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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 2,000-year-old trick for nailing your next high-stakes presentation

Forget the slow, chronological wind-up; the most powerful presentations drop you straight into the moment of highest drama. It’s a storytelling trick over 2,000 years old used to deliver everything from case studies to pitches to keynotes. In this edition, we’re breaking down how it transforms any presentation from a passive report into an urgent narrative that makes your solution inevitable. You have a high-stakes presentation. The audience is smart, busy, and has seen it all. You open your...

Great communication isn't just about what you say; it's about designing your message so the right parts are remembered. This intentional approach makes your key insights feel significant, gives your arguments a clear structure, and ensures your audience walks away with the takeaways you intended. Today, we're unpacking the Isolation Effect—a powerful psychological trigger for memory—and giving you a simple framework to add weight and clarity to your most important ideas. How do you ensure...

Movement-building storytelling does more than just explain your idea—it builds energy around it. It gives your audience a reason to care, a place in the story, and a sense that something bigger is underway. In this edition, we break down how Hamish McKenzie structures his TED Talk to create that effect—and how you can use the same moves to give your message more traction, urgency, and staying power. Some talks are about what you've built. Movement-building talks are about what you believe....

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:...