Bored with PowerPoint? Try Prezi

Over the years TED has hosted some of the best speakers from a diverse set of fields. Ideas presented at TED Talks are often life changing. TED Speakers are outstanding not only for their ideas, but also for their carefully chosen words, passionately constructed arguments, heartfelt sentences, pauses, and for their presentation styles. Many such memorable presentations were created using Prezi, a cloud based presentation tool that is redefining the way we present our ideas.

So what is Prezi?

According to company’s website, ‘Prezi is a virtual whiteboard that transforms presentations from monologues into conversations: enabling people to see, understand, and remember ideas.’ We all remember the famous quote from Arthur Brisbane: A picture is worth a thousand words. Imagine the power of a large canvas that can accommodate hundreds of images and text lines and yet delivers an idea or a story seamlessly through a single window. Unlike PowerPoint, Prezi captures content in a spatial context making it captivating for audience. This is particularly helpful when you want to engage your audience through a story telling experience. The website claims, ‘with Prezi, you move seamlessly from brainstorming your ideas to presenting them. Create a more cinematic and engaging experience and lead your audience downs a path of discovery.’

According to Wikipedia, ‘Prezi employs a Zooming User Interface (ZUI), which allows users to zoom in and out of their presentation media, and allows users to display and navigate through information within a 2.5D or parallax 3D space on the Z-axis.

My tryst with Prezi began a couple of months ago while doing a short course from Stanford on Design Thinking. At first sight it reminded me of Adobe Flash. I was completely bowled over with the style and format of Prezi presentations. Later I learnt Prezi is developed in Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR and built on top of Django. It is therefore compatible with most modern computers and web browsers, and tablet devices. I also learnt Stanford uses Prezi quite often for delivering their course lectures.

Like most of you I too am a diehard PowerPoint person. It took a couple of weeks before I could sync in with the philosophy of this creative tool. I decided to give it a try. A friend of mine who was also doing the same course helped me a great deal. We ended up doing all our assignments using Prezi.

One of  my early Prezis during the Design Thinking Course: 

What I like most about Prezi is its ability to surprise the audience on every click. There is always a new trick hidden somewhere, a sense of anticipation as what is next and that compounds the fun. Though Prezi was not developed in the US, it is a hot shot start up today in the Silicon valley. The software was developed by three Hungarian men Péter Árvai, Szabolcs Somlai-Fischer and Péter Halácsy. The word prezi is the Hungarian short form of presentation.

When should you use Prezi?

Prezi boasts 26 million registered users and adding over a million new users every month. During the first six months of the year over 500 million Prezis viewed online. As such Prezi can be used for most of your routine presentations. And if you enjoy adding a bit of creative touch and fun to your presentations then Prezi is certainly for you. However after spending a couple of months on the software I have developed my own code of guidelines on when Prezi works best and perhaps when not. I would certainly not use Prezi to show how my sales figures going southwards month on month in my sales monthly review meeting with boss. I would rather use simple static charts to present the facts and figures and avoid drawing further attention to my creativity. However, I would definitely use Prezi to brainstorm ideas, present growth story, showcase achievements, announce new products, or to simply tell a story.

Why should a marketer care?

Marketing managers are often challenged with building presentations. Be it a product presentation or a corporate overview, be it a client presentation or HR deck, marketers are asked for help. Prezi offers a fresh breath of air to marketing fraternity. Imagine you are able to review, comment, and edit the work of your creative agency or able to brainstorm a launch idea with your product team in real time. Fun to use, rich text, high quality vector graphics and images, easy to embed audio and video links, social media enabled and easy to share features makes the software worth a try.  

Pricing model 
Prezi offers flexible and affordable subscription based pricing including a basic version for free. I have been using the cloud based free version that serves my purpose. The only catch for the free version is your work will be visible in public. It has two paid license model starting at $59 a year.  

Here’s a Prezi you would love:

How Coca Cola became digital marketing rock stars!

 

Prezi Tutorial

The only true drawback of Prezi is it takes a little bit of time to learn –getting used to. But if you want to make your presentation fun, engaging, and classy it is worth give it a shot.

Ready to zoom into Prezi?

Look forward to hear your views, stories, and experience.

5 important steps to revive your marketing career

How safe is your marketing job today? If you are a marketer from 1990s or even from the last decade like me chances are there you may end up losing your marketing job in next three years. Shocked? But it is certainly a possibility unless you step up and fix a few things.

Image courtesy: www.livingonadime.com

Recently two of my colleagues quit their corporate marketing jobs and decided to move to US. Both were in their mid-thirties and were well settled in India with their families and kids. What made them take this move? Interestingly both had different reasons and yet they tie back to the same issue we are discussing today -an ever evolving uncertainty within marketing profession. One of them opted to move into academics hence enrolled for a full time marketing PhD. The other could foresee himself going out of job within next 12 months and hence quickly signed up for a marketing masters in one of the tier two colleges in Pennsylvania. While the first colleague saw an opportunity within marketing, the later decided to go back to school and get himself trained on new marketing essentials, and possibly find a feat in the US. 

As a discipline marketing has seen unprecedented changes during last five years. And it is hard to imagine how the next five would look like! Marketing profession was never as important as it is today for corporations. And yet it will still not guarantee a job. The rules have changed. If you are a conservative old fashioned marketer and reluctant to embrace change, it is time you find an alternative profession. Marketing today demands high degree of agility, openness, and willingness to learn. It is a challenging time with proliferation of new technologies and tools that are driving the way the consumer behave /respond to marketing messages and campaigns. 

While there are many moving parts in marketing profession today, below are five imperatives to save your current job, build a successful marketing career:

1.       Be a champion of frugal marketing - there is no money honey

Embrace digital social channels to deliver your marketing messages. World is going digital faster than you can imagine. Just two years ago our global marketing mix comprised less than 15% of digital. This year the mix has jumped to 40%. In next couple of years we might see the number touching 80%. While this mix is inversely proportional to marketing budget it is highly suitable to current economic climate. Digital platforms and channels offer highly targeted reach at a fraction of conventional media cost resulting excellent ROI. 

2.       Build your own digital social eminence

The power of digital social channels is long underestimated. Nine year old Caine Monroy from Los Angeles built an elaborate games arcade using cardboard packing boxes at his Dad’s used auto parts store while spending time during his summer vacation. He wanted to simulate real life arcade experience through his cardboard games. Unfortunately Caine couldn’t get anyone to try his games for two months until one day when a young film maker spotted his magical creations. The film maker was highly impressed with little boy’s creativity and made a small video on Caine’s arcade. He went ahead and posted the video on multiple social networking website. To his amaze the video went viral and within hours he received tremendous experience. Today the video has received over 7 million hits and 9 year old Caine became a national hero. This is a good example to illustrate the power of digital social channel. 

Start simple – just read, write, speak, share, and comment on a subject of your interest over a few months and systematically build a digital public association with the subject. You can leverage popular channels such as You Tube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to broadcast your messages and point of views. Alternatively take up a writing assignment for a technical paper or be a spokesperson of your company for a certain subject matter/domain. Make sure you carry an original point of view and not copy any content from internet. This will help you build credibility within your immediate social community, your employer and peers, and your industry. If you have strong creativity and language skills, try writing a book in your domain. If you are a good speaker or an orator, volunteer to speak in community meetings, industry events, or simply at your weekly official meetings. Record a video message about your experience in managing marketing events and upload it on the You Tube. Decide what interests you and just get started.

3.       Get comfortable with numbers and data analytics

As a marketer you own your customer. Business expects you to know what drives their choices and purchase behaviors. It is easier said than done especially if you are in a consumer space. With increasing numbers of media and channels trying to lure a buyer, Marketers are expected to understand buyer’s psyche and offer them the right product /service at the right time and at the most convenient manner. As a marketer you need to be at ease with large chunk of complex data and have a good handle on data analytics. Your ability to manage and process complex data sets /numbers to identify leads and convert into sales will earn you brownie points in your organization. 

4.       Keep track of the forces driving changes in market place

For a marketer nothing is as important as being customer centric. To be able to serve your customers’ needs more effectively you need to know the market forces causing changes in their respective industries, whom are they competing with, what are their basic challenges, and how does technology plays a role in addressing some of the challenges. With so much changes happening in the outside world, marketers simply cannot stay internal focused with their eyes closed. Make sure you are tracking the right channels and getting yourself updated with the constant changes. If you have strong interests in tech startups, gadgets, product launches, and venture capital firms, you may want to follow TechCrunch.  TechCrunch is a leading technology media portal, dedicated to obsessively profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news.

5.       Take up a digital marketing course

If you are an old school marketer like me, be a trendsetter; take up a digital marketing course. You can start with a digital media course and learn more about various digital channels that are causing disruptions in the way we access and consume content. There are many short term crash courses available on Digital Media. There is an interesting course offered by North Western University, Chicago through MOOC model called ‘Understanding Media by Understanding Google’. This six week digital media course teaches how to understand the tactics that modern media companies, journalists, marketers, politicians, technologists, and social networks are using to reach their respective target audiences and affect their behaviors.

What do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts, point of views, and reactions on this post.