The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: The Real Deal Behind The Reality Distortion Field

By Carmine Gallo (11:59 pm, Sep 13 2009)

steve_jobs_rockroll

Steve Jobs made a welcome return to the public eye last week at a special music event to introduce Apple’s 2009 holiday iPods.

“The September music event was classic Apple. It marked the return of the world’s greatest corporate storyteller,” says communications coach, Carmine Gallo, author of The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience.

Gallo’s book will be published later this month by McGraw-Hill and can be pre-ordered now from Amazon. Gallo’s written some insightful analyses of Steve’s presentations in the past, so we asked him to take a look at last week’s event. After the jump, Gallo breaks down his top ten presentation tips from Jobs’ latest speech.

memorable_moments

Create memorable moments. Every Steve Jobs presentation has one moment that leaves everyone in awe. These “moments” are scripted ahead of time to compliment Steve Jobs’s slides, the Apple website, press releases and advertisements. At Macworld, 2008, Jobs pulled the new MacBook Air out of a manila inter-office envelope to show everyone just how thin it was. Bloggers went nuts and it was the most common photograph of the event. At last week’s “Rock & Roll” event, the “water cooler” moment wasn’t a product at all. Instead, it was Steve Jobs himself walking onstage after a long, health related absence. He told the audience he now had the liver of a mid twenties person who died in a car crash and was generous enough to donate their organs. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for such generosity,” he said.

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About the author

Carmine Gallo is the author of The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. He is the communication skills coach for the world’s most admired brands, including IBM, Nokia and Chase. He writes a weekly leadership and communications column for BusinessWeek.com. More about Carmine Gallo at his Gallo Communications website.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by Carmine Gallo.

Posted in Apple, How-To, Opinions, Steve Jobs |

nak
Why do you refer to yourself in the third person?
Dylan
Very good post. Was a great read. Thanks!
Johnny
Interesting article to read. Thanks.
http://twitter.com/chas_martin Charles Martin
I recognise and appreciate that hits = $ so I understand breaking this up over several “pages,” but geez louise ELEVEN PAGES?? That’s just money-grubbing, sorry. Six would have been about right.
Shenanigans like this actually hurt the story (just check Digg comments any time a story not from Ars Technica goes over half-a-dozen pages) by losing “busy readers” and by annoying faithful readers. It also makes me question the motivation behind presenting the story — am I really going to get some useful info if I stay with it, or am I just being used to drive up the hit count and will end up with an unsatisfied feeling at the end?
Better editorial judgement about how long you can string readers along, please …
Matt
I agree with the above post. I’m afraid I skip these articles with so many pages because it’s too annoying to have to keep clicking from one page to another.
D
The problem is that if you try to copy steve jobs “reality distortion field” your audience would not think:
-Wow that guy is great at speaking!
Instead they will chuckle to themself and think:
-Wow, that guy thinks he’s Steve Jobs. What a looser.
J
Meh, Jobs is good, but he’s no Billy Mays.