Well-placed Presentation Audio

 

I was working with a group of high schoolers kids recently on their presentations for a Junior Achievement project, and their advisor asked me for help on making their pitches "more professional."

"Anything you can recommend to them," she said. "Transitions, sounds..."

I instinctively blurted out, "No crazy transitions or sound effects!" But later I told myself secretly that careful well-placed sound clips can actually be really awesome. I've long used a few in my presentation training including "Make The Logo Bigger" to kick off a discussion about logo usage, but recently good audio clips have made some other presentation appearances...

Guaranteed Laughs

At Saatchi & Saatchi's 7x7 event earlier this month Joe Park, CEO of Bluefly.com, gave a totally entertaining talk. To set the stage for a discussion on the attempted IPO of his first start-up Kosmo.com years ago, Joe took the audience back to 1997 courtesy of a few examples: Amazon having just gone public and Steve Jobs returning to Apple. Then Joe put up the slide below and used an audio clip that received a roar of laughter from the audience. Click to play...

 

 

I don't know what it is, but small well-placed and suprise audio clips seem to be guaranteed laugh lines.

 Recently one of our account teams had a last minute idea for part of a Prezi pitch that would directly address one of the clients. So, there I am recording a voiceover minutes before... 

 

And the client loved it.

So...if you're having trouble getting laughs with a joke in a presentation, maybe try a sound effect?