Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The dangers of bad a PowerPoint presentation are manifold. It might just mean putting your audience to sleep, or running afoul of the High Council of Information Design.

But if your presentations have wider reaching concerns, like those given routinely by members of the U.S. Armed Forces, bad slides can have far greater consequences. In the military’s hands, as Brigadier General H. R. McMaster explained to the New York Times in 2010, bad PowerPoint can actually be dangerous--it gives "the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control."

It certainly doesn’t help when you’re making 100-slide presentations entirely in Comic Sans, as one Army aide submitted last year.....

Social science has determined that average length of an audience's attention span. Here's how you can use those findings to improve your speeches and presentations.

Imagine you’re in a meeting and someone is presenting sales figures for the last quarter.

How long can she hold your attention? If the topic is of interest to you and she is a good presenter, you can focus on the presentation for 7 to 10 minutes at most. If you’re not interested in the topic or the presenter is particularly boring, then you’ll lose interest much faster—possibly you’ll tune out within 7 seconds instead of minutes.

If people have a short break, then they can start over with another 7- to 10-minute period, but 7 to 10 minutes is the longest block of time they will pay attention to any one presentation....

[Sound advice for speakers and presenters - JD]