Leaves on the Line

I saw this poster today at Bromley South station and had a wry smile. It was nice to see that Southeastern railway had a sense of humour - and at their own expense too, while being cool (the OMG! bit) and a little bit clever. But I did frown slightly when I read that there would be 50 million leaves on their lines this autumn. Not because of the amount, although this does sound a lot. But what surprised me was the fact that they actually have someone in their offices counting the leaves. No wonder the trains never run on time. Stop counting leaves and employ a few more engineers! But I liked the ad. Nice idea to give you a mental image of the leaves on lines and then make a joke about it at their expense.

Then I read a small article on Linked-In about how Google was changing the way they wanted to sell themselves. Apparently, gone were bullet points and USPs. Those are things of the past. Old hat. Now is the time of the visual story. Not words. People hate words. People don't understand words. People are bored by words, because nowadays they have the attention span of a goldfish and have no time for such luxuries.

And if you don't believe me - ask yourself this; when was the last time you read a book? From cover to cover. Actually sat down in a chair and had an hour or two reading, without stopping every two minutes to check your texts or answer the phone.

The good people at Google now recognise this. They say that the new buzz words are 'visual storytelling.' I'm loving it already. It's the OMG! leaves thing above. Minimal words, a picture and a story. And now Google employees are now being trained to 'present in a bolder, fresher style' which is 'less text heavy and more... visual'. Great.... except that now it's the time of the VLOG, meaning that the BLOG is on the edge of having its day. Oh dear. You'd better stop now and check your texts. This is a meandering BLOG, after all.

OK... for those of you still left with me - back to the good people at Google. Presentations there are now to be filled with pictures and a maximum of just 40 words to each slide. And no more than 12 slides in total. This is radical stuff.

I like it because I too I have a very limited attention span, particularly in presentations. My mind quickly starts drifting to Northampton Town football, what's on the telly tonight and inevitably when lunch is and how I can be out of the presentation room quickly enough to get to the front of the buffet queue.

So, when I read that Google is aiming their new presentations at sad, bovine people like me, I was impressed. Suddenly, presentations would be quicker, easier to understand, rememberable because of the stories and full of colourful pictures. It would be a bit like watching a Teletubbies show - but for adults. I really am liking this new way.

Then I thought - hang about - all my own presentations are like this anyway. I've being doing it this way for years. Lots of picture slides, no notes and a minimal number of daft spreadsheets and pie charts, because I rarely understand them myself. It might be a bit of a pudding, if you analyse it too much, but I'm guaranteeing you a laugh a minute.

And Isn't that what people want? Fun, laughter, pictures, a bit of reverse psychology, not many words, self-deprecating stories and, most importantly, it all over relatively quickly? The perfect presentations.

But now Google has copied me and... Southeastern rail are doing what I would have done with the leaves thing. That's my presentation style. My way. My... copyright.

I'm appalled..... OMG!