Don Draper VS Powerpoint: Guess who wins?
The ubiquity of PowerPoint has become unavoidable. You can’t attend a meeting without sitting through a “deck.” There are websites that preserve forever the presentations we’d rather forget. And now they actually teach it in grade school. No doubt my eight-year-old will soon be making his plea for a new video game using charts, graphs and images downloaded from the web.
It’s not that I have anything against PowerPoint. I just hate boring presentations. And sometimes I fear that the crutch of PowerPoint has made it too easy for the person holding the clicker to limp through his 40 or so slides instead of dazzling me with eloquence, dramatic pauses, or memorable story telling.
So in the spirit of bringing back more presentations we’ll actually remember, let’s revisit Don Draper’s pitch to Kodak. Yeah, he used slides. They just didn’t have pie charts. And he didn’t repeat the same thing we were already looking at.
(Note: Sterling Cooper is pitching Kodak. They have a new product, a slide projector with a “wheel” that sits on top. The wheel goes around in a circle dropping 35 millimeter slides in front of the bulb, which projects them on the screen. The assignment is to come up with an ad campaign to sell the “wheel.” )
Don Draper seals the deal — repositioning the “wheel” as a “carousel” — as he advances through slides of his family.
“Technology is a glittering lure, but there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product. My first job I was in-house at a fur company. There was this old pro copywriter, a Greek named Teddy. Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is “new.” It creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond to a product. Nostalgia. It’s delicate but potent.
Teddy told me that in Greek, nostalgia literally means, ‘the pain from an old wound.
It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone.
This device isn’t a space ship, it’s a time machine.
It goes backwards and forwards.
And it takes us to a place where we ache to go again.
It’s not called ‘The Wheel.’ It’s called ‘The Carousel.
It lets us travel the way a child travels.
Around and around.
And back home again.
To a place where we know we are loved.”
And then Roger says to the client who’s on his way to the next agency,
“Good luck at your next meeting.”
Don’t you wish the next PowerPoint presentation you sit through is this good?
Comments
Played this clip at a meeting.
No surprise -- Don Draper IS in fact better than a Power Point. Who would have thought that an actual clip from a TV show about an ad agency would be a good tool FOR an ad agency?
This reminds me of the story of Goodby pitching the California Milk Processors Board. Apparently they'd already coined, "Got milk." But how to reveal it, how to get the client to bite?
Goodby decided to act out creative doodling during the meeting. He sketched ideas as the clients spoke--one could assume, the story goes, that he was creating ideas on the spot in reaction to the Milk Processor clients' conversation. But most of the ideas had already been articulated. He was merely re-drawing them. Suddenly, Goodby passes a note to one of the clients at just the right moment. How about this little idea, apparently developed in the moment? "Got milk?"
As touching as Draper's presentation is, it masks all the prep work. Yeah, I'm cynical. And yes, some clients do act as sheepishly as those Kodak clients. But most don't. Draper's performance is solidly, wonderfully calculated. And am I alone is insisting the musical underscore does an awful lot to convey the scene--and I seriously doubt Sterling Cooper had synch-to-sound technology in 1963. As viewers, we're being sold, too.
Last point--what's even more brilliant about the pitch, IMHO, is that the slide show is entirely about Draper. Not only is he pitching the "carousel" idea, he's pitching himself as a solid, married father. What client (in 1963) wouldn't want that? Brilliant.
As far as PPT goes, it sucks. Use Keynote.
And tell really good stories.
about 10 years ago I saw a keynote speech given using this technology, instead of PPT:
http://www.thebrain.com/
it seemed to mimic the structure of a thought-trip (or lecture) more naturally. plus it allowed the speaker to ad lib and change directions on the fly unlike PPT's linear structure. i haven't been in that world for a while -- so maybe The Brain is old news by now, but thought it was worth tossing out there.
Don Draper's character is inspiring. What's more inspiring is that clients back then made a choice of agency based on talent and creativity, rather than cost.
Those pitch scenes with Draper give me the chills. I'll be lucky to have 1 or 2 of those in my lifetime.
Thanks for an awesome link. This is the kind of clip that should be shown during agency new employee orientations... first day on the job. To remind that at the end of the day it's about connecting with the consumer at the deepest level... to never get lost in analytics, deadlines, executional mandatories. The most compelling messages are always born from truth.
This is a GEM.
It's far too easy for people to think that PPT will do the communicating for you. I think, as Don Draper shows us, that regardless of balance sheets and portfolios and past performance, that we do business with people -- humans. That, really, is the reality behind any successful David & Goliath story. Even in business we have instant crushes, "corporate infatuations" if you will. When a person blows us away, it wouldn't even matter if the PPT was pictures of the muppets.
Ah, yes, I remember that scene well. My ad friends & I all marveled at what a beautiful 'sell' it was. The only thing more powerful than that scene was the one that followed it, where Don returns home to an empty house--left behind by his family for the weekend, completely disconnected from the ones he'd just given such a touching tribute to, the reality of his life in stark contrast to the image he presents. Damn that Matthew Weiner...
;)
This post reminded me of a comment that a professor made to me last year: "Power Point," he said, "is the most powerful tool for communication available to the public, but unfortunately no one knows how to use it correctly." I have been blown away by PPTs, but on only a few occasions that have proven to be the exception to the rule. I agree that it's far too easy for the idea of a presentation, the drama and suspense and message, to get lost in walls of text being read at you. In a way I've been taught, by example, that PPT = Presentation, not "you can give a good presentation with the help of PPT." This is especially true in my college classes where technology is used as a shortcut for good content and/ or the communication of that content - a problem not necessarily limited to PPT. Ugg.
Ronan:
Thanks. Just added the link. Don't know what I was thinking. Unfortunately, can't embed.
Edward
It's great to read it.. but everyone should watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus
Powerful. Wonderful. What all presentations should be.
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