Attention-getting – The Evidence

In my last post I wrote about the attention-getting myth. I argued that the idea that you have to grab attention at the beginning of a presentation is a myth. Here’s the evidence to back that up.

Studies have been done measuring the attention levels of students in university lectures. Here’s the results of a study that asked students for their subjective assessment of their attention at different points in the lecture:

[Read more]

The attention-getting myth

There is a pervasive myth in public speaking and presenting that you have to have an attention-getting opening.

I would argue to the contrary. The beginning of your talk is the one time that you can guarantee that the audience is paying attention. They will pay attention for the first one or two minutes to see if your presentation is going to be useful to them. But after that, if you don’t deliver good value through your content they may get bored and turn-off.

I believe that this attention-getting myth came from the advertising world. Advertisers generally have to interrupt what people are doing to get them to pay attention to their ads. So they’ve developed many attention-getting devices. Classic advertising formulas like AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) have been imported into public speaking and presenting without consideration of the different context. Generally, our audiences have decided to come and listen to us – we’re not having to interrupt what they’re doing to come and listen to us.

This attention-getting myth has led to two problems: [Read more]