What I learned at MPA Academy Presenting for Creatives

What I learned at MPA Academy | Presenting For Creatives

Aimed at copywriters and art directors the MPA Academy half day course is a hands on session to help creatives present and share their creative concepts to make the most impact. Adam Gatley, junior art director at IF Agency shares his thoughts and learnings from the ‘Presenting For Creatives’ course run by Clare Briscall at Planning Express.

There are two essential elements for winning creative presentations:

1. Make great work

2. Persuade people it’s great!

With these two elements nailed you would win every pitch, every single time.

Simple. Straight forward. Sounds easy, right?

Great work, yep, I definitely feel confident that we have that one covered! Persuading other’s that it is great is a personal development area! The skills involved in presenting creative work are just as valuable internally within the agency environment as they are when presenting to clients and at pitches and I found the course really valuable.

We focussed on how others are persuaded and how to blend creative elements within a presentation. Tips for conveying the creative story from proposition development and how to use the creative rationale to build up to your concept development, right through to revealing the big idea.

Confidence is key, however it is less important for the presenter to BE confident and more important for the audience to FEEL confident. People will forget what you said but a person will never forget how you made them feel. We also focussed on best practice around body language, eye contact, pausing for effect, presentation format and most importantly – preparation. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail!

We covered handling feedback and how to deal with criticism. Listen, consider and respond calmly. It’s not the feedback that wins or loses the pitch, it’s the way we react and respond that ultimately decides the outcome.

On a personal note I feel much more normal about presenting. I’ve always had bad nerves when it comes to public speaking especially with strangers and it was good to be with others that felt the same. Feeling nervous is normal.

Creative Directors enjoy the process of creative development and art direction, presenting is part of the job, so we just have to get on with it. I do feel much better able to present and tell the story behind my work more successfully. Send over the brief I’m ready for the pitch!