I’m wild about a brand new, beautiful, and absolutely brilliant book on how to create memorable visuals for presentations.  It’s called Presentation Zen, Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, by Garr Reynolds (New Riders, 2008).

You only have to flip through the pages to immediately grasp Reynold’s provocative mix of inspiration and practical guidance.  As a presentation designer and internationally acclaimed communications expert, he shows how  thoughtfully designed, graceful, efficient visual imagery can make you look good as a presenter.  He has of the most popular Web sites on presentation design and delivery on the net — www.presentationzen.com.

The book is filled page after page of examples of how creativity, photos, large size font, and cool graphics can transform your PowerPoint from dull to dynamite.  Just one example - picture this - the slide on the left shows a full page photo of a runner slogging through the desert with a simple message - Less than 33% of U.S. adults are at a “healthy weight.”  Not bad.  But the slide on the right? It shows the midsection only of an overweight man grabbing his belly fat, with the caption in large print: 66% of Americans are obsese or overweight; below that a simple chart on the numbers of all adults, women and men.  It’s so much more memorable!

Garr Reynolds is a writer, designer and musician who currently holds the position of  Associate Professor of Management at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan. http://www.kansaigaidai.ac.jp/asp/

 Hence, his zen-way of seeing things.

His real message: Simplicity Rules.

How good is it?  Seth Godin  http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/ the marketing guru of gurus quips, “Please don’t buy this book! Once people start making better presentations, mine won’t look so good.”

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I often think about how customer service might be the only industry that technology hasn’t benefited.  We’ve all heard (and experienced) the horror stories of “pressing 1” and getting nowhere, “pressing 4” to be told you’ve reached the wrong department and asked to start over again, etc. etc. etc.  So it was refreshing when I got an email about a wonderful example of superb customer service!

My mom emailed me a few months ago about an experience she had calling the Bruins’ customer service line.  (I know, I know, I shouldn’t be bringing up stories back from when there was still hope for Boston hockey fans this year, but I just have to share this story…)  Below is the “excerpt” from her email - 

“It was so funny… before they made the playoffs, I randomly called the Bruins direct # & got this young guy AJ.  We chatted for several minutes…he joked and asked if I was a “true” fan and not just “dusting off my black & gold for the playoffs!” He took my # and email & said that he’d call as soon as they made it in.  Sure enough, he called me on my cell Monday morning… I thought that was excellent service!”

Not only did ”AJ” connect with her on a personal level, but he kept his promise to call her back.  It sounds “small,” but how many times has a random customer service representative promised to call you back just out of generosity and then actually done so!?  Who knows, maybe the Bruins have some sort of policy for their employees to be that courteous to all customers.   Or maybe this guy AJ is just a really nice, great guy.  Either way, his friendliness leaves me with a great impression of the Bruins’ organization.

I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s new book “Meatball Sundae”.  (The title really does make sense, I swear.)  Like some of his previous books, Godin talks a lot about word of mouth marketing.  My mom’s experience with AJ is a great example of how one encounter with a customer service rep can do wonders for the positive word of mouth about a company. 

Big companies may have gotten rich throughout the past few decades by cutting costs and creating cookie-cutter ways of dealing with customers.  But we’re all yearning for personal connections.  Going forward, I think it’s clear that the “AJ Factor” is going to increasingly define consumers’ opinions of a company. 

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