Adventures In Advertising: The Secret Of The Best Presenter I Ever Saw

I thought I would share the secret of the best presenter I ever saw.  His advice is the secret to making great speeches and presentations.

Ad agencies love to rehearse pending client presentations.  It is understandable:  they want the presentation to be perfect so they can sell the work or land the account.  There is only one problem.  Everyone in the room, from the most senior person to the most junior must be of one mind - they must believe in and love what they are selling.

Rehearsal cannot sell. Correcting people's syntax and the way they express themselves cannot sell. Only attitudes can.  Having confidence in in the work and communicating that belief is far more important than any talking points which someone might want to include in the presentation.  It isn’t that the talking points aren’t valid, it is that they have to be made in a forceful and passionate manner – from the gut.

In my first advertising job, I worked for the Richard K. Manoff Agency (subsequently bought by McCann).  Dick Manoff was the best presenter I ever met or saw.  He was an account guy and he was mesmerizing when he talked to clients (all employees loved to go to the one way mirror in the conference room and watch him present).  One day I asked him what his secret was.  He told me two things which have stayed with me for my whole career, even still.

First, he said, you have to absolutely believe in what you are selling.  Second, your words have to come from your gut.  In fact, words matter less than attitude when presenting.  To put it another way, words don’t sell, attitudes do.   

What great advice!

Ad agencies tend to practice and re-rehearse their presentations, sometimes to the point where they sound over-rehearsed and the actual presentation sounds memorized and insincere - kind of like reading a speech, . From the time I was an account supervisor, I had a hard time practicing what I was going to say thanks to Mr. Manoff. In fact, when agencies I worked at insisted on going over and over what we were going to say, I said what they wanted me to say in the rehearsal and then simply spoke from my gut when I presented, forgetting the practiced script, except very important points.  Clients believed me and I was generally able to sell the work if it was right.  It was my attitude that sold the work.  If I really believed in it, clients believed me and, if it was on strategy and there were no other unanticipated problems, the work sold.

This is a lesson that needs to be taught in every public speaking course and in every presentation class.

I promise you, David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach did not rehearse (they may have practiced, but like Mr. Manoff, when the actual presentation came, they spoke from their heart.  This is also true of icons like Mary Wells or Jay Chiat.  When they planned presentations, they told people what they were going to say without actually saying it.  As a result, their presentations were unstilted and believable. They came across as experts and the sincerity of their message came from somewhere deep inside them. 

When run-troughs are so over structured that the speakers sound stilted, the chances of selling the work goes way down.  Worse, during the client presentation when asked a question which is unexpected, over practiced people have a good chance of being unable to parry the response because it did not fit into the pre-rehearsed responses.  

I have previously written about the role of passion in success.  The story of legendary ad man George Lois is worth retelling.  When a client questioned his presentation, he threatened to jump out a window and went so far as to raising the window in his conference room and began to put his body outside.  The client was so alarmed that he immediately approved whatever it was that was presented. True?  Maybe.  But the point is that it proved to the client that George Lois believed in what he was saying and they bought the work.

I always believed that clients actually do support their agencies and want them to succeed.  Clients should be treated like friends, because they are.  And, for the most part they want to believe what you are telling them, especially when an effective account person has worked with them and pre-sold the work.

Pre-selling is one of the hallmarks of a good account person and a smart agency.