Sing my song: How to make presentations even more memorable

Sing my song: How to make presentations even more memorable

Prolog: Nothing compares 2 U.

Meeting room 101, presentation time. Ten slides in, my attention starts to wander – even though the presenter is trying their hardest to engage. But somehow, all presentations now look the same, down to the overused business graphics: mountains, geese flock, overlapping hands, plants and chessboards.

Situation: Presentations are not differentiating enough.

We are bombarded with too many presentations. No wonder we can’t keep up with the information flow. At the same time, many presentations are becoming better but also more streamlined - and therefore interchangeable. This means presentation content needs to achieve higher cut-through thresholds to differentiate and ensure that key facts are remembered.

Option: Connect musical references to key messages.

Well-known songs & music can help imprint important messages. Musical usage at key presentation points can range from: Song title or lyrical reference as text; Playing an audio part of the song embedded in the presentation; Presenter (or audience) actually singing out lyrics of the song; Or variations thereof.

Obviously, the presentation content and audience needs to fit to the passive or active use of music. Also, tailor the music to your audience’s region and stick to local Top 40 hits for highest recognition. Finally, the musical reference should have a clear connection to the key message.

Pros: higher audience engagement; better audience participation; further audio cue (next to graphics & speech) can help imprint key messages; works well with open-minded audiences (e.g. marketing, sales); helps differentiate vs. standardadized presentations.

Cons: can backfire if not carefully tailored to presentation content and audience type; more preparation time needed to find fitting songs; audio speakers and more set-up time needed for larger audience groups.

Example: BCG matrix with Queen songs. When segmenting a product portfolio via BCG matrix, link each of the four quadrants to a Queen song: Stars (“We are the Champions”), Poor Dogs (“’Another one bites the Dust”), Question Marks (“I want to break Free”) and Cash Cows (“Don’t stop me Now”).

Take-away: If fitting to audience and presentation content, try using musical references in different variations to imprint key points.

© John Guenther Consulting 2019

John Guenther Consulting helps international companies reach their marketing business goals through interim assignments in leadership and project management roles. John is a seasoned marketing executive with 25 years of marketing & sales experience in global roles and diverse industries. His focus is on B2B marketing, transformation of marketing organizations, optimization of marketing & sales cooperation, brand management and agile leadership of complex marketing projects. Learn more at www.john-guenther-consulting.de.

Photo by Natalie Perea on Unsplash