Advertising Pitch: Presentation Reflection

Yesterday I presented my pitch for the ‘Affordable and Easy to Assemble Conflict Zone Shelter’. I am relieved that the presentation went well seeing as I was incredibly timorous of the exceedingly abstract task that was at hand. Rather than seeking further clarification on the precise meaning of a ‘pitch’ my group and I decided we would avoid resolving our nebulous state of mind and simply follow the format of the ‘Mad Men Pitch’. Had there been enough time allocated to planning the task, had the presentation been more trenchant.

The persuasion techniques I incorporated into the pitch (more of an advertisement) were:

·      Basic persuasion technique- warm and fuzzy: A presentation rife of images displaying the sad lives refugees live and images of children left without a home will cause the audience to think of their own families and thus they will be struck by a wave of empathy that will benefit the seller (me) and make it easier to sell our product.

·      Intermediate persuasion technique- Charisma: The presenters had to maintain confidence and a winsome attitude. The audience will be inexorable if the presenters did not display their confidence.   With confidence comes trust from the audience. The moment your audience trusts your credibility, consider your product SOLD! This is incredibly important when you are striving to convince an audience of a charity case/ product.

·      Intermediate persuasion technique - rhetorical question: Rhetorical questions were used in order to emphasize the exceedingly egregious global refugee crisis: this helped me subtly (yet effectively) convince the audience that there is an exigent need for donations (that can be done through our company) in order to make an impact on the world as we strive to make the world a better place.

·      Intermediate persuasion technique - simple solution: Our product is the simple solution to help improve the lives of the refugees and and save the world!  

o   Dominance appeal: The audience gain a sense of power and self worth through hearing that they can make a change in the world and that they have the power to help those whom have been enervated due to poverty.  

·      Advanced- persuasion technique: timing- The current global events and the international refugee crisis have caused this ad to be relevant. Due to the Syrian refugee crisis and all the morose news of anguish that has accompanied this event, the audience would naturally experience a moment of hindsight that would ultimately lead to a wave of sad emotions. Thus, this would reduce the barriers between the presenters and the audience, which would then lead to an abundance of products being sold.

Audience and context:

My audience was directed towards adults whom had a stable life and a job, thus they had the financial capacity of providing donations to help those in need.

The context I was provided with was the Global Market.

Knowing my audience and context enabled me to effectively craft my pitch in order to maximize its efficiency and its rate of success.

Points of improvement:

·      Clarity of voice: I kept vacillating between the paper in my hand and trying to maintain eye contact with the audience. As our presentation pried on empathy, it would have been best if I had memorized my lines. Having the paper in front of my face and not knowing my lines sprouted a great deal of insecurity in my mind, this was evident in the tone of my voice.

·      Script: the script was poorly written. The content of the script was inaccurate. The structure of the script was poorly assembled. 

·      Vapid tone: I could not present at my full potential as my insecurity held me back, thus my presenting voice was undeniably vapid.

·      Inaccurate presentation: My presentation was inaccurate as my group approached the task in a different manner to what was asked. A pitch is not an advertisement; it is merely the mechanics of creating an advertisement.

Through approaching my past presentation’s faults, I have learnt a valuable lesion that will benefit my FOA: I must be meticulously read the task in in order to be able to create a diligent and coherent presentation.

  

Watching the other groups present had truly kindled many presentation ideas for my FOA’s and it gave me insight into what I could do to maximize the success of my FOA presentation.