doesn’t know her stuff. It’s ﬁne to look at the slide for a moment,

but then get back to making effective eye contact with the people

in the audience.

Throughout our lives, we’ve had situations in which people

have literally or ﬁguratively asked us to look them in the eye and

tell them our story. It’s the same thing with presentations.

The Art of the Pitch

204

So look them in the eye and tell them your truth.

Slow down. Take your time. Vary your pitch and volume.

Move around the room. Smile where appropriate. Take charge of

the room. And get what you came for.

Presenting on the Phone

An unpleasant reality of modern life in advertising is the telephone

presentation. Geography, shrinking budgets, and the develop-

ment of technology are the principal reasons this once-unthink-

able practice has proliferated. I say unthinkable, because over the

phone is simply not the optimum way of presenting work. We all

know this, but telephone presentations aren’t going away, so what

can we do to optimize our level of success on the phone?

A few thoughts that, not surprisingly, are consistent with

many of our recommendations for in-person presentations:

Control the visuals. If you’re showing work that is preceded by

a deck of some kind, as is so often the case, you’ve got to have

control of that deck. You can’t let them ﬂip ahead and read it for

themselves. If they can, they will. Which means they won’t be

paying attention to what you and your colleagues are saying. So

use WebEX or any of the other software programs that allow you

to control the viewing of the deck. Just as in an in-person presen-

tation, don’t let them see any slide until exactly the right moment.

Make sure that your slides are in harmony with your words.

PUNCTUATION

205

Start Strong. Get their attention right away. Start with some-

thing powerful, urgent, or compelling. Cause them to pay at-

tention throughout the call and understand the importance of

doing so.

Lay Some Ground Rules. Tell them you know they’re busy,

just as you are, and if they will cease multitasking during the

call, they will actually get a lot more done and get it done more

quickly. So ask them to stop emailing or texting.

Interact Early. Get folks involved in the call right away by call-

ing them by name. Ask for their input and comments. Solicit the

opinions of the quieter people who usually don’t speak up. Call

on them by name, which emphasizes the need to pay attention.

Punctuation. Punctuation is even more important on the phone

because unless you’re using video conferencing, they can’t look

at you and respond to you. So use the techniques discussed

earlier. Vary your pitch, timbre, speed. Use inﬂection. Don’t be

afraid of silence. Although without your body language to fol-

low, you probably can’t pause quite as long as you can in person.

Make It Visual. They don’t have you to look at, so make the

deck as visual as possible. Simple, elegant, and restrained use

of type. If you’re in doubt, err on the side of images rather than

type.

The Art of the Pitch

206

You can send them a written document after the call is over.

Make this a presentation, not a “group-read” of a PowerPoint

deck.

Stay Committed. At times there will be silence on the other

end. Don’t let this throw you. Stay focused and on point. As

we said earlier, ask for their reactions if the silence goes on

too long. You may consider having a conversation with one

of the participants before the presentation and ask them to

help out by asking questions and keeping the energy up on

their end.

Don’t Try to Do Too Much. Most phone conferences, like in-

person presentations, are too long. Phone fatigue sets in quickly.

If you have a lot of material, you may consider not presenting it

all on one call. You may schedule another call for another day

if possible. Do everything you can to make the call as efﬁcient a

use of everyone’s time as possible.

Keep Your People in Line. Just as we work to command the at-

tention of the folks on the other end of the line, insist that your

own people stay engaged and focused. Don’t let them email or

text during the meeting either, and don’t allow them to make

faces or gestures at the phone. (We’ve all seen it. It’s stupid and

disrespectful.)

PUNCTUATION

207

Stand Up. I believe that standing up is a good idea. It makes it

feel more important to the presenters and it lends a different,

more powerful tone to your voice. Professional singers don’t sit

down for a reason. Subconsciously, it communicates a feeling of

authority to the listeners.

BBC Radio news presenters were required to wear tuxedos

up until World War II. Think about that.

Plan the Call. Just as you would a meeting in your board room,

plan out the call in advance. Know what you want from it. Be

sure that everyone on your team is in complete agreement and

understands the strategy for the call. Too many phone confer-

ences are treated like a random chat with a buddy. Make it busi-

nesslike and professional.

Rehearse. Just as with in-person presentations, rehearsal will

make you better. It will help you to be more concise and get to

the point quicker. I suggest that you and your team work on

phone presentations. Get the team in one room and have the

caller call in from another room in your ofﬁces. Listen to what

it sounds like. Record the calls. Most people who do a lot of

telephone presentations have never heard themselves or their

teammates this way. When they listen to the playback, they usu-

ally discover that they are creating a far different effect than

they thought they were. So listen and learn.

The Art of the Pitch

208

If you follow these suggestions and treat the call as a true pre-

sentation, with all the planning and creativity that one requires,

you’ll get more done and you’ll sell more of your best work.

Remember, punctuation is even more important on the phone.

The Ultimate Punctuation

Mark: The Close

We’ve discussed the importance of a strong opening and a pow-

erful ending. We’re telling a story, remember? These are critical

components to any presentation and it’s useful to think of the

opening and the close as punctuation marks.

But how are they delivered, and more to the point, who deliv-

ers them?

In the last chapter, Darren Moran mentioned his practice of

“casting” the appropriate people both to create the presentation

and to deliver it. Remember, they may not be the same people.

Different people have different strengths. With that in mind, the

best agencies are aware of the talents of each of their people with

regard to presenting. They know who can open a meeting with

excitement, who can deliver a thoughtful, compelling, and logical

setup to the work or ideas, who can really bring the presentation

of those ideas to life, and, maybe most importantly, who can close

the deal. We’ve all heard of the concept of the “closer” in business

vocabulary, that person who stands up, wraps it all up, and deliv-

ers a few well-chosen remarks that make the client say “yes.” I’ve

PUNCTUATION

209

seen many good closers over the years. They come in all different

sizes and shapes. But the one thing they all have in common is

the ability to excite the imagination of the audience. To challenge

them to be their “best selves.”

To inspire them to something greater, more signiﬁcant. To

raise the level of discourse. Sometimes it’s done with a story, other

times with some kind of device or prop. However it’s done, more

often than not, they get what they came for.

Agencies that win a lot have a closer. Who’s yours? If you

don’t know, ﬁnd one.

I won’t get into naming a list of the best closers I’ve ever seen,

but I will quote my colleague, Don Just, who’s been the president

of at least two important ad agencies over the years and knows

how to close.

The pitch was to a major American jeans manufacturer—

important to the agency as it would be our ﬁrst well-known,

highly visible national consumer brand with a large advertis-

ing budget. We went all out to prepare a comprehensive stra-

tegic and spec creative presentation that ﬁlled our allotted

three-hour time slot.

We were assigned the ﬁrst presentation slot among the ﬁve

ﬁnalists, and presentations began on Monday with one per day

during the week. The audience consisted of a dozen or so cli-

ent execs, including marketing, advertising, and management

types from around the country. Presentations were held in a

The Art of the Pitch

210

very large, empty warehouse-type building; in the middle of the

room was a long table behind which were seated the client reps.

The presentation proceeded well, moving from in-depth re-

search ﬁndings to my speciﬁc strategic and tactical recommen-

dations to a lengthy creative pitch. At the end, much of the room

was ﬁlled with creative materials, from packaging to signage to

advertising to fully mocked-up store displays, and, through it

all, the clients maintained a stoic demeanor, never indicating ap-

proval, excitement, or enthusiasm for any of the work. In fact,

toward the end of the pitch, during an animated presentation of

TV spots, the lead dog got up and said, “I’ve seen enough,” and

left the room—disconcerting, to say the least.

Our biggest problem, though, was how to keep our pre-

sentation alive and in the minds of the client for the entire

week as they moved from presentation to presentation. What

we did was simple but proved to be highly effective. The

room’s ceiling was high, perhaps 20 feet, and there was only

one entrance/exit door. Having scouted the room ahead of

time, we brought a ladder which I climbed to place a strip of

duct tape four or ﬁve feet above the door. From the top of the

ladder I thanked the client for including us, asked for the busi-

ness and directed their attention to the tape, saying, “We’ve

put the mark on the wall. Each time you leave a subsequent

presentation, look at this mark, and if what you have just seen

was better, then replace this mark with theirs. However, if, at

PUNCTUATION

211

the end of the week, our mark is still on the wall, then your

decision should be easy.”

On Friday afternoon of presentation week, I received a

call from the client who said, “Your mark is still on the wall.

Congratulations, you’re our new agency.”

—Don Just, professor, VCU Brandcenter

213

ELEVEN

You Never Know

am the ﬁrst to admit that that there are an awful lot of things

about which I know very little. Or nothing. Many times in

the day I ﬁnd myself saying, “I don’t know.” (By the way, the

next time I hear a politician say that, it will be the ﬁrst time. Please

point out a politician who says, “I don’t know, but I’ve got a lot of

smart people who work for me, and they’ll ﬁnd the answer. Then

I’ll get back to you.” I’ll vote for him/her.)

But there is one thing I deﬁnitely do know, and that is that you

never know.

You never know when there is someone in the room who

can really help/hurt you. You never know when something you

have said or done in the past will come back to reward/haunt

you. You cannot take any situation for granted. You’ve got to

be at your very best at all times. Everything is a presentation,

remember?

The Art of the Pitch

214

Let me illustrate this point. Years ago, my agency was invited

to participate in a presentation for something that seemed like an

exciting piece of business. We felt that way until we found out that

the invitation wasn’t exactly exclusive. There would be 24 other

agencies presenting, and we were all going to do it on the same day.

That’s right, 24 agencies on one day. The plan, if one can call it

that, was to give each agency 15 minutes to make its case.

Our ﬁrst reaction was to say thanks but no thanks. It seemed

like a ridiculous proposition, and more to the point, a clear indi-

cation of the low regard in which the prospective client held agen-

cies and what they do.

But we thought about it for a while and decided that it really

couldn’t hurt to participate. Because, you never know.

So I took a day and traveled ﬁve hours round trip to make my

15-minute presentation. I thought it went well, but I really didn’t

expect anything to happen.

And then, something did. The very next day, I got a call

from the person in charge of the cattle-call presentation. He

said, “We’re not going to hire your agency. We’re going to hire J.

Walter Thompson because they’re famous and everyone has heard

of them. I was just helping these folks with this review. I’m the

director of marketing of Riggs National Bank [an account with a

much larger budget]. Would you guys like to talk about being our

agency?” I quickly answered, “Yes.”

Two weeks later, we had the account. We didn’t even have to

compete for it. The client was so impressed with the work that

YOU NEVER KNOW

215

we showed in our 15-minute presentation that he wanted to learn

more about us. When he did, he decided to hire us, saying, “I re-

ally liked a lot of your work, I just didn’t know you were the guys

who did it.”

We worked on that account for years and produced some of

the very best, most awarded, most effective work in our agency’s

history.

You never know.

Another thing I’ve learned in all the years I’ve been involved

with agencies and clients is that if you do what the client, or new

business prospect expects you to do—they will be disappointed.

You need to go above and beyond and bring them something that

surprises and delights them. Here’s a story from Jeff Steinhour

that brings that idea to life.

Let’s call this “The Element of Surprise.”

You’ll hear all kinds of advice on making presentations

and becoming a stand-out presenter from pros that do it for a

living. But one thing that many won’t mention is digging for

the unexpected and delivering something fresh that no one

might have seen coming. This only really works once you’ve

surmised the requisite “deliverables” and feel very conﬁdent

that you have the data you need to carry the day in your

meeting. Sometimes showing true skill comes after knowing

you’ve done the expected work and have time to go deeper

and further.

The Art of the Pitch

216

When we (CP+B) were asked to consider a project for

struggling Burger King in 2003, we were caught off guard.

BK had six agencies on their roster, and we were asked for

some ideas on a particular assignment. The more we thought

about how to help them, the more we realized we’d need to get

deeper to uncover the real issues, not just ruin a weekend com-

ing up with some TV spots. So we asked about taking a shot at

delivering ideas for the whole account—a bit crazy at the time.

The CMO was open to it and the more we all thought about

it, the more he warmed up to really going for it. So we asked

for an extra day, yes, a day to do this. That was really all the

time allowed. A weekend plus a day to try and sort out the BK

business and brand opportunities. Foolish? Maybe. But about

40 people went off on it for 48 hours straight and uncovered

some amazing insights, facts, and issues. It was all organized

in a linear way that gave the clients a path toward success that

couldn’t be skipped or supplanted with short cuts. And when

we presented to them, in what they expected would be the

result of a weekend spent writing funny scripts and gags, it

was something entirely different. In what became a four-hour

meeting at our ofﬁce in Miami, we gave them a solid, wall-

to-wall three hours of business observations on their fran-

chise and how it needed to change and evolve. Not one ad or

marketing idea was shown for over three straight hours. And

they were enthralled. What they saw were ideas for products,

their stores, their uniforms, their parking lots, the way trafﬁc

YOU NEVER KNOW

217

ﬂowed through the real estate, signage, the language they used

in their stores, the names for their internal materials, the way

they hired, where their competitors were weak, how they’d

abandoned their “star,” the Whopper, and much more. And

then ﬁnally they saw some ads. In hour four.

What they expected was the furthest thing from what they

received and it really mattered to show the depth of digging, the

passion, the hard news about how some things they were doing

really sucked. And they said to us, after four hours of smart

business ideas, “How do we get started with you guys?” By

executing many of the pitch ideas, beginning in January 2004,

together we produced 63 straight months of positive same-store

sales, month after month. This had not happened in over a de-

cade for their brand. A long way to say, do not be afraid to

share what you think is most important with your allotted time.

Almost all discussions around preparing for a big meeting in-

volve answering what the intended audience is expecting to see.

Go further, have a sharp point of view, and believe that it needs

to be heard. And have the courage to win.

—Jeffrey Steinhour, president and managing

partner, Crispin Porter + Bogusky Advertising

Once we were invited on a truly bizarre presentation boon-

doggle. Our agency was invited to London, along with represen-

tatives from 23 other agencies from the United States and Europe,

in order to meet with a big international client.

The Art of the Pitch

218

It was, of course, ridiculous. But I went, because you never

know.

What ensued was a week-long magical mystery tour through

the British Isles visiting the client’s manufacturing plants.

I won’t go into the hilarious tales that came from that week.

I’ll just say that at the end of the week, we were invited to spend

some time thinking about what we might do to help this client

and then send our thoughts, ads, ideas, etc., to them. In a box

through the mail. Today, I would never do that. I insist on being

in the room to present. But if I had done that then, I would have

been wrong. Because we sent in our package of ideas, and made it

to the next round of six agencies to present in person in New York

City. See, you never know.

We went to New York, and made it to the ﬁnal round of two

agencies to present back in England at an inn outside London.

We turned up there and, I thought, did a great job.

Just not great enough.

Our competitors had included not just spec creative in their

offering, but fully produced creative which was ready to run.

They won, and the stuff ran.

We were told that we were wonderful lads and that we’d be

hearing from them soon. Yeah, right.

In a few days, we got a letter saying that they really appreci-

ated our efforts and hoped to work with us on something else

someday. Yeah, right.

YOU NEVER KNOW

219

Two months later, I got a phone call from the president of

the North American ofﬁce of this company, awarding us his ac-

count, which was considerably more exciting and lucrative than

the original one we’d pitched for. As I said, you never know.

Here’s a slightly different, but no less important way that

“you never know” works.

Once, I was the president of the Richmond Advertising Club.

At one of our ofﬁcers’ meetings, a young lady from the Virginia

Commonwealth University undergraduate advertising club came

to present a report to us on the activities of the students’ club.

She did a fantastic job and impressed us all very much. Fifteen

months later she came to my agency looking for a job. I agreed to

see her because I remembered how impressive she had been in her

presentation to our group. But I had to tell her that we weren’t

going to hire any junior account people. She countered by saying

she would do anything just to get her foot in the door. I thought

about it a minute and then asked her if she’d be willing to take a

job as my assistant. She agreed to it on the spot, and she became

our newest employee shortly thereafter. She had gotten her foot in

the door at the agency she wanted to work for principally because

of a presentation she had given to me and a few of my fellow of-

ﬁcers 15 months before. So again, you never know.

But there’s more to the story. She performed her way out of

the job as my assistant pretty quickly and soon became an ac-

count executive, and a very good one, indeed. After a few years,

The Art of the Pitch

220

she left us for another agency, where she worked for a few years,

and then went to the client side, always moving up in title and

opportunity.

During all this time, she and I remained friends, and she would

regularly call on me for career advice and guidance. I was always

happy to offer it.

To make a long story a little bit shorter, today that young lady

is in charge of the marketing and advertising for a Fortune 50

company. She still calls on me regularly, but now she is my client

and I work for her. We’ve come full circle.

You never know.

So always remember this—if you are going to present, do the

very best job you possibly can. Do not hold anything back. Don’t

ever go through the motions. There can be only one level of ef-

fort and that’s pedal to the metal. Because you are being judged

on how you perform every time out. You owe it to yourself, your

ﬁrm, your teammates, and your client to give your very best.

You can learn from every presentation. Each presentation

should make you and your agency better, tougher. Each presen-

tation, win or lose, is a renewable resource that should be built

upon.

It’s All about the Audience

So get as good at presenting as you possibly can. And then always

remember this—it’s not about you, it’s about the audience. Great

YOU NEVER KNOW

221

presenters know this. They know their material so well and they

have rehearsed how they want to present it so well that all they’re

thinking about is the audience. They are in such tune with the au-

dience that they can adjust their presentation to what is going on

in the room. They don’t have to stick to their “rehearsed pitch”;

they go where they have to go to get what they want. And that

may not be in the script.

And besides, you never know.

One thing I do know, and you can be sure of as well, is that

storytelling, which we mentioned in Chapter One, is one of the

keys to winning over an audience. Not slides and charts, but facts

woven into a powerful, logical story and delivered from the heart.

A great story can move a tough audience, even one as tough as the

Commissioner of the National Basketball Association.

My most memorable presentation has to be when I suggested

to David Stern what he had to do with the NBA’s advertis-

ing in 2007. It was memorable because that presentation was

an epiphany that has affected my presentations ever since—a

breakthrough of understanding that came out of a lot of hard

work, hand-wringing, brainstorming, research, meticulous

preparation and the fear of presenting to David Stern.

David Stern, the commissioner of the National Basketball

Association, is a notoriously tough customer. Known for his

smarts and shrewd intellect, the man has presided over ﬁve

league lockouts during his tenure, with another negotiating

The Art of the Pitch

222

war looming on the horizon as I write this. His record? 5 wins,

0 losses. Waltzing into NBA headquarters in New York and

schmoozing Stern and the NBA with some ad jargon and pre-

sentation hijinks wasn’t going to happen. He was going to rip

the agency a new one if we didn’t give the presentation of our

lives. Or at least a very good one. In fact, I was working for

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners at the time and we even had a

history of Stern-shellackings. No less a planning presentation

guru than Jon Steel recalled Stern’s toughness in his book Truth

Lies and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning. The best

planner in history representing the very same agency had been

taken to the woodshed by the Commish. Great. So, walking in,

I had that going for me.

So what did I do? Anticipating Stern’s tough defense took

me back to the fundamentals. I went back to the very basics of

presenting and focused on preparing and delivering a powerful

narrative, a story that would capture the NBA’s attention right

up front and hook them into hearing the resolution. No trick-

ery. No what if’s or assumptions. All hard facts, data and think-

ing woven into a story that walked Stern through the argument,

not unlike a lawyer (which Stern is) presenting a case in court.

Was it the greatest presentation of all time? Certainly not.

But it worked. I was able to line up a strategy that survived the

scrutiny of a tough audience and tee’d up our creative. More im-

portantly, the strategy framed our creative as a solution. Which,

in all honesty, it was. To this day, in all my presentations, I try

YOU NEVER KNOW

223

to focus on strong facts and logic and how they can tell a story,

always looking for holes or weak points.

And I’ve thanked David Stern several times for that.

—Andy Grayson, group strategy director,

Wieden + Kennedy

I love Andy’s tale because it’s about storytelling but also be-

cause he refers to so much of what we’ve been discussing in this

book—the importance of hard work, questioning ourselves, ex-

cluding the extraneous, meticulous preparation, grabbing the au-

dience’s attention right from the start, and having the courage to

stand up and express our point of view.

225

AFTERWORD

Standing Up

arly in my career I learned the value of being a powerful

presenter. Even as an agency principal with a hundred dif-

ferent tasks on my plate, I made it a priority to study and

learn about presenting in all its forms. I knew that it was impor-

tant enough to be the difference between success and failure for

my ﬁrm. But I also knew that it was critical to my personal suc-

cess and growth. I learned that presenting was a powerful way

of expressing not just what I believed, but who I am. The way in

which we behave in front of an audience while communicating

whatever it is that’s on our minds says volumes about who we

are. If a client is to trust us, she must believe us. And we prove

ourselves worthy of that trust by standing up and speaking our

truth. If we expect people to follow us, we must inspire them to

do so. We must stand up and be a leader. On a more mundane

level, if we expect someone to buy our work, to embrace our

The Art of the Pitch

226

ideas, we must ﬁrst stand up and convince them that we are

worthy of their conﬁdence.

Standing up for our ideas, our work, indeed ourselves, isn’t

easy. We’re open to the scrutiny of everyone in the room, virtu-

ally naked in the face of their criticism. In order to do it, to get up

and win them over, we’ve got to ﬁrst believe in ourselves. We’ve

got to believe that what we have to offer will be a signiﬁcant

contribution. In fact, we’ve got to begin to think of ourselves as a

contribution. This way of thinking requires an audacity of spirit,

a conviction that what we have to share will enrich the conver-

sation and that yes, ultimately, everything will work out for the

best. Simply put, it requires courage. It isn’t enough to master the

techniques and concepts discussed in this book and all the other

information sources available to us. Knowledge alone is not the

answer. Putting that knowledge to work is the task. This is an

exercise in results, not intentions. Accomplishing change, trans-

forming the beliefs of the people in the room, is the achievement.

Defy the conventional, create the exceptional. That’s what I’m

preaching. Create exceptional work. Create exceptional presenta-

tions. Create an exceptional life. Doing so requires standing up.

Most of us are not willing to risk what we think it takes to

harness this personal power and transform our lives. But it’s not

because we’re afraid to fail. It’s because we’re afraid that we’ll

succeed. That is what truly terriﬁes us.

When I ﬁrst read them, I knew immediately that Marianne

Williamson’s words in A Return to Love were a perfect message

STANDING UP

227

to share with my students. By the conclusion of a workshop, the

students will have spent two days working hard, learning, shar-

ing, and grappling with their own assessments of themselves.

They will have confronted the realization that they have the abil-

ity to become powerful presenters. The big question is whether

they will have the courage to see themselves for who they are and

what they can be, or if they will choose to settle for something less

than their best selves.

Many people choose to settle. It’s too scary to be really good.

It causes one to stand out from the crowd, and most people really

just want to blend in.

Marianne Williamson says this:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest

fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not

our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am

I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your

playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlight-

ened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure

around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were

born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just

in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we

consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we

are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates

others.

The Art of the Pitch

228

We’ve discussed the fear that most people have of public

speaking or presenting, but the fear that Williamson refers to is

far more insidious. It’s the fear that keeps us from being who

we’re capable of being. It’s the fear behind low self-esteem. It’s

the fear that locks us into a life of mediocrity. We have a vision of

what our “perfect life” could be, but we don’t want to be “that

person.”

We don’t want to stand out when it’s oh so much easier to just

be one of the crowd. We’d rather “play small.” We don’t want to

jeopardize our personal relationships by becoming “too big.” We

want everyone to like us, and by living up to our true potential,

we run the risk of “showing off,” of separating ourselves from the

herd. Of being different.

I’ve spent many years trying to help people be different. My

purpose has become helping people and organizations realize their

fullest potential through the power of communication. Reaching

that potential requires that we be perceived as different, and in

order to achieve that we must actually be different.

This difference manifests itself in being perceived as smarter,

more creative, funnier, stronger, brighter, cooler, better than other

people or organizations.

People like Alex Bogusky, Jon Steele, John Adams, Jeff

Steinhour, Jamie Barrett, Marshall Ross, and agencies like Crispin

Porter + Bogusky, Goodby, Silverstein and Partners, Boone Oakley,

The Martin Agency, Mother, and Wieden + Kennedy among many

others.

STANDING UP

229

People in our industry admire these individuals and agencies

precisely because they are different. They think and act differently

from their competitors and from most of the rest of us.

That’s because they’re not afraid to dream big, defy conven-

tion, and ﬁght for the exceptional.

They’re not afraid to stand up.

231

Acknowledgments

few years ago, I was in Japan with my late friend and

colleague Andrew Jaffe. We were there as part of a con-

tingent from the VCU Brandcenter, engaged by Dentsu,

the globe-spanning advertising ﬁrm. Our mission was to teach

our Western ways to Dentsu executives from every department in

the agency. Presentation was a signiﬁcant part of the curriculum,

and indeed, the way in which the students made manifest their

answers to the problems and cases we assigned them.

Andrew had been the driving force behind the Sohatsu Labo,

as the training program came to be known. We had known one

another for many years, ﬁrst when Andrew was an editor with

Adweek magazine and, later, the head of the Clios.

It was during our time in Japan that Andrew urged me to

write a book about presenting. He brought it up regularly, both

The Art of the Pitch

232

there and once we’d returned to the States. He came to my home

in Richmond, Virginia, to talk about his ambitions for the book

and to offer encouragement. I wrote a ﬁrst draft. Andrew said he

liked it, but suggested that I start over and get more of my stories

and myself into it.

As I was in the process of doing just that, Andrew passed

away after a long struggle with cancer.

It was at this point that I committed to seeing this project

through. Without Andrew and his encouragement, there would

be no book. Thank you, Andrew.

As with just about everything in my life, my wife, Cynthia, has

been a rock of support and a wise counselor. She has put up with

more from me in the years of our marriage than most people ever

would. And then she endured my writing this book.

Thanks to everyone who contributed their personal stories

and anecdotes to the book. You’re not just spectacularly accom-

plished, you’re kind and generous. You’ve given it an array of

ﬂavors I never could have conjured on my own.

All the students I’ve taught at the VCU Brandcenter have

made valuable contributions as well, as have the participants in

my many workshops over the years. I hope I’ve taught half as

much as I’ve learned. And thanks to all my colleagues on the fac-

ulty. A special shout-out to Avery Oldﬁeld and Megan Powers for

their help with chapter seven and Marc Andrew Stephens for his

photos.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

233

My sons, Peter and Ryan, had nothing to do with the writing

of this book, but this seems like an opportunity to put my pride

in them into print.

And ﬁnally, thanks to my editor, Laurie Harting, her assis-

tant, Tiffany Hufford, as well as Alan Bradshaw, at Palgrave

Macmillan. You’ve made this a better book than it would have

been if I had been left to my own devices.

235

Notes

Chapter 1

1. New Oxford American Dictionary (online edition).

2. Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen (blog), January 24, 2008, http://www

.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2008/01/

Chapter 2

1. Lau Tzu, Tao Te Ching, translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English

(London: Wildwood House, 1991; ﬁrst published 1972).

Chapter 3

1. Mehrabian’s ﬁndings were published in two documents: Albert Mehrabian

and Morton Wiener, “Decoding of Inconsistent Communications,” Journal

of Personality and Social Psychology 6, no. 1 (May, 1967): 109–114;

and Albert Mehrabian and Susan R. Ferris, “Inference of Attitudes from

Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels,” Journal of Consulting

Psychology 31, no. 6 (June, 1967): 248–252.

2. D. Joel Whalen, I See What You Mean: Persuasive Business Communication

(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1995).

Chapter 6

1. Agnes de Mille, Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham (New

York: Random House, 1991), p. 264.

2. James C. Collins, Jerry I. Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of

Visionary Companies (New York: Harperbusiness, 1997).

The Art of the Pitch

236

3. Ibid., p. 224.

4. Roy M. Spence Jr., It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For: Why

Every Extraordinary Business Is Driven by Purpose (New York: Portfolio,

2009).

Chapter 7

1. Anna Patty, “Research Points the Finger at PowerPoint,” The Sydney

Morning Herald, April 4, 2007, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/

04/03/1175366240499.html.

Chapter 9

1. Carmine Gallo, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely

Great in Front of Any Audience (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009).

Afterword

1. Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reﬂections on the Principles of

a Course in Miracles (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). From chapter 7,

section 3 (pp. 190–191).

237

Index

account leader, 12

ACTION format, 156–64

Adams, John, 13, 87, 228

Adventures in the Screen Trade: A

Personal View of Hollywood and

Screenwriting (Goldman), 105

Ailes, Roger, 65

Art of War, The (Sun Tzu), 43–6

authenticity, 15, 17, 64–5, 94, 97,

107, 111–29, 154–5, 166

Barrett, Jamie, 228

BBDO, 24

BBH New York, 146, 199

Bildsten, Bruce, 138

Blue Cross/Blue Shield, 41

Bogusky, Alex, 17, 62, 119–20, 228

Bologna, Anne, 163–4

Bomb Factory, 147

Boone/Oakley, 228

Braddock, Pennsylvania, 142–6

Brando, Marlon, 33

BSSP (Butler Shine Stern and

Partners), 176, 178

Built to Last: Successful Habits of

Visionary Companies (Collins

and Porras), 125–7

Burger King, 216–7

Burns, Ken, 78–80

Butler, John, 176–8

Butler, Shine & Stern. See Brunner,

Butler Shine Stern (BSSP)

Campbell, Sheila, 156, 163

Cargill Wilson & Acree, 2

Carter, David, 138

Carter, Reid, 43

Chaﬁn, Carlos, 73

Civil War, The (television

documentary), 78–80

clichés, 17, 59–61, 144

Collins, Jim, 125–6

Conan the Barbarian (ﬁlm), 45

Coppola, Francis Ford, 56

Cramer-Krasselt, 97, 158, 164, 169

Crispin Porter + Bogusky, 11, 63,

217

Curious Company, The, 174

Curtis, Hal, 121–2

Daewoo, 176

Davies, Russell, 182–3

Deck, The, 35, 131–49. See also

PowerPoint

Dentsu, 37–8

Deutsch, Donny, 108

dfgw, 114

DiSesa, Nina, 196

The Art of the Pitch

238

Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), 2, 160

DraftFCB, 93, 170

Duckworth, Gary, 114

Earle Palmer Brown, 47, 71, 73

Eastwood, Clint, 33

eye contact, 99, 181, 198–204

Fallon, 47, 125, 138

Fallon, Joe, 108

Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to

Persuasion and Captivation

(Hogshead), 187

fear, 8, 23, 83–5, 91–3, 114, 227–9

Fenske, Mark, 147–9

Freson, Ray, 41–4, 46

Gallop, Cindy, 142–6, 199

Garnett, Steve, 160

Gates, Bill, 115, 179

Gillespie, Dizzy, 30

Gladwell, Malcolm, 5

Glen, Doug, 65–6

Godfather ﬁlms, 33

Goldman, William, 105

Goodby, Jeff, 17, 65–7, 87, 172

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, 113,

116, 135, 222, 228

Gossage, Howard, 33

Graham, Martha, 111

Grayson, Andy, 121–3

GSD&M, 128

Gulf Oil Corporation, 2

high risk–high gain, 70–2

Hogshead, Sally, 17, 185–8

Hughes, Mike, 80–1, 102

humor, 20, 89, 96–9, 114, 164

I See What You Mean (Whalen), 54

IfWeRanTheWorld.com, 142–6, 199

Ignazi, Peter, 24

It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You

Stand For (Spence), 128

J. Walter Thompson, 41, 214

Jackson, Michael, 120

Jacobs, Chris, 96–7

Jensen, Lance, 108–9

Jobs, Steve, 171–2, 191

jokes vs. humor, 20, 98–9

Just, Don, 91, 209–11

Kay, Gareth, 114–6, 119

Keynote, 133

Krivkovich, Peter, 169

Lao Tzu, 30

Lawner, Ron, 108

Leo Burnett, 193

Lexus, 47

MacWorld, 171, 191

Martin Agency, 13, 47–9, 72, 80–1,

102–7, 228

Martin Workshop, 103–6

Matus, Stanley, 1

memorization, 18–9, 23, 25, 92–3,

155–6, 165–6

Mercedes, 47–9

Mirren, Helen, 33

Moran, Darren, 92–3, 170, 208

Mother, 228

Mumford, Lee, 160

National Basketball Association, 113,

221–2

Nintendo, 66

Oakley, Boone, 228

Ogilvy, David, 115

Othmer, Jim, 49–50

Pafenbach, Alan, 108

INDEX

239

Patton (ﬁlm), 56

Pepsi, 120

Perfect Pitch (Steel), 135, 157

Phillips, Leslie, 114–5

Porras, Jerry, 125–6

Post-it notes, 152

PowerPoint, 106, 113, 115, 131–49,

172, 186, 206

Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs,

The (Gallo), 171

presentations

characteristics of effective, 15–25

as a dance, 36–9

equipment for, 114–6

everything as, 9

eye contact and, 99, 181, 198–204

fear and, 8, 23, 83–5, 91–3, 114,

227–9

humor and, 20, 89, 96–9, 114, 164

memorization and, 18–9, 23, 25,

92–3, 155–6, 165–6

as an opportunity, 10

organizing, 151–64

PowerPoint and, 106, 113, 115,

131–49, 172, 186, 206

rehearsing, 24, 165–87

use of the term, 7–8

punctuation

closing, 208–11

eye contact, 198–204

facial expressions, 194

gestures and, 196

movement and, 195–6

pauses and silence, 190–1

on the phone, 204–8

pitch, 193

questions and, 194–5

tone, 193–4

visual aids and props, 197–8

volume, 191–2

Queen, The (ﬁlm), 33

Red Book, 2

Regardie’s (magazine), 100

Return to Love, A (Williamson),

226–8

Rolling Rock, 144–7

Ross, Marshall, 228

Scali McCabe Sloves, 47–9

Scott, George C., 56

Scott, Pam, 172–4

Secret Weapon Marketing, 136

Sega, 65–7, 172

Siddall, John, 1

Siddall, Matus & Coughter, 1–5, 41

Sittig, Dick, 136

Sloves, Marvin, 48

Sony, 158–9

Spence, Roy, 128

Springsteen, Bruce, 171

Steel, Jon, 87, 135, 157, 222, 228

Steinhour, Jeff, 11–2, 63, 215–7, 228

Stern, David, 221–3

storytelling, 17–8, 21–2, 45–50, 53–

8, 99–100, 114–6, 141–4, 152–4,

164–6, 192, 208–9, 221–3

Sun Tzu, 43–4

Sweller, John, 134–5, 141

Thompson, Robbin, 73

Toastmasters Club, 89

Todd, Brad, 122

Truth, Lies & Advertising (Steel),

136, 222

Twain, Mark, 34

VCU Brandcenter, 4, 9, 91, 142,

147–9, 209–11

Vega, Guillermo (Guille), 70

Virginia, State of, 72–3

Virginia Commonwealth University

Brandcenter, 4, 9, 13, 53, 91,

137, 142, 147–9, 209–11

The Art of the Pitch

240

vocal delivery. See punctuation

voice-over, 154

Volk, Kristen, 109

Volkswagen, 108–9

Volvo, 47

WebEX, 204

Weight Watchers, 71

Westbrook, Bill, 47, 61–2, 70–2

Whalen, Joel, 54

white space, 30–5

whiteboards, 152

Wieden + Kennedy, 66, 70, 122, 223,

228

Williamson, Marianne, 226–8

Yellow Pages, 2