jon steel at the apg

(In the style of Gwen Yip.  But nowhere near as good because I can't draw and I'm not Gwen.  Caveat: this talk was ostensibly about perfect pitching, but like all the best talks, really about lots more besides.  I will have missed out a lot - this is what struck me most.  All quotes are paraphrases).

The apg originally allowed for a 30 person audience.  About 300 turn up.  We must have looked scary.

Yet 3 of the people in my taxi don't know who Jon Steel is.  (The other 2 are amazed.)

There is a big screen with the word professionalism written on it while we are waiting for Jon to start.

When Jon does start, I can feel the fondness for him in the room.  I'm suprised how fond I am of him too, just from reading his first book.  (Haven't read this one yet.)  I want him to be really, really good.  And he is.

He talks in a very professional suit to a very professional looking audience in a consummately professional Holiday Inn room about how being unprofessional is really important.  And how often the most unusual, unprofessional looking people, offices and work, are the most brilliant.

Lots of his talk is about good presentation as much as good pitching.  And the evils of powerpoint when you let it dictate your message.  He uses Churchill as one example.

What if his famous speech to rally England had had charts in it that looked like this?

He has misspelt Hitler on this chart, which he might have done on purpose to make a joke about it.  He's very funny.  He makes all of us laugh a lot. 

He shows a picture of his Blackberry

and says he ran over it forwards and then in reverse in his car.  I can't imagine him doing this in rage.  I can only imagine it being done very calmly.  But I know what he means.  We need more time free of checking this stuff.

He says at Goodby he let all his planners take unlimited holiday as long as they did something good with it.  Lots of people frantically scribble notes to take back to their psycho bosses to say that Jon Steel said they could do what they like.

 

Jon talks about how logic is not the way to get to ideas, and how we should all take more time off to let our subconscious have the ideas.

There are lots of quesitons at the end.  And Jon's almost better at answering questions (and making them more interesting than they seem) than he is at presenting.  It's lovely to hear.

Q: How can creatives help you guys get insights?  [I can feel half the audience sag a little at the question, and the other half going 'oh yeah, interesting.']

A: Planners don't have the exclusive deal on insights.  We all have them, so we all work together.

Q: What would you say a successful pitch was?

A: One where you're proud of the work you did, whether you win or not. 

Q: What would you have done again differently, pitch wise?

A: I would have said no to pitching a few pieces of business.

Q: You mention Tony Blair speaking French in the London Olympics pitch.  Do you agree with slating the opposition?

A: No.  but I believe in saying things from which the client might infer something bad about the opposition.

Q: What is your next book?

A: It's a love story in Africa with gorillas.  Nothing to do with business.

I find myself wishing the other two thirds of the industry were here too so that planning wisdom doesn't just stay as planning wisdom.  But I leave inspired to be unprofessional none the less.  And with the plan to get to the place where I love presenting as much as Jon does. 

Things I learned:

When you're pitching have the idea very early, then 'execute the hell out of it' (when a client asked Silverstein whether that was the best idea they could have come up with once, Silverstein replied: 'Is your wife the best woman you could have married?')

If you wear your heart on your sleeve (whatever your heart's like) it will be a better presentation.

We shouldn't hide our intuition from our clients behind facts and research.  There's nothing to be embarrassed about.

One of the most powerful new business tools is the ability to say No.  When the business isn't right for your agency, or you don't think you can win.  Or you're doing too many pitches.

Win pitches on your own terms.

Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Powerpoint is designed for the benefit of presenters, not the audience.

The presenter is the presentation.

Wordy powerpoint if always overkill for a presentation, and underkill for a leave-behind copy.

Bosses need to trust their teams and delegate properly.  Small groups become demotivated very fast if they know the chief exec will come in and rewrite the pitch the night before.  Either the CE is involved properly from the start, or not at all.

Comments

[henry lambert]

Brilliant! I was there too, but didn't take notes. I've stuck my memories of it up on IF - not nearly as well written or interesting as yours though!

[beeker]

http://if.psfk.com/if/#Jon%20Steel%20-%20Perfect%20Pitch

Link to Henry's thing. He's got lots of things I missed. Thanks Henry.

[Johnny Vulkan]

Very nice write up - I'm sad to have missed it - "thanks for sharing" as we say stateside. Hope the road trip planning is coming along nicely.

[Lebowski]

Cool.

I learnt that:

a. Fermentation comes before distillation in any other industry except ours. Which says we (and by that I mean old fashioned agencies) are doing it wrong by trying to get to a proposition and go from there.
b. He doesnt like people being too obsessed by business/marketing/all that nonsense. More important to read fiction and experience stuff than reading business books. And that he's not going to write any more business books, instead he's writing a novel.

The last one might be a note for bloggers who only ever write about our industry to take note of. So more bloggers who do interesting stuff like write about classical music (see what I did there?) and meat contests and other interests that are fun and actually interesting, not stuff that is just 'work/business/brand interesting', please.

[Will]

Interesting stuff..

He sounds just as I'd expect him -very calm and considered, aschewing overly rational responses to communications questions.

Considering Jon is supposedly going to be giving me a buzz in the next few days, I think I should list some more interests on my blog (if he got the email I sent, at any rate...). Expect a podcast in the next day or so.

Thanks again for this beeker - it's really fascinating.

[Faris]

Hey Beeks!

Lovely to see you - excellent write up - I had better think of something else to say about it ;)

FX

[Northern Planner]

Hi

Lovely post,I put up something and wish I hadn't bothered now..

[richard]

Top post Beeker. I missed it but felt I could have been there.

[Helen]

I missed it too - but am loving reading all the write ups. Yours wins purely on the basis of great visual aids.

[jon steel]

Thanks, Beeker. I think your post was a lot better than my presentation. Jon

[beeker]

Jon, I'd like to say it was nothing. But some of those illustrations took an awful long time to really nail.
(Very good to see you here).

[gemma]

Dear Top Boss,

Jon Steel (very important Planning guru, I'll lend you the books) said that I can have as much holiday as I like, so long as I go and do fun things with my free time. And I can book pretend important meetings with myself in Outlook but go and sit in Starbucks instead as I need Time To Think. Oh, and don't bother giving me a Blackberry as Jon says that I should run it over with my car as they are the devil's communication tool or something.

By the way, the night before a big pitch he says you have to cough up for great wine and I should never, ever be forced to use PowerPoint ever again.

But thats what Jon said, so thats OK isn't it?

[Amelia]

I was lucky enough to work with Jon at Berlin Cameron in New York and in fact worked with Jon on one of the Pfizer pitches that he mentions in his (excellent!) book. The pitch was the best run, most insightful and most fun that I have had the pleasure of working on.
For a long time Jon has been a bit of planning guru in the States but not so known here - glad that this is changing now.

[beeker]

I think you'll inspire a fair bit of rampant envy with that last comment, Amelia. Not least from me. Jon's been my guru ever since I read TL&A. It was what encouraged me to try and be a planner in the first place.