Cliché of the Week: The Bullseye
We need to stay focused.
Our numbers are right on target.
We made our goal!
When someone says those words, does your brain instantaneously call up images like the one to the right?
It does? Good. Then your brain is functioning appropriately.
Clichés are perfectly normal and perfectly natural. Your brain was designed to retrieve visuals quickly, and clichés are simply an imprint left on your brain-screen from the dozens of times it’s had to recall a similar image.
So when you read the short phrases above, your brain felt relaxed and cool. Like a warm, resonant, C major chord, everything seemed to fit together perfectly.
“Oh, yeeaah,” your brain was saying, nodding to the music and dragging on a clove cigarette, “that’s niiiiiice”.
So clichés make for easy brain-work. That’s a good thing. Relaxed brains are happy brains. [Hmm. Another opportunity for a cliché. Zombies?]
But a relaxed brain isn’t necessarily an engaged brain. And a relaxed brain isn’t necessarily willing to change its mind about anything just because you played it some nice music and gave it a cigarette.
And that’s usually what we’re trying to do with our presentations. (No, not give out cigarettes.) We’re trying to Inform, Inspire, or Persuade our audience.
And if we really want to get through to the ACTION centers of the brain, we need to use images that make those brains stand up straight, fling their cigarettes into the gutter, and take notice.
Believe me, there’s nothing wrong with clichés. I’ve used them myself many times, and clients often ask for them. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using clichés in a presentation.
Except for one thing:
You won’t be very effective. Your audience won’t buy your product, support your cause, or even remember your point. They’ll be happy and relaxed, and their brains will thank you on the way out. But a polite thank you is all you’ll get.
So let’s see if the combined creative power of this blog community can’t come up with something better.
The main idea: “Sales are on target for projected growth”.
How would you express that idea visually?
Back to TopTopic: Design, Message Tags: Clichés, Design, story, Visuals
Posted October 22nd, 2008 at 4:18 pm by Doug Neff
- COMMENTS (15)
A chart showing:
* the target (with a cross for instance)
* a line reaching the target (or at least going to reach it)
And we can also add a dotted line for projection beyond the target (if the target is reached) or between the end of the line and the target (if the target will be reached)
Space rocket leaving earth closing in on the moon, showing the trajectory.
Highly pregnant woman watching a calendar with date slider and a red encircled date a few days later.
The word Sales across a target with an equals sign then show a projector beaming out the words growth.
A sailing ship approaching a finish line. Ship has Sales written on it and Finishing line marked with Growth.
A snipers scope focusing in on the word growth.
A Footbal Scorebaord with Sales as on team and Growth as the other with the scores nearly matching.
The word GROWTH overlayed with the word SALES with the two nearly the same size.
An archer, arrow and bow drawn back. This plays off the target cliche, but focuses more on the action of reaching the target. Depending on the tone of the presentation, the archer could be a modern bow hunter, Olympian, or Robin Hood type.
Couldn’t get past the cigarette references to pay attention to anything you had to say. Why would you associate yourself with such a negative image when trying to say something positive? Really dissapointed with Slide:ology today. I work for a State health deparment and It’s very hard for me to point to you as an authority with this kind of material on your site.
I would show the projected numbers, the actual numbers, smile, and throw darts at the presenter.
A sail boat with a magnified compass by the side
How about a chair lift taking skiers to the summit…
Mountain climbers reaching the peak…
Race horses/marathon runners/sprinters crossing the finish line…
for a group effort, in a competitive situation, one team winning a tug-of-war contest…
I think it all depends on what you want the people in the room to take out of “target achieved”.
For a start - what is the actual target?
I think that the speech to combine with the slide would be “6 months ago we all got together to make a target. It hasn’t been easy in these tough times and we didn’t make it easy for ourselves either. But hard work and dedication by the whole team has made us achieve our target.”
If I am talking to the team itself then I would have a picture depicting teamwork or hard work. Something sporty maybe (with lots of sweat) or something like mountain climbing. The audience should feel proud.
If I was presenting to stakeholders, I would emphasise what they get out of the target. Money - this is a crass image so I would use some humourous depiction of loads of cash, charitable work - have a picture of a beaming person, market share - have a picture of a kid doing his “business” on the competitors logo.
It’s tricky, because your main idea ““Sales are on target for projected growth” does not call for any action, simply statement of a fact.
In this case I can only imagine that as you’re on target you want to congratulate staff, thus the target and sales are the decoy, the real message is something else.
I’d try use a pic of the actual sales guys at work, perhaps their own sales bell. then state the fact…!
Growth:
cute kid and then a young-adult (think “Big” with Tom Hanks).
Sales:
for the kid: a lemonade stand
for the adult: image of soda-jerk
Bonus, you can further extend this to demonstrate that expenses have grown relative to growth as well. Think Bicycle/Toys vs. Sports-car/Houses
Another:
Baseball: Runner stealing home … “Safe!”
… image of ball leaving pitcher’s hand (Sales)
… Catcher’s glove: Target
.. flash to speeding runner for growth
Suddenly there’s a rash of ghastly plastic people in all sorts of metaphorical arrangements - courtesy of iStockPhoto. Here’s an example http://www.hrtechnews.com/will-eeoc-make-online-application-illegal/
I recently faced the “Triple Target” challenge and went literal. I took a stock photo of bull sculpture, blurred the majority of the image (kept its head in focus), and placed the three words that were being targeted in a circle around its eye.
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Jan Schultink
October 22nd, 2008
8:51 pm
A Photoshop of a big airport arrivals board, instead of “on time” or “delayed”:
US Sales “on target”
Europe Sales “on target”
Profits “on target”
you can add a whole bunch of other metrics.