One of the big deals I discuss in my Presentation Magic workshops is how the brain acts as a pattern detecting and assembling device, and the more one knows how it operates this way, the better you can construct your presentations to be memorable and persuasive.
There are two professions who have known about this for a long time, without necessarily knowing to a great level the cognitive neuroscience underpinning their knowledge base. They are Magicians and Advertisers.
TED.com has just posted a wonderful 20 minute presentation by advertising guru, Rory Sutherland, from the recent July Oxford TED, where he offered a wide-ranging, pictorially rich, two bullet points-only talk which I will likely use at some future Presentation Magic workshop.
For now, in the video link below, watch for several things:
1. How Rory weaves stories with pictures, unscripted,
2. His use of language to provide surprising elements of humour,
3. His use of a Canadian advertisement which is a wonderfully humorous example of pattern detection in action. (If you want to jump to it immediately, it’s at the 11m55sec spot),
4. How Rory left his audience wanting more, and had them utterly engaged throughout his presentation. Lots of lessons to be learnt.
Enjoy!
Les Posen's Presentation Magic 