Make the results come alive

Editor’s note: Melissa Murray is an independent marketing consultant.

So you’ve finished that last focus group, data table or perceptual map - assured that you’ve collected the valuable insight your client is looking for. But your job’s not over yet. A market research study is often only as good as the quality of the presentation.

Finding an effective way to communicate research results can be tricky. Amongst all the options, one thing is certain: an effective PowerPoint presentation will be the key to transforming data into insight.

Know the basics

Since 1990, Microsoft PowerPoint has been a standard program in the Microsoft Office application suite, making it the most common presentation software on the market. Although other presentation software exists (i.e., Apple’s Keynote and OpenOffice.org’s Impress) these programs cater to the popularity of PowerPoint by enabling users to open, view, and convert PowerPoint files right inside the program.

A PowerPoint presentation is comprised of text, graphics and objects arranged on individual slides. PowerPoint slides are somewhat of a tribute to the 35mm slide projector, a presentation tool that has become nearly obsolete. Unlike a projector, PC-based presentations give users the convenience to print slides and creatively animate slide transitions. The overall design and structure of a presentation can be quickly modified with the click of a mouse, giving users the flexibility and control to efficiently develop visual aids.

As the style, animation and multimedia capabilities of PowerPoint become more sophisticated with each new version, presentation boards and handouts are becoming less relevant in most business and educational settings. Presenters who might not otherwise use a visual aid are plugging their content into pre-existing templates to create a truly interactive experience for the audience.

In spite of all the tools PowerPoint offers to aid presenters in creating an effective slideshow, the threat of “death by PowerPoint” remains a real risk. The expression has become popular for describing poor and ineffective presentations. Although personal preferences lead to varying definitions of poor, common symptoms of this condition include:

• unnecessarily long presentations;

• slides with all text - no graphics, animation and/or white space;

• slides cluttered with clip art and/or a distracting use of animation;

• too much variance in colors, fonts, font sizes, slide format and overall style;

• too much to read - including excessive bullet points and/or run-on sentences;

• failing to tailor language, style and/or graphs to the audience;

• slides that are difficult to read by all members of the audience.

Avoiding blunders such as these can be tricky for even the most experienced PowerPoint user. Researchers face an exceptional challenge when presenting intricate qualitative and quantitative data. However, creating an effective multimedia presentation is easy with these simple hints.

Start strong

Being fully organized is essential when creating a PowerPoint presentation. Think about the purpose of the presentation and the audience who will see it before choosing fonts and colors or determining headings and content.

HINT: Choose a slide background, body text and heading placement, fonts and accent colors and apply these settings once to the slide master. To do this, click on the View menu, mouse over Master and select the sub-menu Slide Master. The slide master will become visible and you can edit fonts, colors and text-box placements. When finished making modifications to the slide master, simply click Close Master View from the floating dialogue box or click the View menu and choose Normal View to return to the individual slides.

Once the slide master is set, every slide in the presentation will reflect the same stylistic elements. Furthermore, if you decide later to change an independent characteristic of the presentation, you can modify the slide master once and instantly apply the change to all slides.

Minimize text

Although a slideshow presentation is not the substitute for a formal research report, many users type every idea they intend to share with the audience directly into the slides. This leaves very little room for graphics or essential white space and results in a text-heavy presentation filled with run-on sentences.

HINT: Combat text-heavy slides by typing up a set of presenters’ notes in Microsoft Word or another word processing program. Organize the information according to how you plan to discuss it in the presentation and pull headings and bullet points straight from the notes.

Limit the amount of information on the slides to only the main points from this longer set of notes. Keep in mind that the bullets on your slide should be used as speaker’s cues to help minimize the amount of verbatim reading that you do. Don’t give the audience so much to read that they are distracted from what you have to say.

Think of the slides as a safety net, rather than the primary way of communicating to the audience. The bullets on a slide should help you get back on track if you lose your train of thought and the presentation should always be a supplement to the conversation you use to engage the audience. Each time you introduce a new slide, you want to create a natural transition for the audience: their attention is immediately fixed on the new slide and then gradually returns to the speaker.

HINT: Another quick and easy way to format PowerPoint material is to type directly in the Outline view. Referring again to your presenters’ notes, click the Outline tab and begin typing as you would an outline, with main points as headings and indenting supporting information. Each time you press Enter in the outline, a new slide will be created with the next headline.

Have your preferences set on the slide master before typing an outline so that each new slide is consistent. Once the outline is complete, the slide show can be created directly from its content or a copy of the outline can be printed by selecting Outline View in the Print dialogue box.

Master consistency

As important as the content may be, your client will also be evaluating the stylistic consistency of your presentation. Aside from appearing unprofessional, a stylistically inconsistent presentation - one with varying headline sizes or irregular text-box alignment, for example - is incredibly distracting to an audience.

HINT: To keep things consistent, copy a finished slide in the Slide Sorter area to the left of the main slide view and paste it immediately following the finished slide, and then modify content in the main view from there.

PowerPoint will automatically number the slides and by creating new slides this way, you avoid the hassle of modifying the standard slide setup that defaults when creating a new slide. Likewise, reordering slides is easy: select a slide in the Slide Sorter area and drag it to a new position amongst the other slides.

The best way to create aesthetic consistency is by applying a pre-made template complete with background design and a coordinating text color scheme. If you feel you have exhausted the limited selection of ready-to-use templates in the PowerPoint program, browse and download over 700 free templates online at Powerbacks (http://powerbacks.com/ ).

HINT: When you find a set of templates you like, simply download the Zip file onto the desktop or your computer’s hard drive. To access the template, open the Zip file, open the name of the template file inside (i.e., Gradients) until you see icons for .jpegs and .pot files. To preview a template, double-click any image (.jpeg) file. After deciding on a template you like, double-click on a .pot file with the same number and select Open to access the PowerPoint template. PowerPoint will automatically open and the new template will be applied to the slides.

In addition to using the same background on each slide, use no more than two fonts. For example, use a serif font such as Lucida Calligraphy or Times New Roman for headings and a sans serif font such as Arial or Tahoma for the body text. Using a combination of two fonts adds a certain amount of interest to the presentation and gives you a reasonable amount of creative freedom with bold or italic effects.

HINT: Make headings pop by applying a shadow: select the text, right-click, choose Font and click the Shadow checkbox.

As mentioned before, save time in formatting each new slide (every new slide created will default to black or white Arial text) by formatting the font style, color and size within the heading and body text boxes on the slide master. This ensures that the elements appearing on every slide will not shift as you advance through the presentation.

HINT: Increase your credibility by inserting your company name, the client’s logo, or slide numbers on the slide master. It will appear in the same position on every slide.

The last way to ensure a professional feel during the slideshow is by choosing an appropriate slide transition and applying it to every slide. Good slide transitions include Box In, Box Out or Circle In, set to play slow. A few to avoid are the Checkerboard or Random Bars, mainly because they can become distracting in large doses. The subtle slide transitions are usually enough to spice up the slideshow, therefore individual transitional elements, such as a title heading flying onto the screen or transition sounds, should really be avoided.

Provide notes

So you’ve typed out all the presenter’s notes in a word processor format and there’s some really, really good information there. You’re searching for a way to squeeze another slide in somewhere so you can be sure the audience is exposed to every last bit of valuable insight. Well, relax and refrain from slide overkill by providing that information to your audience in the form of handouts.

HINT: The PowerPoint notes feature is a great way to share notes and provide the audience with a copy of the slides. A good rule of thumb is to use the word processor program to spell-check and format your notes, making sure the content is no more than 25 lines. Once you have final text, copy and paste it in the Notes window, which is the box directly below the slide when set to Normal view.

Using this feature, you can print a set of individual slides with accompanying notes following at the bottom of the page. You will find that the audience will not only appreciate the presentation and notes organized all in one document, but you’ll earn their undivided attention since you’ve freed them from note-taking. When presenting to a client, always print a copy of the presentation so that they can follow along and jot down questions or ideas during the presentation.

HINT: When getting ready to print your slides, be sure to select Notes Pages in the print dialogue box. Also, print first in black-and-white and proof for errors before printing copies for the client in color.

Be visually engaging

Elevating an everyday PowerPoint to a professional level requires accentuating clear, concise bullet points with media that enhances the content in a truly memorable way. An effective presentation should do more for the audience than simply bulleting the information that the speaker says - it should complement what is being verbally presented.

A major strength of PowerPoint is the ability to display photographs and play video. These visual elements are a great way to help connect the client with the research study. The sole purpose of your slides is to engage the attention of your audience as a visual aid to your verbal presentation, so when designing your slideshow, be sure you take advantage of PowerPoint’s multimedia capabilities.

Incorporating photographs into your presentation is easy. The minimal effort does wonders for the professionalism and quality of slideshow content. A digital camera or professional photographer is really not necessary. You can easily substitute a disposable camera to snap photos of respondents engaged in discussion.

HINT: When you develop the shots, order a photo CD and insert the photos directly into your presentation from there. Other sources of imagery to enhance your PowerPoint can be obtained online. For example if you are showcasing the state-of-the-art facility used to house a study, visit the facility’s Web site and pull photographs from there. Simply right-click on the image and select Save As to save the photo or logo to your computer and insert it onto a slide.

Don’t be afraid to be tactfully creative. If a slide topic is defining the perceptions of a particular target group, insert a photo that resembles that type of consumer.

HINT: A great way to locate photos like this is through Corbis (www.corbis.com ), which offers royalty-free stock photography and illustrations. Registration is required, however once registered, you can browse the entire collection of images and right-click them from the site without watermarks (images have a Corbis watermark otherwise).

The site also sells volumes of CDs filled with royalty-free images that you can purchase for personal use. A CD of images is around $600, but this investment is not really necessary for presentation purposes, since a wide selection is available online with simple membership. The advantage to using a source like Corbis is the professional feel that photography will add to a presentation. Mixing cheesy cartoon clip-art and real-life photographs are a major no-no - unless of course the client’s business is toys. Many presenters are tempted to use a variety of clip art, moving images and photography to liven up the presentation, but more often than not this lessens the professionalism of the slideshow.

Importing tables and graphs created in applications such as SPSS or Excel is another great way to visually engage the audience. For example, the results from an SPSS perceptual brand map are produced in an Excel macro file. The easiest way to pull such a file into PowerPoint is to first delete the statistics sheet in the Excel macro - leaving the sheet with the map only - and re-saving it as a new file. Next, on a blank slide in PowerPoint click the Insert menu and choose Object. Choose the modified file and the map will become a single piece of artwork that can be manipulated in the presentation. To maximize the visibility for the audience, increase the size of the map to the edges of the slide. The font style, color and size of the labels on the map can be modified by double-clicking the file and changing each one individually. If you choose to modify the file, know that resizing the text often requires the text box itself to be enlarged to accommodate the larger text.

As new methods of conducting qualitative research online are evolving, new approaches to blogs and message boards are constantly emerging. PowerPoint easily enables you to display screens showcasing a blog or discussion thread. To copy a Web page onto a slide simply pull up the desired page, hold down the CTRL key and press the Print Screen button. Next, switch windows so that the presentation is active and right-click and choose Paste. The page will appear in the presentation and will likely be larger than the blank slide, so press and hold the Shift key and use the corner handles of the Web site artwork to reduce the image size.

Use technology to add a little spice

Possibly the best element a researcher can incorporate into a PowerPoint presentation is a video clip highlighting a particularly interesting point from a focus group or interview. There are a few ways to do this, however the easiest approach is to use a service that will record and catalog the focus group session for you.

InterClipper (www.interclipper.com ), for example, allows moderators to record, bookmark, distribute and organize clips from the discussion. The moderator simply uses a remote to mark certain points during a recording and later decides how much of a statement should be included in a clip. When ordering this service, it is important to request that clips be saved as high-resolution and stored on a CD as a wave (.wav) or Windows Media (.wmv) file so that they can be quickly uploaded without sacrificing video integrity.

HINT: When inserting a video clip, be sure to save copies of the clip in the same destination folder housing the PowerPoint presentation (if moved to a laptop or stored on a removable storage device, be sure to save copies of the clips as well). Storing the clips with the PowerPoint file ensures that the link created in the slide remains intact for undisturbed play during the presentation.

Next, click the Insert menu, choose Movies and Sounds and click Movie from File. Choose the clip intended for the slide. When inserting the clip, you will be prompted to set the movie file to play automatically or on command during the presentation. It is best to choose When Clicked simply because you can never be certain on timing during a presentation. Choosing this option will prevent the clip from interrupting a speaker or audience discussion abruptly following the slide transition.

After inserting the link to a clip, a rectangle (either black or a still of the first frame of the video) will appear on the slide. To avoid the unsightly box, reduce the box size and drag it off the slide to the gutter.

Next, you should set the clip to play on full-screen. To do this, right-click on the rectangle and choose Edit Movie Object from the shortcut menu. In the Movie Options dialogue box, click Zoom to Full Screen under the Display Options heading. In order to start the movie at your discretion, the last step is to add an on-click animation effect. To do this, choose Custom Animation from the Slide Show menu, click the rectangle, and choose Add Effect. Be sure to add an entrance effect such as Appear and move the animation to the top of the effects list by dragging it or hitting the Up re-order arrow so that it is at the top of the list of effects for the slide.

Effective tool

Using these hints, your next PowerPoint presentation can lend justice to extraordinary research, enhancing both quantitative and qualitative results. Focus on consistency and brevity and you’ll produce a professional, effective visual communication tool.