Media Presentations by CEOs

[skieur]

I went to a dinner at a golf club, last night, where the guest speaker was the CEO of a national newspaper. What I found rather amazing was the extremely over-exposed strong pink shade digital slides which were supposed to be full colour with readable print.

This is not the first time that I have seen this kind of poor quality presentation by apparently top business professionals. I am astounded that they put up with it, since it reflects badly on the competence of their staff and indirectly on their management.

I would certainly have fired any tech. that I supervised for producing such terrible quality visuals for a business presentation.

skieur

 

[LokiZ]

You have way more faith in top business professionals then I my friend, way more. Not all of them get there by being the best at what they or their company does.

I am curious though. So when you got up to these CEO's after the presentations are over and tactfully point out some of the issues you saw, are they aware or oblivious? You would think they would notice this when they preview the presentation the night before. (Or whatever timely pre-check is available for them, note I said timely) Or are they too busy to care about how it "reflects badly on the competence of their staff and indirectly on their management" until they are standing up in front of the podium giving their presentation?

LokiZ

 

[skieur]

He pointed out at the start of the presentation, the pink problem, but then of course why use the slides at all?

In previous inept presentations by other business types, the attitude seems to be that the content is more important than the media used to present it, which makes no sense since if the medium by its poor quality obscures rather than communicates the content, then the presenter has failed.

Interesting too, that content-wise, he was saying that newspapers were not dying due to the digital age, while demonstrating what could be considered "media illiteracy" in using almost unviewable digital slides. Putting it another way, an executive in the media business should be able to demonstrate his communications-skills using quality media in his presentations.

skieur

 

[LokiZ]

He pointed out at the start of the presentation, the pink problem, but then of course why use the slides at all?

I would agree with that.

In previous inept presentations by other business types, the attitude seems to be that the content is more important than the media used to present it, which makes no sense since if the medium by its poor quality obscures rather than communicates the content, then the presenter has failed.

The media is the container. While the content is very important, if you don't use the correct "container" or misuse the container. then your content is no longer worth serving to your customer.

Interesting too, that content-wise, he was saying that newspapers were not dying due to the digital age, while demonstrating what could be considered "media illiteracy" in using almost unviewable digital slides. Putting it another way, an executive in the media business should be able to demonstrate his communications-skills using quality media in his presentations.

skieur

I would have to agree with you on this level also. It's bad enough if a CEO that is normally in the business of selling a physical product and fails with bad quality presentations. But this, selling of content through media, yes this is just sad.

I won't even do slides shows and movie creation for my own home at the moment. And the reason why? Because I bought an HD TV. Now my video camera is obsolete as well as the software I use for slide shows and video. To me it just looks horrid. And yet those selling the business that pays their bills go ahead and show substandard quality content in order to grow their business? Sad, very sad.

LokiZ