Steve Jobs (30 page)

OS X would run efficiently on Intel chips. Having some fun with

the audience, he said that the OS X had been “living a double

life” for five years, secretly being developed to run on both

PowerPC and Intel processors “just in case.” The result, said Jobs,

was that Mac OS X is “singing on Intel processors.”

He then hit the audience with the unexpected: “As a matter

of fact, this system I’ve been using . . .” His voice trails off, he

flashes a knowing smile, and the audience laughs when it sinks

Connect with Three Types of Learners

Demonstrations help speakers make an emotional connection

with every type of learner in the audience: visual, auditory, and

kinesthetic.


Visual learners.
About 40 percent of us are visual learners, people who learn through seeing. This group retains information that is highly visual. To reach visual learners, avoid

cramming too much text onto the screen. Build slides that

have few words and plenty of pictures. Remember: individuals

are more likely to act on information they have a connection

with, but they cannot connect with anything that they have

not internalized. Visual learners connect through seeing.


Auditory learners.
These people learn through listening.

Auditory learners represent about 20 to 30 percent of your

audience. Individuals who learn through listening benefit from

verbal and rhetorical techniques that are featured in Act 3.

Tell personal stories or use vivid examples to support your key

messages.


Kinesthetic learners.
These people learn by doing, mov-

ing, and touching. In short, they are “hands-on.” They get

bored listening for long periods. So, include activities in

your presen tation to keep kinesthetic learners engaged:

pass around objects as Jobs did with the aluminum frame,

conduct writing exercises, or have them participate in

demonstrations.

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DELIVER THE EXPERIENCE

in that the system is running on new Intel processors. “Let’s

have a look,” Jobs says as he walks to the side of the stage. He sits

down and begins exploring many of the conventional computer

tasks, such as calendar functions, e-mail, photographs, brows-

ing, and movies, loading and working quickly and effortlessly.

He concluded the two-minute demo by saying, “This is Mac

OS X running on Intel.
”14

The CEO Sidekick

Cisco’s Jim Grubb plays the sidekick to CEO John Chambers.

Grubb’s title is, literally, Chief Demonstration Officer. Nearly

every Chambers presentation involves a demonstration,

and Grubb is Chambers’s go-to guy for some sixty events a

year. The demonstrations are unique and truly remarkable.

Cisco replicates a scenario onstage complete with furniture

and props: it could be an office, a retail store, or rooms of a

house. In a demonstration at the 2009 Consumer Electronics

Show in Las Vegas, Chambers and Grubb called a doctor in a

remote location thousands of miles away and, using Cisco’s

TelePresence technology, which lets you see a person as

though he or she is right in front of you, held a medical evalua-

tion over the network.

Chambers enjoys needling Grubb with lines such as “Are

you nervous, Jim? You seem a little tense,” or “It’s OK if you

mess up. I’ll just fire you.” Most of the jokes between the

two men are scripted but are still funny as Grubb just smiles,

laughs it off, and continues with the demonstration—the

perfect straight man. Grubb studied music and theater in col-

lege. His polished performance reflects his training. Although

it appears effortless, he and his staff spend countless hours in

the lab testing and practicing, not only to simplify complicated

networking technology so it’s easy to understand in a fifteen-

minute demonstration but also to make sure it works, so his

boss doesn’t get mad!

STAGE YOUR PRESENTATION WITH PROPS
149

The launch of the iPhone in 2007 also provided Jobs with a

memorable prop. He showed the audience how they could listen

to their favorite music by playing one of his favorite songs from

the Red Hot Chili Peppers. A phone call interrupted the music

and a photo of Apple’s VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, appeared

on the phone. Jobs answered it and talked to Schiller who was

standing in the audience on another phone. Schiller requested a

photograph; Jobs retrieved it and e-mailed it, and went back to

listening to his song. Jobs is a showman, incorporating just the

right amount of theater to make features come alive.

D IR EC TO R ’ S N OT E S

 Build in a product demo during the planning phase of

your presentation. Keep the demo short, sweet, and

substantial. If you can introduce another person on your

team to participate in the demonstration, do so.

 Commit to the demo. Comedians say a joke works only

if you commit to it. In the same way, commit to your

demo, especially if your product has any entertainment

value at all. Have fun with it.

 Provide something for every type of learner in your

audience: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

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SCE

SCENNEE 1

133

Reveal a “Holy

Shit” Moment

People will forget what you said, people

will forget what you did, but people will

never forget how you made them feel.

MAYA ANGELOU

Every office worker has seen a manila envelope. But where

most people see a manila envelope as a means of distrib-

uting documents, Steve Jobs sees a memorable moment

that will leave his audience in awe.

“This is the MacBook Air,” he said in January 2008, “so thin

it even fits inside one of those envelopes you see floating around

the office.” With that, Jobs walked to the side of the stage, picked

up one such envelope, and pulled out a notebook computer.

The audience went wild as the sound of hundreds of cameras

clicking and flashing filled the auditorium. Like a proud parent

showing off a newborn, Jobs held the computer head-high for

all to see. “You can get a feel for how thin it is. It has a full-size

keyboard and full-size display. Isn’t it amazing? It’s the world’s

thinnest notebook,” said Jobs
.1

The photo of Jobs pulling the computer from the envelope

proved to be the most popular of the event and was carried by

major newspapers, magazines, and websites. The dramatic intro-

duction even sparked an entrepreneur to build a carrying sleeve

for the MacBook Air that looked like, you guessed it, a manila

envelope. See Figure 13.1.

151

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DELIVER THE EXPERIENCE

Figure 13.1 Jobs holding up the MacBook Air after dramatically removing it from an office-sized manila envelope.

TONY AVELAR/AFP/Getty Images

When Jobs slipped the computer out of the envelope, you

could hear the gasps in the room. You knew most people in

the audience that day were thinking, “Holy shit. That’s thin!”

ABC News declared, “The MacBook Air has the potential to

reshape the laptop industry. The laptop fits inside a standard

office manila envelope, which is how Jobs presented it as the

showstopper of this year’s conference of all things Apple.
”2 Th
e

“showstopper” had been planned all along. Well before Jobs

enacted the stunt in front of an audience, press releases had

been written, images created for the website, and ads developed

showing a hand pulling the notebook from a manila envelope.

The “holy shit” moment had been scripted to elicit an emotional

response; the presentation as theater.

Raising a Product Launch

to an Art Form

On January 24, 2009, Macintosh celebrated its twenty-fifth

anniversary. Apple’s Macintosh had reinvented the personal

REVEAL A “HOLY SHIT” MOMENT
153

computer industry in the eighties. A computer with a mouse

and graphical user interface was a major transformation from

the old command-line interfaces prevalent then. The Mac

was much easier to use than anything IBM had at the time.

The Mac’s introduction was also one of the most spellbinding

product launches of its day. The unveiling took place a quarter-

century earlier during the Apple shareholders meeting, held at

the Flint Center at De Anza College, near the Apple campus. All

2,571 seats were filled as employees, analysts, shareholders, and

media representatives buzzed with anticipation.