My friend Wick Smith told me about this approach to messaging. Wick has been in advertising for many years, primarily in Asia. He speaks Japanese and is an incredibly resourceful and creative person.

The Wick Smith Approach is based on the four elements in an ad:

The Headline, The Image, The Body Copy, The Logo

Each one has a role to play, and each viewer will have his or her own preference as to which is most important.

The Headline is the big idea or the claim being made by the ad. People who like the big picture and avoid the details prefer to read the headline.  Since people make decisions out of fear or desire, a headline should target one of those emotions.

The Image appeals to the visual thinker. The Image could evoke a problem that needs to be solved, or an aspiration that the viewer has. Either one stimulates the emotions and moves the viewer to action.

The Body Copy is meant to give the reader reasons to buy—some would even say “permission” to buy. For instance, expensive chocolate companies often compose body copy trying to convince prospects that they are “worth it,” and deserve a little luxury in their lives.

Finally, the Logo is meant to build the relationship. It is the identity of the company, and therefore the sign of trust and reliability, or perhaps of excitement (Ferrari) or innovation (Apple), or perhaps luxury (Tiffany).

Speeches and presentations need all four of these elements.

First, the Headline. The speaker should be able to articulate the Headline, or premise of the talk, in one simple sentence. For instance, “Everyone can become a better speaker,” is the premise of this blog (and this article.)

PowerPoint should be used to supply visuals to support the spoken word, or if the speaker chooses to NOT USE POWERPOINT, he can tell stories or use metaphors and analogies to paint pictures in the mind of the listeners.

In a presentation, Body Copy is the proof you marshall under your claims. Each slide should have a Headline that makes a claim, and the imagery or data on the slide should supply the evidence that the headline is a valid conclusion.

It is ill-advised to put body copy on a slide because it is hard for the audience to read slides and listen at the same time.

Much better to put dramatic imagery on your slides and put the detailed narrative in the notes section of the PowerPoint page.

Finally,  in a presentation, the Logo is YOU. You are not a corporation. You are a person, and your behaviors and look should be consistent with the message you strive to impart.

Furthermore, the presentation should be all about the audience, not all about how cool you, your company, product, or ideas are. So, in a sales presentation, I suggest that you remove your company Logo from all your slides except the title slide.  Instead, put your prospect’s Logo on the slides.

Conclusion: Good ads persuade us to buy through four channels of communication:

1.  The claim,  generalization, or summary headline

2.  The details and evidence to prove that the headline is true and valid

3.  An image that enables us to feel the benefit of the offering

4.  A logo, or a branded source of information, that strives to earn our trust in the argument being made.

Speeches and presentations have similar elements: Key take-aways! Data, facts and other forms of proof (such as stories) that justify the key-takeaways! And Imagery on the slides or created in the mind of the audience by the speaker telling vivid stories!

And then there is you, the speaker, the source of the information. Your comfort, confidence and ease on stage help you generate the willing suspension of disbelief amongst your listeners, which allows them to take a chance on you and your idea.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills andpublic speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

On April 27, on the front page of the New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller has an article entitled: We Have Met the Enemy, and He is PowerPoint.

Speech professionals like me, along with many other communication experts, have had a love-hate relationship with PowerPoint for years.

Now we see that the leaders of our military are having the same debate: At what point does PowerPoint become a hindrance rather than an aid?

I remember the story about Lou Gerstner when he took over IBM. He went to his first meeting as CEO and sat down to watch a PowerPoint presentation on what was wrong with the company.

Within minutes, he asked that the projector be turned off and simply said, “Let’s talk.”

There is something wrong when we ask people to listen to us and give them something to read at the same time.  I’m not a cognitive scientist, but I don’t think the human brain was designed to listen to a speech and read at the same time.

There are many people who have done research into these issues and we should heed their call.

Cliff Atkinson at www.sociablemedia.com has published a book entitled Beyond Bullet Points.  He makes an elegant case for the use of imagery, the structure of story, and the effective use of clear outlines and headlines.

Cliff based some of his methodology on the work of Professor Richard E. Mayer at the University of California.

Professor Mayer and others have done ground-breaking research into the Principles of Cognitive Guidance:  basically, how do you get people to follow what you’re saying.

These Principles apply to teaching, lecturing, and presenting, and are extremely useful to all of us who must make sense out of complexity.

Many of us are also familiar with Edward Tufte, Professor Emeritus at Yale, who has done extraordinary work on the visual display of quantitative information.

His paper, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, was published in May 2003, and while it has been found to be strongly biased against PowerPoint, it has helped to point the way to a more effective use of visual displays in business settings.

In my work within big Pharma, financial services, and strategic consulting shops, I am amazed at how much time managers spend designing slides.

When you add up the cost of pulling everyone into a meeting, and the cost of an executive salary paid to a manager to create slides for a week, the amount spent is considerable.

And if you add in the fact that the audience may frequently get bored, or confused, or simply exhausted from the onslaught of daily PowerPoint presentations they have to sit through, you have an additional cost in lower morale and disengagement.

As the article in the Times says, PowerPoint probably isn’t going away anytime soon.  But it is time to make it clear that PowerPoint is a tool that we can use more effectively by using it according to proven principles of science, and not according to our legacy corporate habits.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills andpublic speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.