Page 96 - Today’s Business Communication; A How-to Guide for the Modern Professional

CHAPTER 7

Why Must I Give a

Memorable Presentation?

In most of our chapters, we rely on the anecdotes of others to intro-
duce a topic. For this chapter, we’ve decided to share a story from our
vault of examples. One of us, who shall remain nameless, but you’ll fig-
ure out which one of us while you are reading this chapter, once wit-
nessed the worst public presentation ever made. No kidding. The.
Worst. Ever.
A young PR executive from Toyota, which had a plant in Alabama
(hint about which author was the witness of this terrible presentation), was
representing her company at a trade show. The venue for the show was
the campus of a historically Black university in Montgomery. The exec-
utive made several fatal errors that caused her failure. No one else could
take responsibility for her mistakes. As a footnote, we’ll tell you that we
don’t know whether she kept her job after her public disgrace; but, we
wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she left the country in embarrassment
and became a subsistence fisherperson in a remote location where she
could live incognito.
The first mistake she made was she didn’t do her homework. Having
done no reconnaissance regarding the facility where she would be present-
ing, she created a slide show with a Mac Computer, and didn’t bother to
find out whether the facility where she was to present would have Mac
capabilities. She arrived with her presentation burned onto a CD-ROM,
which was cutting-edge technology in 1999. That reference to the year
1999 was another hint about the author who witnessed the crash-and-burn
presentation� Unfortunately for her, the facility where she was presenting
had the latest Dell Computers, and there wasn’t a Mac in sight.