A few weeks ago I visited Cypress Primary School, the Deputy Head Alisa Chapman had asked me to assist with a powerpoint presentation. Induction day is coming up soon, and like all Primary and Infant schools, they were busy preparing for the big event. Over 100 parents would be visiting the school and wanted to hear all about the great facilities, meet the teachers, take a look in the classrooms and ask questions.
I was more than happy to help out and lend a hand to spice up their presentation and talk to the team about the structure of digital presentations.
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Listening to your Audience
Last year, the presentation failed to engage the audience, and the primary school had received a few comments from parents, so what did the team do? They listened to their audience and made changes to the entire format of the evening;
Seating arrangements
Speaker Lineup
Included video
Updated the powerpoint (which I assisted with)
and ensured all their suppliers were onsite to answer any queries
Presentation Setup
Alisa had previously sent me the original presentation, which in her own words, “Needed some tender loving care”. So I set to work ensuring the powerpoint presentation would reflect the spirit of the Primary School, branding accordingly by using the school colours, and by adding in fun visuals, video and a couple of Cinemagraphs to really engage with the audience.
“Visual are processed 60,000 times faster in your brain than text.” - Source
Putting that statistic into action, as parents arrived and settled into their seats they were able to watch this fantastic Video all about Cypress Primary school.
“Researchers found that colored visuals increase people's willingness to read a piece of content by 80%” - Source
Which is why I added block colour to the slide.
Children’s Artwork
One of the more fun pages included an introduction to the teaching staff, I thought it would be fun for the children to draw pictures of their teachers, Alisa provided me with some great artwork which we added to slide two.
Cinemgraphs are attention grabbing without being distracting or annoying
The Cinemagraphs were also a great success, on this particular slide, the school discussed rewarding good behaviour, so we added in a couple of fun Cinemagraphs to spice up the presentation. Cinemagraphs help to keep your audience's eyes fixated on content, brands are now using cinemagraphs to create ‘snackable’ images that really capture your attention.
“Animated gifs and cinemagraphs also produce higher transaction-to-click rates: 72% of email marketers who have used animated gifs or cinemagraphs have recorded higher transaction-to-click rates, compared with bulk emails to the same customers.” Source: MarketingProfs
Successful Evening
Alisa is pleased to report the evening was a complete success, the parents loved the new overall format and the children were looking forward to starting the new school year in September.
