Important Message + Humor = Engaging Message Delivery

Like any company that produces/consults on a lot of corporate events, we end up traveling frequently. The one thing we hear on every flight is that take-off safety message. Fasten your safety belts by clicking the buckle and tighten so it sits...blah, blah, blah... Most frequent fliers don't pay attention to these messages anymore. Heck, some sometimes-fliers tune out.

But this messaging is VERY important and could save a passenger's life in the event of an emergency. So what's an airline to do? Add in humor.

Delta put out two new safety videos:

Version 1:


Version 2:

The thing that's so strikingly good about these videos? They take their message seriously but they don't take themselves seriously. They know that people are tuning them out, but their message is critical, so they add moments of novelty and absurdity. These little "bonus" additions give the viewer something to focus on. It refreshes their attention and makes them look forward to the next moment of novelty or delight.

We hear a lot of companies say that their message is SO important that to have fun with it would diminish its seriousness. Well, what's more important than safety information in the event of a life-threatening situation? The fun doesn't diminish the message. The point is this: No matter how serious your subject, if your audience is tuning it out, it isn't going to be heard and remembered. Therefore it pays to have a little fun with it.

We here at Live Spark have flown hundreds and thousands of times. We've HEARD these pre-flight messages before. And yet we all watched these videos all the way through...twice.
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Flash Mob: A Team Building Flash-In-The-Pan?

Since we've been talking about Team Building (or teambuilding or team-building or teamBONDING) experiences lately, we thought we'd point out another team building trend: super trendy trends.

Some examples are team challenges/experiences like:
  • Create a "viral" video
  • Create a "mashup" of two songs that describe your company
  • Participate in a "flash mob"
It's interesting to see social media-influenced trends trickle down into the corporate world...about a year after the internet has stopped talking about them. It makes sense, in a way, that this is the time line. It does, after all, take time to build up best-practices and processes around these concepts.

However, the window of opportunity for these super-trendy team building concepts can be very short lived. There are some components of these ideas that have legs or that might work well as part of a larger context. Creating videos, for instance, is something that can be used in team building in a variety of different ways. It's only the colloquialism "viral" that gives it the trend-spin.

The danger, of course, is that these things quickly become passe or "corporatized" to the point where they lose that freshness that made them appealing in the first place. Let's take the flash mob, for instance. The idea behind a flash mob team building is that everyone learns the same steps and has to coordinate to come up with a final product. They then, at some point, perform this--perhaps during an interlude at an award ceremony, for instance. We've seen this now about a half-dozen times at various events and it has never failed to...well...fall a little flat. Flash mobs in and of themselves are/were originally delightful because they had an element of surprise. Some people--the dancers--were in on the mob, but the rest of the audience was amazed by this moment of socially-awkward-moment-turned-coordinated-effort. In addition to taking away novelty, the amazingly complex movements performed by a group need to be simplified, played down and cleansed for a corporate audience with various skill levels. And, truthfully, 80% of all executives we've seen performing in a flash mob looked tremendously uncomfortable.

Viral videos become viral because they have an almost-indefinable nugget of appeal. Something that surprises people and makes them want to watch and share the video. Part of the charm is in absurdity and spontaneity; a truly "viral" video is incredibly hard to manufacture. It is certainly extra-hard for your average meeting attendee, and most of the "viral videos" we've seen end up veering perilously off-message and into the inexplicably bizarre territory. Of course, there's the option to parody other viral videos, but that takes away from some of the creativity this activity is supposed to foster.

There are the same issues with song mashups, etc. The bottom line is that "trend" gets played out and loses its aim quickly when done for trend's sake. We're not arguing against fresh ideas and changing things up--we like that--but sometimes tried and true IS better than flash-in-the-pan. Or flash in the mob.
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Presenters Like Presentations That Are Fun To Present

Here's a novel concept: a dense deck of PowerPoint slides is just as not-fun for the presenter as it is for the audience.

I guess we've always known this is true in the back of our minds; but if a presentation wasn't fun to present, why would a presenter present it? (Ladies and gentleman, your new tongue-twister.)

We stumbled upon this revelation (ehhem) when consulting with a client about their lunch-and-learn style presentations. They wanted a fun, brain-based presentation that was turnkey; anyone presenting could give a good, engaging presentation--even if they weren't their top choice for a speaker. Then our client said, "Well, if we have a fun presentation, it could make the presenter better. After all, presenters like presentations that are fun to present."

The lightbulb went on!

We're so entrenched in advocating for the audience to be engaged, that we forget that a speaker can become a talking zombie; someone who is just delivering the words and going through the motions without enjoying the experience. The presenters' enjoyment always took a backseat to the audience--and we went forth crafting energizing, brain-based presentations without being aware of the effect it had on the presenter.

It's true, there are some presenters who can make a proverbial silk purse out of a sow's ear--taking a 49 slide deck with 18 bullet points per slide and presenting it in an energetic way. . . but they typically aren't just *presenting*, they're also engaging with jokes and anecdotes and going off the slides, etc. If you had to substitute speakers at the last moment, giving that same presentation wouldn't be nearly as agreeable.

Just as the audience doesn't want to listen to a speaker just reading slide after slide, we can't imagine that that's what speakers want either. Not only does it not provide a creative outlet for them, but not having a presentation that engages the audience deprives a speaker of the critical positive audience feedback--the effervescent bubbling of energy in the room that you feel on stage when you're really *on* and they're really liking what you're saying.

So I guess the point is a humanitarian one: don't just improve your presentations for the sake of the audience, do it for the presenters, too.
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Homer Simpson Builds a Computer: An Event Design Parable

I recently caught an episode of "The Simpsons" where Homer (the bumbling father character--on the rare chance that anyone reading hasn't been exposed to "The Simpsons") decides that he wants to build his own computer.

Ever-ambitious, he gathers up the necessary supplies and assembles his masterpiece. He knows that a computer needs a keyboard, so he gets a typewriter. He finds a television set for a monitor. He attaches a CD player for a CD-rom drive. This continues on. All the elements come together and finally, Homer has a machine with all the functional parts of a computer.

But it doesn't work.

Just because all the elements are there, doesn't mean that it can perform the desired function, or produce the correct result.

We see the same thing happen with a lot of presentations in an event. (Or an event as a whole.) Not that we'd dare say that any meeting planner is akin to Homer Simpson, but they fall into the same trap.

They have the PowerPoints. They have the presenters. They have the content. They have the audience. They have the staging and breaks and food and evening activites. ALL elements have been collected, put together, and voila! Event!

The problem is, these individual elements don't make an event. Just as a computer is more than the sum of its parts, an event has to have every element designed with the outcome in mind. Just having content doesn't mean that the audience will absorb it. Having PowerPoint doesn't mean that there's a good presentation.

This is where event design comes in. When the event is designed with the brain in mind, instead of the individual elements that make up an event, the audience walks away knowing, doing and believing in the key objectives. Next time an event is being produced, don't just think about each element going into place--think about the whole direction of the event.
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What's New Versus What's Needed.

Occasionally, we gain a new client because they're looking for something novel in their event--something different from what they've done the year before. I'm sure this request is foreign to absolutely zero production companies or event design firms. Our unique tools do fit the bill for this kind of request and it's good for us (so no complaints there), but I have issue with novelty in an event.

No, I'm not opposed to change or to doing something different within an event, but this approach is extremely problematic and it tends to create extreme parties and disparate event elements: The "it's not broke, don't fix it" camp and the "we can't do something they've seen before" camp.

All with attention on what's NEW instead of what's NEEDED.

Because I highly doubt that whatever new and novel juggler/act/entertainment/technology/game/etc. is really going to hide the fact that all the attendees have seen the same old PowerPoint from presenters. And novelty is great, but novelty with a purpose is even better.

Oftentimes, we'll be asked to do an AniMate for an event--something that a lot of attendees have not seen--or at least experienced--before. When we produce an AniMate character, the first thing we ask is how it will further the outcomes of the event. No outcomes? Okay, let's put down your outcomes. A presenter wants to interact with the AniMate? Okay, let's work on your presentation.

We end up doing much more than adding a novelty and consequently, though the attendees will have "seen it before", the characters are frequently brought back in subsequent years (for example).

The most frustrating thing to hear is this conversation:
"But we've done that before."
"Did it work?"
"Yeah, they loved it! And it was very effective."
"Then why aren't you doing it again?"
"Because we've done that before."

I understand the tendency to gravitate toward the novel, to impress with new technology and new elements, but if the rest of the event isn't going to change (it's still going to be a line of presenters one after another--a proverbial death-by-PowerPoint firing squad) then adding new bells and whistles is going to be a waste of money (and no wonder audiences will have little tolerance for what has "been done" if it's not on-purpose).

The point is, the search for novelty without factoring in what the event really needs is a futile endeavor. Sometimes what the event needs is what worked the last time. Sometimes the event needs something different. And sometimes the core elements of the event need to be reevaluated, and the novelty is nice to have, but not needed.
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Up in the Air about Virtual Meetings

I know, I've been writing a lot lately about virtual events (both pros and cons). The topic seems timely and has captivated certainly the training world as well as the event world--so it makes sense that I keep coming across it on a day-to-day basis.

This weekend, I watched the recent blockbuster "Up in the Air", and I couldn't help but revisit the topic.

Putting all romantic and personal growth plot lines aside, at the heart of the movie is a company considering switching its face-to-face business into the virtual conferencing space. They're doing it for the reasons that I see a lot of companies eschewing in-person meetings for online conferences:

• It saves significant money on travel costs
• It saves time/energy on traveling
• It's new technology and therefore appealing
• It theoretically provides the information needed

BUT this company fires people--that's their product. George Clooney's character argues that this simply can't be done any way but face to face. By the end of the movie, the company has transitioned back to sending people on the road for in-person meetings instead of continuing to use the virtual solution.

Interesting to note here that this seems like a prime example of where virtual meetings would be most useful. All the numbers add up, the technology is there, etc. But at the heart of the movie we find that there are just some messages that have to be delivered face to face. People were insulted that they were told such life-changing news as a layoff, and there wasn't even the courtesy of having a person in the room with them. They were stuck staring at a video screen. How cold.

Companies utilizing virtual technology are, in some instances, doing so in reaction to economic hardship of some sorts. It's a cost-saving measure like anything else. But when they're not meeting in person, and are delivering OTHER economically sensitive news, what message is that sending to employees? That they don't care enough to look them in the eye and tell them that the annual yearly report isn't looking so great?

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to be harsh. I understand perfectly the constraints of budget. However, one cannot ignore the human factor in the virtual world. And that, so far, is missing to me.
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