Steve Jobs (22 page)

that simplicity applies not just to the words on the slides but

also to the words that come out of your mouth.

Author and advertising expert Paul Arden says that people go

to a presentation to see you, not to read your words. He offers this

tip: “Instead of giving people the benefit of your wit and wisdom

(words), try painting them a picture. The more strikingly visual

your presentation is, the more people will remember it.
”29

Leonardo da Vinci stated, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophis-

tication.” One of the most celebrated painters in history, he

understood the real power of simplicity, as does Steve Jobs.

When you discover this concept for yourself, your ideas will

become far more persuasive than you could ever imagine.

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TABLE 8.7
BEFORE-AND-AFTER EXAMPLES FROM THE PLAIN

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D IR EC TO R ’ S N OT E S

 Avoid bullet points. Always. Well, almost always. Bullet

points are perfectly acceptable on pages intended to

be read by your audience, like books, documents, and

e-mails. In fact, they break up the text quite nicely.

Bullet points on presentation slides should be avoided.

Pictures are superior.

 Focus on one theme per slide, and complement that

theme with a photograph or image.

 Learn to create visually aesthetic slides. Above all, keep

in mind that you do not have to be an artist to build

slides rich in imagery. Visit carminegallo.com for a list of

resources.

SCE

SCENNEE 9

9

Dress Up

Your Numbers

We have sold four million iPhones to date. If you

divide four million by two hundred days, that’s

twenty thousand iPhones every day on average.

STEVE JOBS

On October 23, 2001, Apple launched a digital music

player that would revolutionize the entire music

industry—the iPod. At $399, however, it was an

expensive gadget. The iPod stored songs on a five-

gigabyte drive, but the number itself—5 GB—meant very little to

the average music lover. In his keynote presentation, Jobs made

that number more meaningful by saying that 5 GB provided

enough storage for one thousand songs. While that sounds more

impressive, it still did not provide a compelling value, since com-

petitors were offering devices containing more storage at a lower

price. But wait, Jobs assured his audience, there’s more. Jobs said

the new iPod weighed 6.5 ounces and was so small that it could

“fit in your pocket.” When Jobs pulled one out of his own pocket,

it immediately clicked with the audience. The iPod’s slogan said

it all: “1,000 songs in your pocket.
”1

Rarely do numbers resonate with people until those num-

bers are placed in a context that people can understand, and

the best way to help them understand is to make those numbers

relevant to something with which they are already familiar. Five

gigabytes may mean nothing to you, but one thousand songs

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in your pocket opens up an entirely new way for you to enjoy

music.

Jobs dresses up numbers to make them more interesting.

Rolling Stone
reporter Jeff Goodell once asked Jobs what he thought about Apple’s market share’s being “stuck” at 5 percent

in the United States. (The interview took place in 2003. As of

this writing, Apple’s market share of the computer industry is 10

percent.) The average reader might consider a 5 percent market

share to be tiny. Jobs put the number in perspective when he

described it this way: “Our market share is greater than BMW or

Mercedes in the car industry. And yet, no one thinks BMW or

Mercedes are going away and no one thinks they’re at a tremen-

dous disadvantage because of their market share. As a matter

of fact, they’re both highly desirable products and brands.
”2 A

5 percent market share sounded low but became much more

interesting when Jobs put it into context using the automobile

analogy. Comparing Apple’s market share to that of two admired

brands told the story behind the numbers.

Twice as Fast at Half the Price

Data transfers on the original iPhone were often painfully slow

on AT&T’s standard cellular network (EDGE). Apple solved the

problem with the launch of iPhone 3G on June 9, 2008. In the

presentation, Jobs said the new iPhone was 2.8 times faster than

EDGE, but he didn’t stop there. Jobs put the figure into a con-

text that normal Web surfers would understand and appreciate.

He showed two images back to back—a National Geographic

website loading on the EDGE network and also on the new 3G

high-speed network. The EDGE site took fifty-nine seconds to

fully load. The 3G site took only twenty-one second
s.3
Further, Apple offered customers a bonus by lowering the price.

According to Jobs, consumers would be getting a phone that

was twice as fast at half the price. Average presenters spew num-

bers with no context, assuming their audience will share their

excitement. Jobs knows that numbers might have meaning to

the most ardent fans but are largely meaningless to the majority

DRESS UP YOUR NUMBERS
107

of potential customers. Jobs makes his numbers specific, rele-

vant, and contextual.

Specific. Relevant. Contextual.

Let’s take a look at two other examples in which Jobs made

numbers specific, relevant, and contextual. On February 23,

2005, Apple added a new iPod to its lineup. The iPod featured

30 GB of storage. Now, most consumers could not tell you what

30 GB means to them. They know it’s “better” than 8 GB, but

that’s about it. Jobs would never announce a number that big

without context, so he broke it down in language his audience

could understand. He said 30 GB of storage is enough memory

for 7,500 songs, 25,000 photos, or up to 75 hours of video. The

description was specific (7,500 songs, versus “thousands” of

songs), relevant to the lives of his audience (people who want

mobile access to songs, photos, and video), and contextual

because he chose to highlight numbers that his core audience of

consumers would care about most.

In a second example, Jobs chose Macworld 2008 to hold a

two-hundreth-day birthday celebration for the iPhone. Jobs

said, “I’m extraordinarily pleased that we have sold four mil-

lion iPhones to date.” He could have stopped there (and most

presenters would have done just that), but Jobs being Jobs, he

continued: “If you divide four million by two hundred days,

that’s twenty thousand iPhones every day on average.” Jobs

could have stopped there as well, but he kept going, adding that

the iPhone had captured nearly 20 percent of the market in that

short period. OK, you might be saying, surely Jobs would have

stopped there. He didn’t.

“What does this mean in terms of the overall market?” he

asked
.4
He then showed a slide of the U.S. smartphone market share with competitors RIM, Palm, Nokia, and Motorola.

RIM’s BlackBerry had the highest market share at 39 percent.

The iPhone came in second at 19.5 percent. Jobs then compared

iPhone’s market share to that of all of the other remaining com-

petitors. Jobs concluded that the iPhone matched the combined

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market share of the remaining three competitors—in the first

ninety days of shipments. The numbers, of course, were very

specific, relevant to the category, and, above all, contextual (Jobs

was addressing investors). By comparing the iPhone against well-

established competitors, Jobs made this achievement—selling

four million units in the first quarter—far more remarkable.

Dress Up Numbers with Analogies

When I worked with SanDisk executives to prepare them for a

major announcement at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show

in Las Vegas, we took a page from the Steve Jobs playbook. The

maker of flash memory cards was introducing a card small

enough to fit into a cell phone’s micro SD slot. That’s very tiny.

Even bigger news was that it held 12 GB of storage in that small

form factor. Now, only gadget geeks would find 12 GB exciting.

So, we had to dress up the numbers à la Steve Jobs. Our final

announcement went something like this:

“Today we’re announcing the first 12 GB memory card for

cell phones. It has fifty billion transistors. Think of each tran-

sistor as an ant: if you were to put fifty billion end to end, they

would circle the globe twice. What does this mean to you?

Enough memory to store six hours of movies. Enough memory

to listen to music while traveling to the moon . . . and back!”

The number 12 GB is largely uninteresting unless you truly

understand the implications of the achievement and what it

means to you. When SanDisk compared fifty billion transistors

to the number of ants that could circle the globe, the company

was using an analogy to jazz up the numbers. Analogies point

out similar features between two separate things. Sometimes,

analogies are the best way to put numbers into a context that

people can understand.

The more complex the idea, the more important it is to use

rhetorical devices such as analogies to facilitate understanding.

For example, on November 17, 2008, Intel released a power-

ful new microprocessor named the Core i7. The new chip

represented a significant leap in technology, packing 730 million

DRESS UP YOUR NUMBERS
109

transistors on a single piece of silicon. Engineers described the

technology as “breathtaking.” But that’s because they’re engi-

neers. How could the average consumer and investors appreciate

the profound achievement? Intel’s testing chief, John Barton,

found the answer.

In an interview with the
New York Times
, Barton said an Intel

processor created twenty-seven years ago had 29,000 transistors;

the i7 boasted 730 million transistors on a chip the same size.

He equated the two by comparing the city of Ithaca, New York

(population 29,000), with the continent of Europe (population

730 million). “Ithaca is quite complex in its own right, if you