Good. The subject clearly caught your attention.

In the spirit of full transparency, this is not about cancer. And it is not true that PowerPoint is second to nicotine as a cause of malignancy.

Okay. With that outta the way…

Here’s the real story. Did we miss an important memo? The one that said that public speaking is and must be an ordeal…for the audience?

Did you get that memo? If you did, throw it out immediately! And read on.

Standing up in front of a room or ballroom or stadium (respect!) full of people and doing your thing, your shtick, your pitch rates up there with marriage, a new job and divorce on that list of stressful life events. (True confession: We love public speaking. Really. Give either of the founders of Storytegic a mic and good luck ever getting it back…! We are unabashedly weird, we know.)

Anyway, we get it that giving a presentation can be ordeal for the speaker.

But what about for the audience? Has anyone thought about those poor wretches and the soul-destroying effects of poor presentations? Have researchers thought about potential neck or spinal injuries as bored-out-of-their-gourd audience members first slump and then crash to the floor when the 212th slide appears on the screen?

Or what about the mortification of falling asleep and drooling on your iPad? Or, even worse, on someone else’s iPad?

And what does all of this have to do with brand?

The reason that presentations are killing audiences is that they have become unapologetically formulaic. Speakers don’t even think. And they rarely, if ever, storyboard what they’re going to say. Instead, it’s straight to PowerPoint. Bullet pointed agendas. And a “Where’s Waldo” approach to white space.

The great presentation:

1. Is a story
2. Has a beginning, a middle and an end.
3. Has a hero (usually an underdog) and a villain/challenge
4. Is inspiring and engaging and gets the audience to give a shit about the outcome. Really.
5. And, finally, is mostly visual. Or, even better, 100% visual.

About that last one. It’s important to think about the fact that the brain is a two-way channel. Think of it as a highway. Text gets one lane; visuals get the other. Add to this the fact that the brain processes visuals roughly 60 times faster than text and you arrive at the following conclusion: it is waaaaay too difficult (read: exhausting) to cope with the traffic in both lanes. So why not go mostly visual so that your audience has much more time in which to actually listen to what you are saying?

Oh, and the other benefit to visual storytelling is this: It is more memorable. Turns out we humans remember images more than we remember text or data.

What does this have to do with brand?

EVERYTHING.

When someone stands up before a group — large or small — that person is making a statement about her brand. A presentation is a way for people to experience your brand. And come away feeling either engaged, switched on and excited or, yup you guessed it, bored, irritated and desperately sleepy.

A great presentation is a story. The onscreen experience is mostly visual. Or even exclusively visual. That frees up the audience to listen. To hear. And to experience the story. To let that story reach us at the emotional level. Because we’ve all been there: we have all been that underdog, that David facing that Goliath (whoever or whatever he is — the fierce competitor, the thug of a manager, the nearly impossible challenge). We cheer for David. We root for the little guy.

Stories reach our emotional core. Our gut. Not coincidentally, that is where strong brands live: right there, in the gut. We don’t become brand loyal because something is on sale; we become brand loyal because we relate to that brand and we believe that it matters in our lives. Because it does.

So if we step away from believing that brand touchpoints are exclusively physical assets, like packaging or billboards or brochures, and embrace the idea that even a presentation can and will be an expression of our brand, then we see the danger in the deadly PowerPoint presentation.

(NB: It isn’t the software itself that’s so toxic. It’s how it is used. Er…misused. We prefer Keynote, to be honest. And we’ve used cardboard and markers to achieve a powerful effect. Don’t believe us? Check out Alex Bogusky’s work. He is beyond awesome and he uses cardboard signs. We borrowed the idea from him. Hell, even if you do believe us, check out Alex Bogusky’s work. He is amazing. No, we are not related. We don’t know him. We just worship him.)

If your brand is about respect, passion, commitment, sustainability, being bold, being gutsy, being compassionate, saving the dolphins or making people laugh — in other words, whatever your brand is about — then bring THAT to your presentation. Bring THAT to your story. Be passionate. Be authentic. Be gutsy, brave, empathic, funny, green or quietly confident. Consider bringing the dolphin.

And leave at home the 312 slide “deck” with endless lists of bullet points, sentences to be read aloud (an insult to your audience — they know how to read!), complicated diagrams that say nothing, whooshing and swooshing elements coming in from the sides and confusing and alarming people.

Tell your story. Stand up in that room and live your values. Get your audience to sit up and pay attention and get involved. Issue a Call to Adventure.

Rock that presentation and give the audience something to think about. More than anything, give ‘em somethin’ to care about. To stay awake for. To believe in. To get behind.

That is brand storytelling. And it ain’t got no bullet points.