“If you can get to Presentation Zen, you can do it all”, said Mitch Joel in a recent Compete blog post. Mitch recommended that I interview Garr Reynolds to get on my way. Garr is the author of the best-selling book Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery and the Presentation Zen blog. As someone who has spent her share of time developing and delivering PowerPoint presentations I was eager to contact Garr and begin the path to becoming a presentation master!

Garr is currently Associate Professor of Management at Kansai Gaidai University where he teaches Global Marketing and Multimedia Design. Garr is the former Manager of Worldwide User Group Relations at Apple Computer, Inc. in Silicon Valley. A sought-after speaker and trainer around the world, he’s a longtime student of the Zen arts and resident of Japan. He currently lives in Osaka where he is Director of Design Matters Japan.

I often refer to what I do in marketing as visually and verbally telling Compete’s story. What’s the number one thing you think makes a great story verbally? What about visually?

Emotion. Where there is emotion there is connection. If you speak like a real human being — which means reading slides is out of the question — and focus on your audience’s pain and the meaning of your brand or product or event in the context of that pain, then your story begins to hit people at a level that is more visceral, more emotional, and more memorable.

Visually, emotion matters too (as advertisers know very well), but above all clarity is the most important element in a visual. Visuals must not be decorative or contain superfluous elements such as logos or clip art, etc. High-quality photography is very effective as are simple and clear quantitative displays.

What can marketers do to better connect with customers when delivering their brand stories?

Stop sucking at presentations. Presentations with powerful visuals that augment your story can be very effective, but poor visuals or typical death-by-PowerPoint slidemares of bulleted lists and bad pie charts is much, much worse than using no slides at all.

What’s important is to understand your audience and know your story inside and out. If you know your story, if you have internalized it, then you don’t have to worry about memorizing a script. Don’t think in terms of memorizing your story, think in terms of internalizing it. Great actors do not memorize a script, they internalize it, it becomes part of them. If you internalize you are free to be in the moment with that particular audience. It does not matter if you have given a similar talk 100 times before, each audience is different. The more your story is internalized, the more it has become a part of you, then you have much more freedom to engage with this unique audience in a natural, conversational way.

They say that marketing is conversation. Well, your marketing presentation is quintessentially about conversation as well, and you can’t memorize conversation…you must keep it real.

You’ve written about the importance of removing barriers to communication. Are there 2 – 3 principles that apply across mediums (PowerPoint, web, print) in effectively delivering a marketing message?

Restraint, brevity, and beauty. Related to these three precepts is the concept of empty space. Whether we are talking about slides, web pages, or documents, careful and thoughtful usage of empty space or “white space” leads to messages that get noticed, understood, and remembered. More professionals need to realize that empty space is not nothing but rather a powerful something. Protecting negative space in a visual display or document is a good example of the kind of restraint that leads to brevity and beauty, both of which are appreciated by the viewer. Simplicity is our driving force, and simplicity contains myriad elements including restraint, brevity, and beauty.

You recently revisited your post, “Stand and Deliver: The comic & the presenter,” in which you recommend looking to comedians like Jerry Seinfeld for presentation inspiration. Is there anyone else, comedian or otherwise that you think “gets it right” when it comes to presenting? What’s the one thing that person does that the rest of us can use today?

We can learn presentation and speaking lessons from unexpected places, which is why I often compare presentation mastery to other fields such as jazz, the Zen arts, documentary film, and comedy, etc. I admire the presentation skills of such people as Sir Ken Robinson, Steve Jobs, Al Gore, Rob Carter (FedEx CIO), comedian Bill Cosby, etc. There are lessons to be found even in observing fictional characters as well. For example, I’d have to say that Yoda is one of my favorite speakers of all time. Yoda understood the importance of economy in verbal expression. “Judge me by my size, do you?” Brilliant!

Never use a paragraph when a single sentence will do. A lesson for presenters today is that we should say only enough to get the point across and help our audiences understand. No more, no less.

At Compete, a lot of our business revolves around complex data sets. What recommendations do you have when delivering data-rich content in written and/or graphic formats?

First of all, throw out all your bad PowerPoint habits and invest in books by Stephen Few, Edward Tufte, and Nancy Duarte’s new book called “Slide:ology.” Also read the classic “How to Lie with Statistics” by Darrell Huff. Ask yourself if the data is really necessary to make or support your point. If (and only if) it’s absolutely necessary then do whatever you can to decrease the noise of the visual and increase the signal. Noise on a slide would include unnecessary colors, logos, clip art, or even thick lines and tic marks on a chart, etc.

Usually information and meaning are more important than mere data so be very careful and make certain you review your “data-rich” slides with a critical eye. Here’s a simple tip, rather than just giving a chart a title such as “Inflation rate,” change your title to something more meaningful such as “Inflation rate doubles” or “Inflation rate up 4%,” whatever underscores the point you are making with the chart. And if you have very complex data (that needs to be shown), consider distributing that in a handout instead.

Who should I interview next for the Compete Blog?

I suggest Dr. John Medina, author of the best-selling book “Brain Rules” — his ideas will change the way we all work and learn.

While Hyundai got its start in the US over 20 years ago with small vehicles, it has aggressively expanded its lineup upwards in size and price, including the just-launched Genesis luxury sedan. Like any brand expanding its portfolio, it is hoping positive consumer perceptions for the existing models carry over to the new ones.

But what are those strengths for Hyundai? Which ones are carrying over to the larger and luxury models? TNS Autos (a sister company of Compete, a unit of TNS Media) investigated in a recent survey.

What we found

• Price, Fuel Efficiency, and Warranty were reported as the greatest strengths for Hyundai’s small and mid-size models.
• These strengths have not translated to the large and luxury models, with the apparent exception of Warranty. However, Hyundai is currently publicizing that it has “America’s Best Warranty.” (The closeness of the results for warranty suggest the campaign has been effective across both vehicle sizes—a separate but important finding.)
• The attributes with the smallest difference are relatively weak for both vehicle size categories.
• The gap between Price and Value for small mid-size models may be explained by weaker results for Quality and Standard Equipment.
• Quality was near the bottom for both sets of vehicles despite quality gains reported in some syndicated automotive industry reports.

The lack of transference—at least to date—represents a challenge for Hyundai. And, the established models face some lingering obstacles. Logical next steps to influence consumer perceptions and behaviors on the road to driving sales include:

• Identify what is impeding perceptions of Hyundai vehicles in general and what is impeding transfer of the more positive perceptions to all models in the line-up
• Benchmark results for Hyundai models against target and in-market rivals (in-market rivals can be identified by Compete cross-shop data)
• Identify which attributes specifically drive or inhibit consideration
• Ensure that messaging effectively targets those through pre-launch ad testing, in-market ad tracking, changes in consideration, increase in in-market shoppers and changes in in-market cross-shopping behavior

As the dust begins to settle after the announcement and launch of the new iPhone 3G, I wondered about who was actually interested in it.

With all the hype, there’s inevitably strong curiosity among iPhone researchers, so interest often isn’t necessarily indicating an intent to buy. Still, I thought that looking at this group’s behavior might provide some insight into who potential (possibly actual) customers are, and what types of marketing and applications might get their attention.

The chart below shows how much more likely iPhone researchers are to visit certain types of sites than other handset researchers in June (green bar) and July (orange bar).

• For both months, these iPhone researchers were most likely to visit blogging sites than the average handset researcher. In June they were 31% more likely to do this than the average handset researcher, and in July 20% more likely.
• Travel and tourism sites were also a popular destination for iPhone researchers during both months compared to the average handset researcher, and consistently took the number two spot.
• In July, iPhone researchers’ behavior, although still very different, began to look a little more like the behavior of the overall handset researching population, suggesting that the appeal and awareness of the device broadened to include more of the general population.

So, what does this mean? The average person who was checking out the iPhone online is more likely to have also been reading blogs and visiting travel sites.

As we learn more about consumer experiences with the iPhone, it will be interesting to see if these trends continue through the summer, when Best Buy begins to sell the device in September, and into the all-important holiday season.

If they do, it appears that blogs and travel sites could be the best places to advertise the iPhone, its accessories and applications. Applications focused on reading and filtering blogs and travel information could be among the most compelling applications to iPhone owners.

The iPhone has headlined industry news for the last 18 months, so it’s anyone’s guess what will happen in the next year and a half. But, by observing and acting upon this type of information, the device might experience a whole other level of popularity.

Things move a little slower in the summer. Right? Well that’s what we’re telling ourselves anyway with our search share numbers being published a bit later in the month than we typically like to get them in your hands. Oh well better late than never.
July turned out to be a return to the norm with everyone losing share to Google. With the exception of the Club Live enhanced Windows Live search numbers everyone’s market share dipped lower while Google’s climbed to new heights.

Year-over-year, the volume of queries being perfomed on Google by the US Adult population was up 44%. In contrast, Yahoo! query volume was down more than 14% year-over-year, while Windows Live search (excluding Club Live) was essentially flat. If you fold in the Club Live numbers Windows Live Search volume was actually up about 27% from this time last year.

The overview (excluding Club Live from the market) …

• Google share climbed to over 70% on roughly 5% m-o-m query volume gains
• Yahoo! dipped to a new low of 18.1% market share on flat query volume
• Windows Live Search dropped slightly to around 7.5% marketshare (if you account for Club Live search this bumps up to around 13% and a slight gain m-o-m)
• Ask share dipped slightly to 2.5% on a 6% m-o-m decline in volume
• AOL seems to be slipping away with market share holding just above 1% after continued query losses
• Next up … Dog days of August

If you want to get your hands on the actual data in this post and a lot more don’t forget to check out Compete’s Data Hub.

*Search market share includes web search only for the Adult US Online Population and is calculated based on unique queries within each session during the given month.

The 2008 Olympic Summer Games are well under way in Beijing, while the contest continues online for audience reach and engagement.

NBC spent $900 million for exclusive rights to broadcast the Beijing Olympics on TV and online. On August 9th, the day after the Opening Ceremony, nearly 2 million unique visitors dropped by NBCOlympics.com to catch the replay.

A week later, NBCOlympics.com shows no sign of slowing down, but Yahoo!’s Olympic coverage has taken the lead in US average daily reach.

Yahoo had 1.5 million average daily visitors compared to NBC’s 1.2. But where Yahoo! is winning the gold in reach, NBC narrowly leads in engagement. Of the nearly 17 million hours spent at the top Olympics sites in the US, NBC edged out Yahoo! by 5%.

Interestingly, visitors to NBC have stayed steadily longer, while length of stay at Yahoo! has been more volatile.

The reason? NBC provides exclusive access to full-length episodes of the events, even if the marquee ones are tape-delayed, whereas Yahoo! hosts short highlights and newswire stories.

As more of the 3,000 hours of Olympic event video that NBC will capture comes online, visitors have stayed longer. Meanwhile, Yahoo!’s spikes correspond to the major news events: the Opening Ceremony and August 16th, the day Michael Phelps won his 8th gold medal.

Just when it seemed the ailing economy, soaring oil prices and a historically unpopular president would doom John McCain’s electoral aspirations, a funny thing happened while Barack Obama and his media entourage were taking last month’s overseas mid-summer victory lap: America seems to have tired a bit of Obama’s celebrity status, dulling, at least slightly, his glow of invulnerability. Now, with the recent Georgia/Russia conflict causing voters to rethink Obama’s preparedness for the world stage, national polls narrowing, falling site traffic, not to mention 2012 aspirant Hillary Clinton’s posturing for another run, Obama’s success in the fall is less assured than it appeared only a few short weeks ago.

John McCain, given up for dead last summer, has had a surprisingly successful past couple of months. After almost of year of convincing most that his campaign lacked anything in the way of a cohesive online strategy, McCain’s camp has seized on the Internet of late to distribute satirical attack ads to define Obama for the American public. Like Mike Huckabee last winter, the relatively underfunded McCain camp has leveraged YouTube to generate free publicity for his campaign. The ads “Celeb” and “The One,” McCain’s most virally successful so far, along with the related well-publicized fight McCain picked with debutant Paris Hilton, helped the presumptive Republican nominee finally get voters to stop and consider that Obama still has to win in November before he can occupy the White House.

The FaceTime chart below illustrates the degree to which McCain, Obama and Ralph Nader are attracting the attention of voters and highlights the degree to which recent developments have helped McCain become much more competitive online. The FaceTime metric looks across candidates’ official websites as well as their related sites on places such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Meetup.com, to measure the total time voters spend with candidates. After months of trailing Obama by a nearly 9 to 1 margin, these well-timed videos helped McCain’s FaceTime share jump to 26% in July…not bad for a candidate mocked for his lack of web savvy.

McCain tactics seem to have worked, so one can only expect more of the same in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next week’s Democratic Convention will broadcast Obama into tens of millions of American homes. It will be interesting to see whether or not, under the scrutiny of the national stage and the pressure of a resurgent opponent, voters will see in Obama a man ready to lead the nation come January.