A lot has been said about the presentation style of Steve Jobs. Numerous books have written about it, blogs, articles and other media are continually discussing and deconstructing his finesse, his charisma, his ‘get-to-the-point’ delivery. And with good reason. This man knows how to launch a product.
Most of us are used to this more ‘typical’ product launch presentations given by a ‘business speaker’: “Here’s our new product. These are the new features… These are the improvements on the old features… Here are the benefits… Here’s the price. Please buy it.” But Jobs does what many business speakers have a hard time doing. He intrigues his audience. He has them in the palm of his hand. He turns them into passionate Apple brand advocates.
Steve Jobs is much more than a talented, above-average business speaker. He’s a product evangelist. Not content to just launch a product or persuade us of its value, he makes us salivate for it. Beg for it. He makes us HAVE to have it – NOW.
I looked at two of Jobs’ presentations – the introduction of the iPad in January 2010, and the introduction of the iPhone 3G in 2008. Both are very similar in style, so we can see that Jobs knows what type of presentation style works for him and sticks with it. So let’s look at four techniques that the Great and Powerful Jobs uses to bring his audience to their knees, begging for his product: Read the rest of this entry »
