I have seen a lot of marketing professionals over the years give some pretty awful presentations. But Seth Godin appears to be one marketing "guru" who has given serious thought to how to design appropriate messages and accompanying visuals. Seth gets it. Can we call seth's presentation approach the "Godin Method"? (See the "Kawasaki Method" and "Takahashi Method".)

In an interview with Cliff Atkinson, Seth shares some of his views on presentations/PowerPoint:

"As a public speaker, I see far more than my fair share of presentations. Worse, a lot of them are from people getting paid to give them - and they're horrible. Horribly produced, horribly ineffective."

Many professionals who give presentations are not actually selling a product, so does all this selling and pitching stuff really apply, say, to academics, researchers, or to the guys down the hall in the accounting department? This was a question asked in the Atkinson interview. Seth comments:

"It seems to me that if you're not wasting your time and mine, you're here to get me to change my mind, to do something different. And that, my friend, is selling. If you're not trying to persuade, why are you here?"

A good question. A question I ask myself many times while watching (enduring?) highly paid senior managers and executives present information...one slide after another (...and another).

Seth wrote an ebook not too long ago that was a #1 bestseller on Amazon for about a year. I think the price was about two bucks for the downloadable PDF file. The money went to charity. The short book is well worth two bucks, but now you can get it for free if you agree to buy Free Prize Inside (it's on the honor system). The digital version is not copy protected so you are allowed to share the file with others in hardcopy or digital form. Spread the word.

I found slides demonstrating the "Godin Method" of presentation from the Ideavirus page on sethgodin.com. These particular slides (random sample thumbs below) are now over five years old. Back in the summer of 2000 there were probably not too many people with visuals like these...or today for that matter. Take a look at the slides. They are not for everyone, of course, but just click through the deck of 60 slides with an open mind. Perhaps you'll get some ideas for the design of your presentation visuals for a future talk. What aspects do you like? What design details would you change to fit your situation?

Sample thumbs from the July, 2000 presentation by Seth Godin: