I filled out an application for a job yesterday where one of the job requirements was the ability to present to multiple levels of audiences. That made me think back to my days at Young & Rubicam in New York.
Y&R had a fantastic training program. You went into the program the day you started and you left it the day you left Y&R. At the beginning, my training was purely focused on the skills needed for the job. So as a Media Planner, it was all about media math and the mechanics of media planning/buying. But when I was promoted to Senior Media Planner (all of about 4 months after I started), the presentation skills workshop I was required to take, is branded into me.
Presentation skills was multiple weeks of sessions on how to speak without being afraid – nervous is one thing, but the point was to take fear out of a presentation. We had to prepare multiple types of presentations – demonstration, persuasion, establishment of facts, etc – and they video taped us each time.
It was PAINFUL watching the tapes while the entire group critiqued you. But I learned so much from going through it. Amazing experience and I would recommend it to anyone no matter how humiliating it could be in an isolated moment.
Later in my career, I worked at Bates USA on the Wendy’s account doing field marketing. I was responsible for as many as 20 franchisee co-ops local advertising. So I presented A LOT. The presentation training I received at Y&R was one of the reasons I was very successful in that role.
I remember presenting for my Wendy’s franchisees once in Indianapolis. The group was in a ballroom at a hotel and I was presenting competitive information at the front of the room. The unfortunate thing was that I was directly under an AC vent that was just blasting – and I was wearing contact lenses. As I presented, my contacts were getting more and more dry. I was fighting my way through it but about half way through my presentation, a lens peeled right off my eye. I felt it going and stuck a hand out to catch it. As I caught it, the second one peeled off as well. So I’m standing in front of about 50 people holding my contacts in my hands, blind as a bat. The room burst into laughter and we had to take a quick break for me to find my glasses and continue. I probably was as red as a tomato but in the end, we all laughed – and my franchisees teased me about it for a long time. But that taught me I could get through ANYTHING in a presentation.
Have you had any odd presentation experiences? Tell us about them in the comments!
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