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

Carmine Gallo ()

think_visually

Think visually. Apple presentations are strikingly simple and visual. For example, there is very little text on a Steve Jobs slide. While the average PowerPoint slide has 40 words, there were far fewer than forty words in the first dozen slides of last week’s event. When Jobs talked about the popularity of iTunes around the world, his slide showed 23 flags of different countries instead of country names. When he said the iPhone app store was celebrating its first anniversary, a slide appeared with a birthday cake holding one candle. When he talked about lower iPod prices, the new price was accompanied by photos of the iPods. Psychologists call this picture superiority: Ideas are more easily recalled when presented with text and images instead of text alone.

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About the author

Carmine GalloCarmine 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.

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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.