Authors: Presentation Secrets
in history and one in which we begin to see the hero-villain
scenario playing out in Jobs’s approach to messaging. The tele-
vision ad, 1984, introduced Macintosh to the world. It ran only
once, during the January 22 Super Bowl that same year. The
Los Angeles Raiders were crushing the Washington Redskins,
but more people remember the spot than the score.
Ridley Scott, of
Alien
fame, directed the Apple ad, which
begins with shaven-headed drones listening to their leader (Big
Brother) on a giant screen. An athletic blonde, dressed in skimpy
eighties-style workout clothes, is running with a sledgehammer.
Chased by helmeted storm troopers, the girl throws the ham-
mer into the screen, which explodes in a blinding light as the
drones sit with their mouths wide open. The spot ends with
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a somber announcer saying, “On January 24, Apple Computer
will introduce Macintosh and you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like
1984
.”1
Apple’s board members had unanimously disliked the com-
mercial and were reluctant to run it. Jobs, of course, supported
it, because he understood the emotional power behind the clas-
sic story structure of the hero and villain. He realized every
protagonist needs an enemy. In the case of the historic 1984
television ad, IBM represented the villain. IBM, a mainframe
computer maker at the time, had made the decision to build a
competitor to the world’s first mass-market home computer, the
Apple II. Jobs explained the ad in a 1983 keynote presentation
to a select group of Apple salespeople who previewed the sixty-
second television spot.
“It is now 1984,” said Jobs. “It appears IBM wants it all. Apple
is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money
. . . IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to
industry control: Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire com-
puter industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell
right?
”2
With that introduction, Jobs stepped aside as the assembled
salespeople became the first public audience to see the commer-
cial. The audience erupted into a thunderous cheer. For another
sixty seconds, Steve remained onstage basking in the adulation,
his smile a mile wide. His posture, body language, and facial
expression said it all—
I nailed it!
Problem + Solution = Classic Jobs
Introducing the antagonist (the problem) rallies the audience
around the hero (the solution). Jobs structures his most exciting presentations around this classic storytelling device. For
example, thirty minutes into one of his most triumphant pre-
sentations, the launch of the iPhone at Macworld 2007, he spent
three minutes explaining why the iPhone is a product whose
time has come. The villains in this case included all the current
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65
smartphones on the market, which, Jobs would argue, weren’t
very smart. Listed in the left column of Table 6.1 are excerpts
from the actual presentation; the right column shows the words
or describes the images on the accompanying slides.
3
Pay attention to how the slides act as a complement to the speaker.
TABLE 6.1
JOBS’S iPHONE KEYNOTE PRESENTATION
STEVE’S WORDS
STEVE’S SLIDES
”The most advanced phones are called
Smartphone
‘smartphones,’ so they say.”
“They typically combine a phone plus
Smartphone
e-mail plus a baby Internet.”
Phone + Email + Internet
“The problem is they are not so smart and
Smartphone
they are not so easy to use. They’re really
Not so smart. Not so easy
complicated. What we want to do is make a
to use.
leapfrog product that is way smarter than
any mobile device has ever been.”
“So, we’re going to reinvent the phone.
Revolutionary UI
We’re going to start with a revolutionary
user interface.”
“It is the result of years of research and
Revolutionary UI
development.”
Years of research &
development
“Why do we need a revolutionary user
Image of four existing
interface? Here are four smartphones: the
smartphones: Motorola Q,
Motorola Q, BlackBerry, Palm Treo, Nokia
BlackBerry, Palm Treo, and
E62—the usual suspects.”
Nokia E62
“What’s wrong with their user interface? The
The top half of each image
problem with them is in the bottom forty.
fades away, leaving just
It’s this stuff right there [points to keyboards
the bottom half—
on the phones]. They all have these
the keyboard
keyboards that are there whether you need
them or not. And they all have these control
continued
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CREATE THE STORY
TABLE 6.1
JOBS’S iPHONE KEYNOTE PRESENTATION (continued)
STEVE’S WORDS
STEVE’S SLIDES
buttons that are fixed in plastic and are
the same for every application. Well, every
application wants a slightly different user
interface, a slightly optimized set of buttons
just for it. And what happens if you think of
a great idea six months from now? You can’t
add a button to these things. They’re already
shipped. So, what do you do?”
“What we’re going to do is get rid of
Image of iPhone
all these buttons and just make a giant
screen.”
“How are we going to communicate with
Image of iPhone on its side;
this? We don’t want to carry around a
a stylus fades in
mouse. So, what are we going to do? A
stylus, right? We’re going to use a stylus.”
“No [laughs]. Who wants a stylus? You have
Words appear next to
to get them out, put them away—you lose
image:
them. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus.”
Who wants a stylus?
“So, let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use
Stylus fades out of frame
the best pointing device in the world—a
as image of index finger
pointing device that we’re all born with.
appears next to iPhone
We’re born with ten of them. We’ll use our
fingers.”
“We have invented a new technology called
Finger fades out, and
‘multi-touch,’ which is phenomenal.”
words appear:
Multi-Touch
“It works like magic. You don’t need a
Words reveal upper right:
stylus. It’s far more accurate than any touch
Works like magic
display that’s ever been shipped. It ignores
No stylus
unintended touches. It’s supersmart. You
Far more accurate
can do multi-finger gestures on it, and boy
Ignores unintended
have we patented it!” [laughter]
touches
Multi-finger gestures
Patented
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67
Make note of how Jobs asks rhetorical questions to advance
the story. “Why do we need a revolutionary user interface?”
he asked before introducing the problem. He even raises prob-
lems to his own solution. When he introduced the concept
of replacing the keyboard with a touch screen, he rhetorically
asked, “How are we going to communicate with this?” His ready
answer was, “We’re going to use the best pointing device in the
world . . . our fingers.”
Nobody really cares about your product or Apple’s products
or Microsoft’s or any other company’s, for that matter. What
people care about is solving problems and making their lives
a little better. As in the smartphone example in Table 6.1, Jobs
describes the pain they’re feeling, gives them a reason for their
pain (usually caused by competitors), and, as you will learn in
Scene 7, offers a cure.
Making His Case to CNBC
“Why in the world would Apple want to jump into the handset
market with so much competition and so many players?” asked
CNBC’s Jim Goldman in one of the few interviews Jobs granted
immediately after the iPhone announcement. Jobs answered the
question by posing a problem in need of a solution: “We used all
the handsets out there, and boy is it frustrating. It’s a category
that needs to be reinvented. Handsets need to be more power-
ful and much easier to use. We thought we could contribute
something. We don’t mind if there are other companies mak-
ing products. The fact is there were one billion handsets sold in
2006. If we just got 1 percent market share, that’s ten million
units. We’ve reinvented the phone and completely changed the
expectations for what you can carry in your pocket.”
“What message is this sending to your competitors?” asked
Goldman.
“We’re a product company. We love great products. In
order to explain what our product is, we have to contrast it to
what products are out there right now and what people use,”
said Jo
bs.4 T
his last sentence reveals Jobs’s approach to crafting
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CREATE THE STORY
a persuasive story. Explanations of new products or services
require context, a relevance to a problem in your customer’s life
that is causing that person “pain.” Once the pain is established,
your listener will be much more receptive to a product or service
that will alleviate that pain.
The Apple Religion
In his book
Buyology
, marketing guru Martin Lindstrom equates
Apple’s message with the same powerful ideas that propel wide-
spread religions. Both appeal to a common vision and a specific
enemy.
“Most religions have a clear vision,” writes Lindstrom. “By
that I mean they are unambiguous in their missions, whether
it’s to achieve a certain state of grace or achieve a spiritual goal.
And, of course, most companies have unambiguous missions as
well. Steve Jobs’s vision dates back to the mid-1980s when he
said, ‘Man is the creator of change in this world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to
them.’ Twenty years and a few million iPods later, the company
still pursues this vision.
”5
According to Lindstrom, who spent years studying the
common traits of lasting brands, religions and brands such as
Apple have another quality in common: the idea of conquer-
ing a shared enemy. “Having an identifiable enemy gives us the
chance not only to articulate and showcase our faith, but also
to unite ourselves with our fellow believers . . . this us-versus-
them strategy attracts fans, incites controversy, creates loyalty,
and gets us thinking—and arguing—and, of course, buying.
”6
Will It Eat Me?
Establishing the antagonist early is critical to persuasion, because
our brains needs a bucket—a category—in which to place a new
idea. Think about it this way: your brain craves meaning before
details. According to scientist John Medina, our brains were
formed to see the big picture. Medina says that when primitive
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69
man saw a saber-toothed tiger, he asked himself, “Will it eat
me?” and not “How many teeth does it have?”
The antagonist gives your audience the big picture. “Don’t
start with the details. Start with the key ideas and, in a hier-
archical fashion, form the details around these larger notions,”
writes Medina in his book
Brain Rules
.7
In presentations, start with the big picture—the problem—before filling in the details
(your solution).
Apple unveiled the Safari Web browser during Macworld
2003, designating it the fastest browser on the Mac. Safari
would join several other browsers vying for attention in the face
of Microsoft’s juggernaut—Internet Explorer. At his persuasive
best, Jobs set up the problem—introducing the antagonist—
simply by asking a rhetorical question: “Why do we need our
own browser?
”8 Be
fore demonstrating the new features—filling in the details—he needed to establish a reason for the product’s
existence.
Jobs told the audience that there were two areas in which
competitors such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, and others fell
short: speed and innovation. In terms of speed, Jobs said Safari
would load pages three times faster than Internet Explorer on
the Mac. In the area of innovation, Jobs discussed the limita-
tions of current browsers, including the fact that Google search
was not provided in the main toolbar and that organizing book-
marks left a lot to be desired. “What we found in our research is
that people don’t use bookmarks. They don’t use favorites very
much because this stuff is complicated and nobody has figured
out how to use it,” Jobs said. Safari would fix the problems by
incorporating Google search into the main toolbar and adding
features that would allow users to more easily navigate back to
previous sites or favorite Web pages.
One simple sentence is all you need to introduce the antago-
nist: “Why do you need this?” This one question allows Jobs to