Inspired by Swedish blogger Fredrik Wass who stated that he will blog for a 100 days in a row I felt I had to get my blog going again. So here we go!

Photographed by Paulina while forecasting trends at the Creative Summit together with among others Brian Solis and Alf Rehn.

In 2011 I was honored to be selected as the keynote speaker for events all over Europe. I delivered more than 80 keynotes on entrepreneurship, creative ideas, future branding, communication and business development, some of them shared here on Slideshare. In more than 90% of the occasions I was given the highest ranking of all the speakers by the audience. Hell, I even spoke for 24 hours in a row without any sleep. In other words – I’m confident I have some thoughts to share on how to deliver a great keynote presentation.

Here are 15 keys to deliver a fantastic keynote presentation.

1. Before even getting on stage – make sure you’ve got your logos, pathos and ethos wired.

What you speak about is 50% of your keynote, but the way you look and sound giving that keynote is the other 50%. The worlds first branding expert Aristotles knew how to make people buy what he sold. He divided the means of persuasion, appeals, into three categories; Ethos, Pathos and Logos.

- Ethos: the source’s credibility, the speaker’s/author’s authority

My credibility when I’m speaking is of course a mix of how I look, my credentials and the way I bring my message forward on stage. A common mistake I see over and over again is when speakers enter the stage and then go; “Before I speak, let me tell you about who I am and the company I’m representing.” This is more or less totally unnecessary since you’re there for a reason. If you do your thing right people will understand that you know your shit. After all, someone invited you so the people in front of you in the crowd will surely expect you to deliver. Remember that no one knows what you will say before you say it so don’t be to hard on yourself if you forget something you were supposed to say!

Who would you listen to if you were a banker? Who would you listen to if you were an Art Director?

An important thing though is to avoid making people angry (if that’s now what your assignment is) by dressing totally wrong, swearing or making fun of things that matter to the people in the room. A certain amount of selling should always be taken into account even if it requires you to dress up differently than you’re used to.

- Logos: the logic used to support a claim (induction and deduction); can also be the facts and statistics used to help support the argument.

When it comes to logos there’s different ways to handle this. Reliable statistics, famous quotes, facts and but also your own observations. However if you only bring up a observation as a proof of your theory you’ll tend to make people feel unsure about your whole presentaiton. But if you make sure to find patterns in historical information and present them in an understandable way you’re usually home free.

In 2007 I spoke about how Facebook would be the worlds most trafficked site with the help of this technical analysis of site traffic.

After all – if you are giving a keynote about future trends or an idea the world have never seen you will have to present logics that support your claims. The history if often your best friend when speaking about things in the future.

- Pathos: the emotional or motivational appeals; vivid language, emotional language and numerous sensory details.

Mirror mirror on the wall! Yes it’s actually true. The more you rehearse the better you get. Use your face, eyes, arms, voice and your whole body. Once you’ve got it wired get out there and rock the party!

2. If you don’t know the subject – don’t speak at all.

The worst presentations I’ve ever given over the years are the ones where I didn’t really master the subject. Avoid moments like that. Of course that shouldn’t keep you from challenging yourselves every now and then. But don’t choose the big arenas for those crying games.

3. Ask what your contractor want

I’ve learned that no one knows your audience better than your contractor. Therefor it’s key that you ask what they want to achieve with your keynote. Make people happy? Make people angry? Make people scared or give people hope. Still I don’t want to much information. It’s important that the contractor doesn’t shape my presentation After all, I am the professional. My solution is the five bullet point rule. Before every presentation I’m expected to give I ask my contractor to send me five short bullets that explains who I’m speaking in front, what they want them to learn, how they want the audience to feel once I’m done and what the goal with the event is.

4. Sell one thing!

This is an easy one so I’ll keep it short – If you’re selling fish don’t make up stories about dead meat. Make sure people understans that know one knows big fish as you do!

5. Drop the corporate bullshit

If you’re representing your company and is expeted to sell something then make sure you share your knowledge and people will ask you in the end what you sell. Nothing sells as competence. Trust people to contact you if they thought you knew what you were talking about.  If you’re on stage purely focused on selling no one will listen to what you’re actually selling.

6. Drop the bullets.

Sometimes the best solution is to make fun of the worst.

No one wants you to read bullets from corporate slides. We’ve all been there. Stuck in the middle of an audience listening to some boring odd character looking not on us but instead on his own presentation and reading those bullets like dead people read poems…not good. Please stop giving keynotes if you don’t know how to sell your shit! Tons of corporate CEO’s are really good at this. They’re sent off to a stage somewhere in never-never-land expected to deliver a keynote with a deck of slides in their hands prepared by a assistent somewhere. I hate CEO’s speaking of shit they don’t know shit about. What’s up with that?

7. Drop the corporate fonts

Every slide in your deck should be there for a reason!

There’s nothing as boring as a presentation with one headline font and then another one for the rest. You’re on stage to inspire people, teach them something and especially keep them awake. No two slides should be the same.

8. Tell stories from your own life.

Preparing a keynote and a story about how my snowboard career ended.

Nothing brings life to a presentation like your own life. True stories that are coming from your own life are the best. People have never heard them before, they’re authentic and people out of some reason always count them as real stories. Of course, if you end up telling stories about Marsians and shit like that people will probably not belive you.

9. You’ve also got ‘black’ slides in your deck!

This is your most valuable slide!

In the world of photoshop, keynote, powerpoint and prezis maybe the most valuable color of them all – black – is often forgotten. If you’ve got something to say that you really really really want people to listen to. Place a black slide in the middle of the deck and let those words out without distraction. If you’re doing it right you’ll have your audience spellbound.

10. Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse some more.

This is one of the things I’m really bad at. But every time I’ve done a presentation that I’m really proud of I’ve almost rehearsed it. I even rehearse presentations that I know by heart already. You can never rehearse enough!

11. It’s your stage. Then make sure it fits your needs.

One of the key factors to delivering a great keynote is the actuall stage. Far to many times have I entered a stage that didn’t match the venue. Maybe the stage was to big compared to how many people visited the event or vice versa. Every now and then someone has placed a wide table between you and the audience – remove it. If people take their places far back in the room – leave the stage and get closer to them. The last thing you want is an audience that thinks your on stage acting superior and distant.

12. One minute before entering the stage

An audience in Zagreb minutes before I’m entering the stage.

Ok, so you’re all done and prepared to give the speech of your life. Remember those five bullet points I wrote about. Now it’s time to get into presentation mode. When I’m waiting to enter the stage I think about these five bullets. The most important one however is how did my contractor want people to feel once I’m done. If they wanted me to make people happy I’m smiling like a dumbass those last 60 seconds. I they wanted me to provoke the audience I’m getting myself psyched up and angry. If they wanted me to make people feel enlightened I’m getting ready to enlighten people. And then I do my best to keep that feeling alive all through the presentation.

13. If something goes wrong – restart yourselves.

Once you’re up there doing your best you will experience moments of dispair. You might see someone in the audience looking bored, someone looks tired or maybe you’ll get an angry comment. Now is the time to seek your inner strenght. Think back to that presentation mode you were supposed to deliver upon. Take a breath, pause, make people wait and then restart. You’ll notice that this will get you back on track!

14. Never lose track of time.

Make sure you prepare your presenter display right.

Rule number one of all presentations. If you’ve got 20 minutes it’s 20 minutes. Not less and definitely not more. If you’re using Apple Keynote you should make sure to set up your second screen with timer and a clock. Another good idea can be to download an app that Per Axbom told me about. It’s called Timer for iPhone and let’s you set up sections to keep track of time. It’s a great help!

15. Shine!

Now it’s up to you! Rock on!

If you’re my brand: Never let me down. Keep on making me smile. Stay cool. Always surprise me. Change when you need to, but stay true to your heritage. Dress nice. Make sure I don’t have to hide our love. If you do something bad – stay honest and tell the truth cause I will forgive you. And finally! Never ever take me for granted.

Tokyo in sunrise – A Brand that didn’t let me down. Taken from my Instagram feed.

If you’ll stick to these simple guidelines – I’m prepared to spend the rest of my life with you and give you my all my love. If not – get lost!

This post is probably most stupid post one can write since CEO’s and board members seems to have decided to stay behind with the dinosaurs while the rest of us look for new ground where we can thrive and prosper. Basically on average they read three local newspapers of their own choice, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and watch a couple of TV channels. They haven’t got a clue about blogs, feed readers and social networks. But I’ll give it a go anyway.

Dear CEO and board member. In most cases you’re probably +40 years old. You have a wife, two kids and live in a house that cost above average. Two cars in the garage and a country-side home. You spend weekends together with other CEO’s and board members in order to secure your position in the hierarchical ladder of success (or at least what you define as a success). Vacations are chosen based on where you’re supposed to be rather than where you would like to go.

Or as Sir Martin Sorrell, founder and chief executive officer (obviously an exception) of WPP puts it 13 minutes into this very insightful video below:

“Clients, mediaowners and agencies tend to be run by older people. They’ve got to the top of companies. Change is the last thing they’re really interested in. You want a quiet life, travel around the world and making sure everything’s ok”

It’s your life we’re talking about and I understand you don’t want to rock the boat. That could of course lead to you having to sell your boat, spend your vacation in another place and replace some of those expensive wine bottles of yours with cheaper ones. So sitting tight along with the rest and not challenge the establishment is probably the right thing to do. After all, in 10-20 years there’s another generation coming along – let them change things.

No! Nee! ????! Ne! Ei! ?! Nein! ??! Nei! Nej!

There is no time for that! You have to start changing things now before your company gets run over by a couple of teenagers sitting in a coffee shop disrupting your business. (Not that I don’t love that idea). The world is in a state of change. Companies and brands all over the world are falling behind due to slow leadership.

Since I’m trying to not to be one of those persons who’s all about yelling I’d also like to provide you with a couple of guidelines you may wanna follow:

Every company can and should become an e-Business.

Make everyone in your company think, eat, shit the E. That’s how the military would have said it. And it suits this post pretty good. The digital world turn things upside down in a way we’ve never seen before so you’ve gotta make sure everyone is on the boat.

A common problem is that a few people in the marketing department might have a clue about what goes on. But, without support from you – the board of directors, the CEO, CTO and CFO they’re screwed. Far too many companies sees the internet as yet another business area. But the internet does in fact change every little bit of your company.

The internet cuts horizontally through every part of your business so your future marketing and communication strategy has to do the same.

Communication of tomorrow is not about new formats or channels it’s about a whole new way of thinking about your business.

This new digital order calls for a totally new way of thinking and I don’t believe many traditional advertising agencies know shit about it. The fault is not really theirs, it’s yours. You have to integrate marketing into your product development. On top of that you have to make sure that marketing competence knows all about digital and traditional marketing cause the problem is more complex that dividing things into digital and traditional advertising.

Today we have categorized consultants into categories – Advertising, Internet consultants, PR, Event, Mobile, Direct Marketing, Guerrilla and so on. Tomorrow you will have to get all of those brains into a single one. Of course, your Advertising agency might suggest you put together some sort of workshop with people from each category – THIS IS WRONG.

The problem with such a setup is that it’s a compromise. You can never reach a satisfactory result by having a lead agency that knows traditional communication and then a group of other consultants. You simply have to get it all into one brain cause that single advertising idea has to take every category into account when you develop and launch ideas.

Look at Garmin for example. They develop among other things GPS running watches. The watch syncs my runs via Bluetooth with an online community that shows me where I’ve been running on a Google map. My information is then automatically uploaded to Facebook so that I can share my training data with friends.

Is this social advertising, a product, service or crm?

Ask yourselves – What is marketing, what is product and what is business development.

I say It’s all tied together in a way we’ve never seen before and most of you CEO’s, board members and top management don’t get the full picture.

Of course Garmin advertise their products today, but tomorrow they might rely on viral traffic from Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that is more or less injected into their entire business.

The future mix of communication and advertising is so tied together with business and product development so in order for us communication consultants to deliver a work well done and on brief we have to get new kind of briefs with new kind of objectives. Communication and advertising has to move up the ladder and we have to look beyond advertising. Instead we have to rethink how companies develop and launch products, how companies are organized in order to sell, how the people in a company can be more involved on every level and how a CEO can learn what the digital world can do for his company.

So, integrate advertising, marketing and communication straight into your business development. And if you as a CEO don’t understand these different formats you’ve got nothing there to do!

I call for a new category – let’s call it entrepreneurial advertising. An entrepreneur would never go on with any kind of communication that didn’t deliver. It’s time for you to care about your company in that way too!

You might wanna head back and read one of my older posts: ‘Seduce us or excuse us – 11 ways to bring your brand up to date‘ that broadens my point of view even further.

What’s your business doing there when it should be here

We are out there waiting but we’re not only in front of the TV anymore.

Think about your business. You’ve probably got tons of content waiting to be spread. Catalogues, photos, movies, texts, ads, business systems and so on. Well, what are you waiting for? Put it out there. And out there doesn’t mean you should publish it on your own platforms or one that matches your own ideals. Let it loose.

A common mistake is choosing between different social platforms. People ask me – “If I am to publish video online, should I choose YouTube or Vimeo?” I answer every time – “Choose them all!” There is no cost involved. People spend time on different sites. And the more content you have out there, the more traffic you’ll get in return. If you spread content on outside platforms you will in the end receive traffic back to your brand in one way or another. If it’s done by the book it will do wonders for your SEO work.

In order to get the best possible performance from your products and services. Think about what you can do best and work your ass off in order to make your brand the nr 1 source for people enjoying your product category. If you’re in the business of building cars, think, do you build cars for transportation, for fun or for some other purpose. If you think it’s about transportation. Let’s say families. Then do everything in your power to become the brand that makes transportation more efficient, more safe and more fun.

The conversation prism by Brian Solis

So, think about how you can distribute your brand all over the digital world the same way you distribute it in the offline world. The only difference is that distribution online is for free once you’ve turned your content production and communication process around.

Connect not collect

People don’t want to connect to your products or services. They wanna connect to values, beliefs, emotions, passion and personality. Like when I wrote about Telco’s earlier this year: “We are in the entertainment business – let’s act as such”.

The brands that invite people to a conversation, listen to them, show them respect and show that they value people for being people and not potential money – those brands will be the winners.

Creative excellence

I’m not gonna write about this one again since I’ve outline it a post before. But I suggest you read that one once you’re done reading this post.

Get your own fan club

In order for your business to be virally spread. Get fans and let them break the rule.
A problem today is that most things spreading like wildfire on the net tend to break a couple of rules. As a legal business you have a disadvantage against the everyday consumer. However, if you get the everyday consumer on board, let him or her do the dirty work. If they like you they’ll be more than happy to stand on the barricades.

Have a look at Zappos for example. Their CEO has got 1,356,038 followers on Twitter! How many have you got?

Get all your employees on board or actually off board. Seriously, if your employees are reachable with land lines or email. Then why shouldn’t I be able to follow them on twitter or become friends with them on Facebook?

The media 180° turn

Yesterday – we all got communicated to when we were in front of the TV or reading a magazine at a certain time on a certain day. This meant brands had to spend quite a lot of time and money to hit a consumer with their message.

Tomorrow – your message must be on 24/7 standby so that when your potential target searches for whatever you’re selling you hit that consumer one time – and that time you’ve gotta hit on your first shot. Everything that stands in your way will lead to a misfire.

Read all the news not only the filtered stuff

I opened up this post with critique pointed towards the fact that most people read only a few sources of information on a daily basis. That was all ok when leading media companies still had monopoly on information. However today most news you read in for example Wall Street Journal has already been out there for a couple of days and the diversity is not broad enough. That’s what you’ve gotta create your own customized news desk based on what you need to know in order to run your company. I would say you have to move from reading 5-10 sources to 50-100 a day.

Last year I tipped about my own source of information – tons of RSS feeds read through Netvibes that I also use to track my brand. Why not start by following some of the channels I personally follow and then slowly remodel that interface to fit your own needs. Read the post I wrote about it for more information.

To sum things up!

As always there’s tons of more things to do. But that would require me to write a book and there’s just not enough time to do that this weekend. Sooner or later I’ll publish that one as well and then I promise I’ll give each and every board member of a Swedish listed company a copy for free!

Finally before I end this post I’d also recommend you to browse through this presentation that I held last week about 10 trends on future communication. It might light up the path for you even more.

See you on the other side!

Today Google launched their latest resource called the Google Internet Stats. It contains industry facts and insights from across five different areas – Macro Economic Trends, Technology, Consumer Trends, Media Consumption and Media Landscape. This is a great resource for us who are trying to make people understand what the future is all about.

I bet that we can expect more in the near future. Anyway it’s a great little tool for people like me who want more ammo in the fight for change. Here’s a little something that gives you an idea about what to expect:

• 5% of all time online is spent on Facebook.
• By election day, fully 25% of people who pulled the lever for Obama were already connected to his campaign electronically
• early three in five (57%) of youth consumers logged on to YouTube to watch a music video in the last 12 months, compared to 56% who watched a music TV channel
• Social networks have a penetration of nearly 75% among European Internet users
• According to Nielsen, 67% of the global online population visited a “member community” site in Dec 2008.
• 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

Now go dig on your own.

Ah, by the way. Thanks @stefanronge for waving your flag about this!

I am away skiing with my family so expect a ‘low frequency week’ when it comes to blog posts. The rule however is: If I’m having fun you should be having fun too! Here we go:

After Tweeting this @larsthomsen tipped me about another changeling in the end of a Ted speech. Check it out!

Thank you Swissmiss

Let me break it to you right away – the old way of planning and executing communication is slowly sinking into the ocean of well paid consultants that doesn’t do shit for your brand and the best you can do is throw yourselves into the lifeboats, get your ass to land and then find something else that makes your brand travel – and it’s not another boat.

You see, in order to paddle on to this new wave of communication you’ve gotta get different gear, different muscles and find new spots and this requires totally new ways of thinking. It’s not really about finding better creatives, cause the creative people out there are top notch, that’s not what I’m saying – I’m talking about choosing problem solving first and channels second. Understanding every new channel and integrating that knowledge as early as in your product development process will be key.

Building brands and companies tomorrow requires a new way of thinking around product and service development that include knowledge on how people use technical tools, mobiles, their way of life and habits – ultimately the entire communication chain already in the product development process.

Turn your brand & communication process up side down

Turns things upside down. In order to get an effect you should create an online strategy based on your business challenge. Create ideas for a digital presence and then brief someone the challenge to create advertising that focus on supporting your digital strategies. We’re moving into a new world where everything communicates and you cannot isolate things as if they had no contact with one another.

You might say; “My advertising agency understands this already and the media agency are providing me with great strategies” but I’m sorry, they don’t know jack shit in 75% of the cases. To be able to recommend strategies today you’ve gotta understand technology. When it comes to media agencies most of them don’t know jack shit in 90% of the cases. Well, of course they know how to place media and they’re all struggling to twist their business towards one where you produce media…but hey, do you really wanna consult someone that actually makes money on producing the same stuff they recommend.

Today most companies contact a digital partner once they have an ad or a couple of TVC’s and want to support that online. What you then get are shallow solutions that doesn’t do anything for the brand on a long term basis and probably not on a short term either.

Your brand is up for a challenge. You’ve set up the way you sell, the way you develop products, the way you communicate, the way you follow up, yes everything – on the old way of doing things. Internet didn’t exist in most cases when today’s organization strategies were drawn up. How do you communicate internally that you don’t need a sales force cause you’re selling online and now you need 20 content writers instead so that you can end up top 5 on Google. How do you cut your old relations cause that factory of yours aren’t developing new products fast enough.

If you’re looking to turns things around, start by asking yourself the following question:

• Can I involve integrated strategy people in my product development process?
• If I take 50% of my existing media budget and focus on creating content based value online – what will happen?
• How can we deliver new products in new packages based on new strategies in half the time as before?
• How can I invite my target group in our product development?
• Is it possible to move my communication plan from seasonal and product launch based communication to an ongoing established conversation?
• How can I move my marketing organization from one that is built to buy communication to one that creates, controls, publishes, talks, supports an ongoing conversation?
• How can I create content that is relative to my product and brand that search optimizes traffic on a daily basis yet continues to position us as the coolest brand on the block?
• Can we move from producing print and TVC’s to images, movies and other content that is relevant rather than selling?

This and probably another 100 questions should be answered. Run your company as an ideas company. You’re selling an idea about something that will change peoples life. Based on this idea – provide people with value, offer them something that will change theirs and not merely something that will empty their pockets and fill yours.

Get started today – stir up a storm, aim for the biggest ice block & head for the lifeboats!

Twitter and microbloggning has been getting a lot of attention recently. Finally companies are learning that Twitter can get your conversation up and running. Companies are getting it. These are words that I’m reading all over the internet on many different blogs, including mine. But I need to make one thing clear.

It’s not about Twitter. It’s not about social media. It’s not about search.

It’s about staying on your toes! It’s about making your status q = constant change.

Just like any other real world hangout Twitter or Facebook for that matter won’t stay talk of the town forever. And when something cooler and better comes up you can be sure the digital natives takes a hike and suddenly your left behind on your own.

Conclusion.
As a company you should put as much effort into getting into and using the existing possibilities as constantly searching for the next place to be. Cause when that turns up it’s being in there that will define you as an innovative brand – not being left behind with a bunch of losers in a club soon to be closed.

Staying on top when it comes to tomorrows communication will be all hard work and no rest.

One of my latest reads – Seth Godins ‘Tribes’ is a book I can warmly recommend. I especially like the way it talks about consumers today and the need to establish a conversation rather than keep on broadcasting your message without listening.

A simple yet great qoute from ‘Tribes’

Here’s the marketing math:
Ideas that spread, win.
Boring ideas don’t spread. Boring organizations don’t grow.

My thought was to write a longer review of it but then I found that you can download it as an audiobook for free. So, half asleep looking forward to the weekend I’ll save yours and my time and instead give you the link. Here’s Seth Godins ‘Tribes’ as an audiobook for free. Go, listen, change!

First, I’m going to find out what she’s like. I’m gonna spend time with her, or around her since I actually don’t know her. What food does she like, white or red wine, does she like fashion, music – what kind of music? Is she into sports and if so, which sport. If not, why? When she walks like that, with her face slightly smiling, eyes browsing the world – what is she thinking about? What’s the thing with that little tin box she carries around in her purse? Why doesn’t she get of on the right station on her way to work? Does she like to walk or is it only about exercise? She speaks with a quiet voice – why? Why, why, why. I want all the answers.

Once I know this I’m going to change. I’m going to cut my hair. Dress differently. I’ll stop drinking and only eat carrots. My car has to go. Can I buy a bike instead? Switch career. Mountain biking has never been my thing, but I bought one today. Birds and an aquarium. I’ll talk differently and learn french too. I’ll start going to museums. Buy art. I’ll start a foundation that save whales. I’ll do everything that needs to be done – for her.

She won’t see me at first since I’m afraid of scaring her away. I’m in it for the long run. But sooner or later she’ll wonder who that guy is who always eats the ecological pasta in her favorite restaurant. Once she’s spotted me I’m going to say hi. Speak to her. We’ll talk about food, fashion, music, sport, cars and especially tin boxes.

She’s falling in love. I can feel it. That man on her favorite restaurant is her perfect match. She’ll make sure to be there on the same time every week. And I am there every week too. We talk more.
Would you like to go to the movies one night?
Yes. She says.

We go. We walk together. She’s smiling like always. I’m smiling too. We talk. We see a movie we both like.

I love you she says.
I love you.

Years go by. I find myself forgetting what she looks like. She doesn’t walk and smile anymore. I can’t remember what she likes to eat. Her voice is everything but quiet. My hair has grown out again.

We divorce.

Later I find out that she is in a new relation with a new man. He does everything that I don’t do for her. And I also learn that she’s not like before.

She changed.
I didn’t

We drifted apart just like brands drift apart from their target group, their behavior, what they enjoy, what kind of references in life they have. How and where they consume communication.

Brands, like people, seem to think change is hard. Its not. Just do something today that you haven’t done before. If you fail, try tomorrow again.

Don’t drift apart. Change.