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Smarter way to glue your audience’s eyes to the presentation.

“The average human attention span has shrunk from 12 seconds in 2010 to 8 seconds in 2017.

Even less than the 9 seconds record of average goldfish.”

(BBC News, 2017)

Whether goldfish has shorter attention span or human is being more easily distractible these days, I’m no expert to judge.

However, there is one thing we could do when it comes to a business pitch — Capture our audience’s attention while we still can!

(Stay with me even though this article lasts longer than the promised 8 secs.)

About Attention Span

When we’re speaking of attention span, not only does it depends on the work context and task purpose, but also the lifestyle and culture of that particular person. For instance, mine only lasts for 4.75 secs in general.

Ain’t too patient, am I?

As an app designer, I asked myself when it comes to the composition of a design pitch.

1. How can I fully express an app idea without verbal or tedious written explanations in a short timeframe?
2. What do people prefer to see?
3. What tends to stand out from an average pitch presentation?
4. How to leave a stronger impression?

Potential solution:
Prepare a surprise. Something outstanding. Extra steps ahead of competitors.

What does it mean to produce an outstanding pitch?

Visualise your presentation.

We, human, are no doubts visual animals; naturally drawn to images and interactive elements. While “Seeing is believing”, visualisation actually helps our brain to digest and process information, which directly affects our impression towards the subject.

End of the day, the estimated proportion of visual learners could go as high as 80% according to Seyens (2016) — Humans Are Visual Creatures.With visual communication aids, your presentation would be at least 43% more persuasive.

Why are nice visuals so important?

The better you look, the higher chance you get a match on Tinder. (Figure of speech.) An eye-catching visual presentation gives your pitch a higher likelihood to be seen and selected. All in all, first impression is very key in terms of idea pitching.

Well. Everyone knows this now — nice illustrations have almost become an entry requirement to qualify as a good pitch. We need something more so as to prepare that‘surprise’for our potential clients.

How much preparation time should we spend on a pitch?

I know what you are thinking. A pitch does not guarantee any profits or expected returns. Is it worthy to allocate great time and effort on creating visual contents?

YES, we should always give our best.

Here is a simple theory of mine —

Ideally, to breakeven, the ‘surprise’ preparation time should equal the expected attention span of your audience.

Scenario: Let’s assume for now that our potential clients would spend their first 8 secs to decide whether to proceed and finish reading our app pitching proposal.

With our theory, either you keep tabs on the composition time, or make sure your client would spend at least 2 or 3 hours reading the proposal (which is almost impossible.)

Now. What can we prepare in approximately 8 seconds?

A lot actually! If you know the right tools. Let’s experiment.

How about…

What if I tell you the 3D animation takes less preparation time than the animated prototype?

Rotato is my recent discovery — you can read more about their development here by Morten Just. With their motto — “3D Animation For Everyone”, it is literally too good to be true. ‘Drag, drop and done’, this is definitely more productive and effective for product promotions.

The message I’m trying to bring out is, if there’s a will, there’s a way. Explore different options to achieve your expected outcomes.

Work smarter, not harder!

The Benefits of Including 3D Animations in Your Presentation.

I hope you are familiar with the NABC method, an ideate, prototype and pitch (3-in-1) method with reference to the article written by Dan Nessler. It certainly covers the four essential angles of a business pitch.

N — Need

A — Approach

B — Benefit.

C — Competition

The ultimate goal of this NABC method is to present the value proposition of a potential product solution in the most concise and attentive way. It helps to consolidate pitch idea with brain writing, prototyping and feedback collection on the respective N-A-B-C area.

By structuring a storytelling flow with the aid of 3D animation, it would be capable of expressing the unique selling point of your idea while engaging your audience within an extremely short timeframe.

More importantly, it shows the extra miles you went for the proposal and catches your client’s eyes at the first golden 8 seconds.