Prezi and Persuasion

Tuesday night I attended a special guest lecture from Peter Arvai put on by USC's Institute for Multimedia Literacy. Arvai is the CEO of a new presentation tool software called Prezi, the third new media start-up he has been involved with that began in Hungary and is beginning to spread. Personally, I think Prezi beats the shit out of powerpoint, and I'm not the only one. The great thing about the software, is that you have one giant interactive pallet to place all your content - text, images, sound, and videos. You can place it all in different sizes and locations to enhance your argument, and when presenting you can come in and out of any part at any time. So, rather than a strictly linear, almost movie style presentation that we're used to, Prezi allows the presenter and audience to interact with each other and spend more or less time on different topics depending on the flow of the presentation. And what makes it even better, is that it's free to use, and it's all online - you build your presentation in a web browser, and save it to a customized URL that can be called up from any computer. No more worrying about saving the powerpoint file somewhere, or worrying about compatibility with other computers.

The presentation Arvai gave using Prezi was mostly about how to give a VC pitch. But whether intentional or not, his outline for a VC pitch was an outline for persuasion in general. He asked the audience what the goals of a VC pitch are, and how you accomplish them. After some back and forth with the crowd, we came to a list of three things you need to do - display potential for your idea or product, competency in yourself, and do it in a way that can be easily communicated to other people. For a VC pitch this makes complete sense; you need them to like your product and see that it's profitable, they have to believe you can come through with it, and you have to package it all in a simple argument they can remember and recount to convince their partners.

But I think this is important in trying to persuade any audience to do anything. Take Obama's campaign as an example: his goal was to get elected. So he had to present his ideas, or platform to the voting Americans and prove they had potential to work. He had to look good doing it, speak well, and convince us he is capable of coming through. And he had to make it all fit into an easily remembered argument - Yes we can. Obviously there was a lot more that went into his campaign than I just outlined, but he hit the three big parts of persuasion right on the money. And how about McCain? He also had to present his platform to voting Americans and convince us he is capable of coming through. But in proving his competency to complete the tasks at hand, he was not nearly as successful. A lot of the flack he got in the media was his running mate's competency and his own age. Jokes about him possibly dying in office, and viral videos of Sarah Palin sounding like she didn't know what she was saying, killed their campaign. And things like Tina Fey's depiction of Palin became that easily remembered and transferable message. Once again let me point out that these weren't the only factors influencing the election, but when looking at the simple act of persuasion, Obama beat the shit out of McCain.