Authors: Peter Sander
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What it is
. Once the stage was set, Steve would introduce the product, typically with a dramatic buildup exemplified by the repeated “An iPod. A phone. And an Internet communicator” that lined the audience up for the iPhone. There was usually a graphic showing the product, and, depending on the size of the product, one was usually available in his shirt or jeans pocket for him to show.
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How it works
. Up to this point, with the right preparation and stagecraft, any CEO or business leader who was so inclined could probably do these steps. Lay out the market; describe a product. Most of them would have to work on the style and flair for drama that Steve brought to the event, but it’s not too far away from the sorts of presentations made in corporate conference rooms all around the world—except that it was externally, not internally, focused. But what really set Steve apart—and this became the third element of his message—was a typically fairly detailed explanation—really, a show—of how the product actually works. Steve gave a demo of the product as if he were sitting
with you one-on-one in your living room. This part was truly unique, for it showed Steve’s level of involvement in and commitment to the product—and your experience with it.
Once we had sat through, and typically enjoyed, this demo, there was usually some kind of enticing or leading close. Steve would tell us how the world will change. And then there was the famous, “And there’s one more thing,” where some really cool product feature, like the new graphics interface for OS X, was rolled out. These “one more things” created anticipation and excitement that even most ad agencies cannot dream of.
These three elements came through whether Steve was announcing a new product to the world or a new business plan to a sitting board or venture capitalist. It’s little wonder that Steve’s expert corporate communications coach, Carmine Gallo, called him the “world’s greatest corporate storyteller.”
Speaking of the “three elements,” Steve liked to keep things simple, and he had a way of doing so by grouping ideas and concepts into threes. We just saw it with the iPod/phone/Internet connection device buildup.
Markets were divided into thirds; presentations were divided into thirds; the evolution to the iPod (iMac, iBook, iPod) was divided into thirds. Besides Steve’s penchant for simplicity, there were other reasons to do this. Researchers have found that people can digest only three to seven things at a time, so if you have a presentation slide with nine points on it, don’t bother. In the tech world, simplicity is king, and in Steve’s world, simplicity was king, so he opted to keep it closer to three (and fewer if he could).
I’ve done this in my
“The 100 Best Stocks You Can Buy”
series of investment analysis books, too. I give three pros and three cons for a particular investment. Not only does this keep the analysis in focus for the customer, but it goes a long way toward keeping you in focus, too, as you analyze or try to understand something complex.
STry it. You’ll like it. It works.
Steve Jobs’s presentations were enviably simple, engaging, informative, exciting, comfortable, and fun.
His delivery style was almost as important as the content itself. Steve set the theme, told you what problems were being solved, set a road map for the solution,
created memorable moments, and left the audience wanting more.
Few others, if any, in the corporate world, have come close.
Although carefully rehearsed—for hours, according to most accounts—his presentations were casual in nature. From the moment he walked on stage in his trademark black turtleneck, jeans, and white shoes, the people in the audience were put at ease, figuring that they would be addressed by a favorite artist rather than a hard-charging executive. It worked.
The presentations were choreographed and rehearsed down to the finest details. Images were few, but they were shown in full-room size behind Steve. Most were dazzling versions of Apple’s simple logo, magnified and colorful images of an Apple product, or very simple tables or lists of facts or bullets. Clean, concise, and colorful.
Steve had an oral style that is difficult to describe and best learned by watching it (a list of some favored presentations on YouTube appears at the end of the chapter). He was calm and confident. He was clear and articulate, using short sentences and simple words, very seldom “techie.” There were almost no “ums” or “ahs” or filler words. The cadence and flow were almost ideal, with pauses and silence in the right places to allow the audience to digest his message or to build excitement. He was genuine and credible; it was pretty clear that he
was saying what he thought, not what the audience wanted to hear.
The presentation, the accompanying visuals, and the message were crisp, visually simple, and easy to grasp.
All of these traits and manners are plainly visible in the videos, and I believe they can be learned or developed with the right amount of focus and rehearsal. Beyond this core, there were a few other notable trademarks of Jobs’s presentations.
How tired we all get of hearing about paradigm shifts and scenarios and eyeballs and leading edges. How tired we all are of hearing words like “basically” and “going live” and “deploying” and “fast track.” The language of business is saturated with buzzwords and jargon that, at day’s end, mean little. There’s actually a game about it. You can play “Bullshit Bingo” at a business presentation by sitting with a customized card listing these expressions. The first to line ’em up wins (see
www.bullshitbingo.net
; try it, it’s fun). Anyway, the point here is not to amuse but to highlight Steve’s clear rejection of the typical “corporate speak” style.
Steve used simple, insightful, and fun words and phrases, such as, “It’s gorgeous,” “It’s amazing,” “They don’t get it.” Main Street words, not headquarters words or techie words.
There is no question that Steve had a flair for the dramatic. He knew how to present a product almost like a three-act play or a gripping novel. The facts that lead to the chase. The chase. And how it all happened and what we get out of it.
He was a master of expression, of pregnant pauses, and of inflection. He knew just the right moment to pull a product out of his shirt pocket. From one image to the next, and from one statement to the next, the audience was hooked and waited for the next big thing to come from the show. There was always a dramatic, applause-capturing close. Of course, Steve used this idea to its full advantage with the “and one more thing” after-announcements.
Good showpeople typically tend to take over, to overpower, and to be more about themselves than about the subject at hand. Steve carefully avoided this. The casual attire started this off right, just right. We could all imagine being Steve up there, presenting our latest product. The focus wasn’t on the man or the image, but on the subject and the images of the subject. Not once did you hear of his own personal successes, and rarely anything of his own stories. In fact, you seldom heard “I.”
You would think such a gifted and younger-than-most icon presenting his youthful products to an often-youthful shorts-and-sandals Silicon Valley culture would be given to humor, jokes, innuendos, and twists on words.
Not so much Steve.
Steve was a pretty serious guy. He stayed to the point and to the message, and if he threw a little humor at you, you remembered it. But unlike so many speakers, it was clear that Steve didn’t need to use humor to keep your attention, and he knew it.
Famously, when introducing OS X in 2000, he told us that the “buttons on the screen looked so good that you want to lick them.” He might also use humor to poke fun at a competitor (usually Microsoft): “Our friends up north spend over five billion dollars on research and development, and all they seem to do is copy Google and Apple.”
He used humor not to entertain, but rather to make a point, and make it clearly. In this way he was a bit like, but more subtle than, other exceptional leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Warren Buffett.
If you do a search for “Steve Jobs” on YouTube, you’ll come up with about 27,100 entries. Naturally, not all of these are unique speeches; there are multiple entries for many of them. But even so, there are dozens of unique presentations out there for you to take a look at. Here are a few of my favorites (you can search the first few words of each of these titles on YouTube to find them):
• Macworld San Francisco 2000: the Mac OS X introduction, 9 minutes, major software product introduction and demo
• Steve Jobs introduces the “Digital Hub” strategy at Macworld 2001, 8 minutes, major product vision and strategy
• October 2001 Apple Music Event: the first ever iPod introduction, 9 minutes, strategy and new product platform
• Steve Jobs’s 2005 Stanford commencement address, 14 minutes, June 2005
• Introducing the new iPhone, Part I, 10 minutes, January 2007
• January 2010 Apple iPad: Steve Jobs keynote, Part I, 6 minutes, introduced the iPad and its benefits
Grab an Odwalla, turn on your iPad, and learn to spread the perfect message.
As we’ve seen, Steve Jobs didn’t stop at creating the product and the customer experience. No way. He evangelized the product and its supporting vision to such an extent that it almost became an extension of the product. Both the content and the style were unique as compared to most corporate-style speeches, and he used the message in ways most people don’t think about. Here are a few pointers:
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Never forget about the message
. It can be just as important as the product.
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Be your product; be your brand; be your company
. Don’t miss this opportunity. Don’t leave it to the PR people. People inside and outside the organization really respond.
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Don’t forget: your presentations in public mean a lot to your team inside the four walls
. It’s a golden opportunity.
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Keep your content simple and in groups of three
. “Why we need it, what it is, and how it works” is a good starting point for organizing a message.
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Keep the language simple
.
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Remember, you’re on stage; use the opportunity
. But avoid making yourself the center of attention. It’s about your product and your message, not about you.
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Be confident, be current, and have fun
.
I have some very bad news to share with all of you. Steve passed away earlier today.
—Apple CEO Tim Cook,
October 5, 2011
Steve. Just Steve. Just like Mike.
We all know who Mike is. But few other people in history have succeeded in making their
first
name their brand. And even fewer—maybe no one—in the history of business have done so. What would Steve Jobs do? What would Steve do? What other Steve
could
we be talking about?
In the days immediately following Steve’s passing, the media, the talk, and the chatter on the street were just about Steve. Everybody knew the story. Like Mike, he touched millions of lives, whether you’re a basketball fan or not. Because of Mike, many of us
became
basketball fans.
But basketball doesn’t touch our lives the way personal technology has come to touch our lives. Steve was a respected and revered role model in an industry that touches us every day, and an industry that touches us more than ever and in a more positive way than ever because of what he did. And in an industry that is little known for producing the kind of folk hero Steve has come to be.
People compare Steve Jobs to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford also created products—really, industries—that touch our lives every day. They also contributed great things to the business philosophy and ethos of the day, a day when the philosophy and ethos of business were in none too great shape.
But did they have the personal charisma of Steve Jobs? The customer-centered vision? The sense of elegant, simple personal design? Could they deliver a keynote speech or introduce a product the way Steve Jobs did? The lack of widespread media and technology may have hampered their efforts. But even if they had today’s media at their disposal, it’s doubtful that either of the two would have moved the needle with the charisma, the passion, the personal charm, the clarity, and the empathy that Steve Jobs exuded on a daily basis.
Thomas Edison was an innovative technologist. Henry Ford was an innovative business leader. But neither became a brand. Steve Jobs became a brand.
We can talk for hours about how to build a product brand. And many people have done so; the literature and Internet resources on this topic are extensive. So I won’t go into the details, but the character traits of product or company branding boil down to a few basic themes: