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The Presentation Playbook

Get one practical tip each week to make your presentations clearer and more persuasive. Learn how to earn trust, explain change, and get buy-in—by understanding how people actually think, feel, and decide.

Featured Post

The familiarity runway: make the “yes” feel earned, easy, and obvious

People don’t always embrace ideas that challenge what they’re used to. They need time to warm up to them. A familiarity runway is how you give them that time. You start with what they know, build trust incrementally, and then introduce the big idea—so it feels like a natural next step, not a risky leap. Today we're talking about how to remove the initial friction that often kills visionary ideas too early. When you’re pitching something unfamiliar—something that asks people to think or act...

It's easy to fall into the “cover all your bases” trap—adding every point that might help. But more isn’t better if some of those points are weak. Without realizing it, you lower the overall strength of the message. That’s the dilution effect. In today’s edition: a simple test to help your strongest ideas stand out. When we hear a list of points in a presentation, we don’t judge each one on its own. We form a quick, overall impression—almost like averaging them. So if you lead with a strong...

Aspirational imagery shows people a version of themselves they already imagine—or hope—they could be. In this edition, we’re looking at how this principle works in branding, and how the same approach can strengthen your presentations by helping your audience see themselves in the future you're proposing. Aspirational imagery is a picture—literal or symbolic—that represents a future someone wants to experience. It evokes a feeling of: “I want that life,” “I want to feel like that,” or “That...

David Ogilvy’s legendary Rolls-Royce ad worked because it anchored luxury in a single, unexpected proof point: silence. Today, we’re breaking down how to find that kind of standout proof for your pitch or sales deck—something so strong it reshapes how people see your idea. David Ogilvy, one of the greatest minds in advertising, understood something fundamental about communication: clarity and precision drive impact. His 1958 Rolls-Royce ad headline is a masterclass in clear, compelling copy:...