Live Presentation

Experiential Marketing White Elephants: Turn Challenges Into Gifts With These Tips

Happy holidays from MPG! As the year comes to an end, many of our clients are creating exciting new marketing experiences for 2019. Most projects, however, come with a few white elephants—challenges and line items that no one really enjoys, but everyone has to make the best of.

If that sounds like your next project, check out these tips for transforming some common live marketing white elephants into gifts your audience will love.

Challenge: Old booth or exhibit that generates little traffic

Transformational Tip: Consider adding a live presentation or live demos. Touchscreens and graphics rarely capture or hold attention. But a live person delivering your message creates instant engagement, plus the impression that your space is a “must visit.” Why be static and dull when you can tell a complete story with a personal touch?

Challenge: Highly technical content with lots of jargon

Transformational Tip: Find a theme that allows you to simplify while engaging your audience’s imagination and emotions. If you’re marketing to an audience of subject matter experts, you don’t want to dumb it down. But a layer of storytelling can bring your message to life and make it more memorable.

Challenge: Too much content

Transformational Tip: Spread it out over several mediums. Keeping experiences under five minutes—eight minutes max—keeps people from getting bored. Capture their attention first. Then post content experts nearby, hand out supplemental material, or direct your audience to a website.

Challenge: Too many cooks

Transformational Tip: It’s common to have a lot of stakeholders giving input and approval throughout the creative process. To minimize delays and bottlenecks, create a clear schedule with plenty of time for everyone to weigh in. Then create one point of contact between your internal team and your agencies.

Challenge: Unmotivated team

Transformational Tip: Face-to-face marketing is a specialty. Expecting your sales team to sparkle at a trade show for 8 hours a day may be unrealistic. Professional brand ambassadors, on the other hand, are experts at drawing people in, communicating full messages, and maintaining friendly smiles, even when their feet are killing them.

Do you have a project that could use transforming? Contact us to find out how we can make your message shine.

in Event Planning / Event Production / Exhibit Design and Build / Live Presentations / Trade Show Tips  by 19 Dec 2018 0 comments

Presentation Best Practices: Easy Tips for Effective Presentations

Presentation Best Practices

At MPG, we’ve built our business around great presentations. We make them fun. We make them interactive. We make them educational, or thought-provoking, or heartwarming… whatever best tells our clients’ stories. And we make them every day. It’s what we do.

It may not be what you do. But that doesn’t mean you can’t create a presentation that wows. By following a few presentation best practices, you can make your message engaging and memorable, whether you’re giving a talk to co-workers or delivering a keynote address to hundreds.

First, know your audience. What do they want to learn from you? What do they already know (or think they know)? What kind of tone is likely to resonate with them? Are they super serious, or would they enjoy something lighter?

Keep it short. We’ve found that the most effective presentations run about five to eight minutes. Choose no more than three key points, and direct your audience to supplemental materials like a website if they want to learn more.

Keep it simple. Look for a “hook” that captures your main message, then repeat it several times, both visually and in your script. Feel like you’re diving too deep into a topic? Trust that instinct! Better to leave them wanting more, than let them walk away numb from information overload.

Let your visuals do the work (but not all of it). Your audience should be paying attention to you, not trying to read your PowerPoint slides. Choose visuals that complement what you’re saying, rather than repeat it. Think bold single images vs. tons of bullet-points.

Break it up. Hold your audience’s attention by incorporating other voices and infusing freshness wherever possible. If you can weave in video, GIFs or animations, do it! Dual presenters, or an interview format, can help as well.

Involve the audience. Invite them to play a game. Poll them, either with technology or a show of hands. Get them shouting a catch phrase, or out of their seats doing some simple dance moves. People are more likely to remember an experience that engaged vs. a dry lecture.

Practice, practice, practice! Finish your script and polish your visuals with plenty of time to rehearse. We offer presentation coaching to help you be your very best. When you’re at ease, your audience will be more likely to trust you and remember what you’ve shared with them.

Instead of crafting your own presentation, why not let MPG do it? We’re experts at professional interactive, multimedia presentations for events of all sizes. Contact us to chat about how we can help put your message in the spotlight.

in Live Presentations  by 20 Aug 2018 0 comments

Discover the Power of a Great Trade Show Presentation

An interactive trade show presentation created by MPG for P&G skin care brands reached thousands of dermatologists at AAD.

Last month, our team went to the Exhibitor Show in Las Vegas to explore some of the latest trade show and event marketing trends and technologies. We always enjoy walking the show floor at Exhibitor, because it’s a sampler of what various vendors can do for their clients.

But this year, we felt like something was missing. During the times we visited the trade show, few booths appeared to have big numbers of highly engaged visitors. The ones that did have crowds weren’t a surprise to us at all. The vendors that had the most engagement were magicians and those that put on some sort of show.

In other words, those that had some sort of live presentation.

Over cocktails later, an attendee told us she was surprised to find the magicians her favorite experience at the trade show. “They kept my attention, and I remembered their message because they delivered it in a way that made me laugh. They were the only ones that had people really gathered around and getting involved.”

MPG brings a full arsenal of options to the table as we craft experiences that help our clients meet their unique objectives. But it’s no secret we believe in the power of great trade show presentations. It’s in our company name.

A great trade show presentation builds a crowd because it creates an event in your booth. Crowds draw more crowds. And because we run presentations back to back, expertly maneuvering traffic in and out of our presentation space, we’re able to help ensure that your booth operates as much to capacity as possible. Your space becomes the place to be.

Trade show presentations allow you to communicate your key messages to large groups of people before they filter out for more intimate encounters with your sales staff. And with the right creative approach (Magicians not your thing? Don’t worry, we’ll come up with an angle that fits you perfectly), you can help guarantee that people walk away remembering what you had to say.

Want to know more about how a trade show presentation can help you build booth traffic, increase engagement and maximize message retention? Check out these recent posts for tips and ideas.

6 Presentation Ideas for Your Next Trade Show

Must Haves for Successful Trade Show Presentations 

Finding Top Talent for Your Trade Show Presentations and Corporate Events 

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in Live Presentations / Trade Show Tips  by 22 Apr 2014 0 comments

Must Haves for Successful Trade Show Presentations

Our team just returned from the 2012 American Academy of Dermatology meeting where, once again, we helped P&G engage with doctors and key influencers whose recommendations are crucial to the company’s beauty and grooming brands.

We’re always proud of our work at AAD, and this year’s success reminded us again how a live presentation—correctly and expertly executed—can make a company the star of the trade show floor. P&G for Dermatologists was packed from start to finish, while attendance lagged at competitors’ booths.  And derms walked away with a full message about how P&G is a leader in science and a partner in solutions, thanks to an experience that included a main presentation detailing key products, a pre-show exploring P&G’s scientific heritage, and a demo experience that gave dermatologists a deeper dive.

What is an effective presentation? Here are some must-haves:

A Compelling Script – There’s an art to weaving science, research and (often multiple) product messages into a presentation that’s credible and interactive.  You’ve got to hold the audience’s attention and set a fresh, conversational tone.  A professional writer knows how to hit the sweet spot combining optimal timing with a balance of hard science, entertainment and audience engagement.

Eye-catching Visuals – High-quality images, video and graphics are a must for effective presentations.  We can work with clients to make the most of existing assets, or we’ll shoot our own to ensure that they look great on the show floor. Many of our presentations use multi-source video, but we are equally adept at weaving great assets into platforms such as Keynote and Prezi.

Professional Presenters – For a truly effective presentation, you need world-class talent to deliver your message. Professional presenters know how to take a great script and make it sound natural, conversational and engaging. At MPG, we put prospective presenters through a rigorous audition process, then hire only those we know will connect with our clients’ unique audiences.

Variety – Nobody wants to sit through a dry lecture, so shake things up by incorporating testimonials, interviews and interesting themes and transitions. Look for as many ways as possible to get the audience in on the action. You want the experience to be memorable, so work in simple messages with taglines and calls to action that stick with peoplelong after they’ve walked away.

An Element of Surprise – We’ve got a ton of tricks up our sleeve—technical “wows” that leave audiences asking “how’d they do that?” It’s all in the name of keeping peoples’ interest, but we never indulge in whiz-bang tactics for whiz-bang’s sake.  Everything we do helps tell our client’s story; if it doesn’t, then it ends up on the cutting room floor.

Optimal Timing – Tradeshow attendees have limited time and attention spans. Keeping the presentation to 8 minutes or less ensures they will retain more of your message. It also helps ensure they’ll spend more time  engaging in other booth activities and talking to your sales representatives.

A Great Support Team—If your presentation is top-notch you won’t need much help keeping your theater full, but a team of professional hosts can help gather crowds, pulse them into the seats and make sure everybody has a great experience.

Giveaways/Samples – Let attendees know you value and appreciate their time by offering product samples or another giveaway tied directly to your message or theme.

Whatever your objectives, an engaging trade show presentation can significantly increase traffic flow, message retention and sales. And who doesn’t want that?

in Live Presentations  by 30 Mar 2012 0 comments