“The Apple music event of Sept. 9, 2009, marked the return of the world’s greatest corporate storyteller. For more than three decades, Apple (AAPL) co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs has raised product launches to an art form. In my new book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, I reveal the techniques that Jobs uses to create and deliver mind-blowing keynote presentations,” Carmine Gallo writes for BusinessWeek.
Gallo writes, “Steve Jobs does not sell computers; he sells an experience. The same holds true for his presentations that are meant to inform, educate, and entertain. An Apple presentation has all the elements of a great theatrical production—a great script, heroes and villains, stage props, breathtaking visuals, and one moment that makes the price of admission well worth it. Here are the five elements of every Steve Jobs presentation. Incorporate these elements into your own presentations to sell your product or ideas the Steve Jobs way.”
1. A headline.
2. A villain.
3. A simple slide.
4. A demo.
5. A holy smokes moment.
Full article here.
[Attribution: MacSurfer. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Judge Bork” for the heads up.]
You cannot properly describe the reality distortion field……..you have to feel it!
Any audience? Now that’s what I call multitasking, and it’s from a book, not an iPhone. That’s the last time Jobs lets paper get there first.
Why do people call it an RDF? Who coined that first? It’s more like a REF, a Reality Enhancement Field.
the problem is every schmuck will be boasting of their snake oil now. This is a silly book, because it will psychologically influence people during presentations, but great products won’t necessarily be introduced. 95% of what Steve does is to actually build successful products – what don’t people get about that?
A virtual exercise in futility. The human factor and substance is nowhere included.
He missed off point six: Blue jeans and a black turtleneck.
This author
This author doesn’t get it. The amazing groundbreaking product has to come first.
He read a book himself – the one written by P. T. Barnum
@Anonymous©
Here it is: RDF
It isn’t a bad assessment.
Might try it myself!!
you know what’s so hard? I’m doing a presentation in a few weeks, and I’ve been watching steve jobs for pointers (an amazing experience, wanna see my 4-5 pages of notes?)
they’re the best, but you know what? it’s pretty tough to blow people away when you’re selling lawn furniture. Apple makes AMAZING products. That helps.
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@maclover:
True enough. But there’s a sucker born every minute. Scam artists don’t need an RDF to sell their crap. They just need stupid consumers, which they have in abundance.
I think the five points is an oversimplification and a recipe for failure. All of us here have, I’m sure, taken a look at several keynotes by Steve Jobs. There’s much more to the experience than that.
First of all, there’s the darkness of the room — not just because the lights are dimmed, but also because the slides are almost black, causing your eye to wander to the key point(s) of the slide.
Secondly, there’s SJ’s mannerism. He isn’t excited and jumping and screaming a la MonkeyBoy. He is calm, poised, and confident because his speech is extremely well-rehearsed. It’s almost as automatic as breathing at that point. Plus, his voice is calm, low and slow — which calms the audience, relaxing them so they can enjoy the presentation and absorb more of it. It’s almost like a meditative, or zen-like experience.
Oh… and it helps that the audience is filled with fanboys/girls <g>
Notice how I haven’t even mentioned products, villains, a demo or a holy smokes moment yet?
I’m not saying the content’s not important (as mike pointed out above, it’s hard to get people excited about mundane products), but it’s only a small part of the overall picture. Much the same way that what you say is only 20-30% of your overall communication.
To compare the keynotes to a theatrical performance is correct, however, because most plays wouldn’t have nearly the impact they do if it weren’t for the dark theatre, a good script, the well-crafted sets, and the talented, rehearsed actors. The same points appear in SJ’s keynotes: darkness that attracts the eye, a well-written, simple speech with interesting points that punctuate it, spectacularly crafted slides that reduce and/or remove all distractions, and a truly gifted orator who knows his stuff.
That is, in my humble opinion, the essence of the RDF distilled into a few simple paragraphs.
Come on Mike, you’re just not trying.
mike,
After reading the article, listening to the interview and flipping through the slide show, I definitely picked up a few ideas for my next presentation. A lot of advice is clearly great.
For my own use, the most valuable ones were:
1. Focus on benefits (show them how your solution/product is so much better than what they’re doing/using now)
2. Simple slides (remove clutter and bullet points, add subtle graphics)
3. Obey the 10-minute rule (do a demo or a video, or any other interruption every 10 mins or so)
4. Use zippy words (talk in simple way, rather than complicating it)
5. Practice a lot (does wonders for smooth delivery)
6. Have fun (or at least make it look like you’re having fun)
As Scott Rose said. Remember all these presentations are to a world that already knows how great the previous products are, how well they work etc. The presentations are not simply in a vacuum. Looking at them, it does not seem to me that there’s so much charisma or whatever pouring forth from this guy that if you saw him for the first time, representing a company you didn’t know, selling a product you knew nothing about, that you’d get all hyped over it.
Given what we know about the past products, whose quality may well be down to him, THEN we get all excited since we assume this will be more of the same.
I think there is no distortion field, other that the one generated by the products themselves, which do ooze such quality and so forth that they persuade us to judge them even more kindly.
Oh, and one more thing…
• Technology that changes the world •
Why Ballmer fails:
1. A headline: Windows Sucks
2. A villain: Monkey Boy as himself
3. A simple slide: Monkey Boy slides into a sweat-drenching wasp-sting frenzy
4. A demo: YouTube’s The Creature
5. A holy smokes moment: What the hell was that???
“they’re the best, but you know what? it’s pretty tough to blow people away when you’re selling lawn furniture.”
Sit on it!
The Suburu add is intrustive and should be dropped immediately. This kind of crap goes on in the Windows world you so righteously deride. Don’t let this kind of crap on your site
We don’t need no stinkin’ ads!
Who pays the bills?
Jokes…you gotta have jokes.
Do you want to know why the background is all black for the stevenote or all white for the Apple Ads?
All the pixels in that extra space around the subject in each frame are the same color. The monochrome background makes streaming the Ad or the Stevenote in High Definition about 60% cheaper than if it had a multicolor background.
The product popping out of the dull background is just a bonus.
Military instructors have been doing this for centuries.