The Halo Effect

MGT 205 veterans will remember the Halo Effect. Here is a humorous PowerPoint representation of it in use.

Put yourself in this presentation, and you can make yourself look downright saintly. Perfect for pastors presenting to Easter congregations, nonprofits asking for donations, or salesfolks who need to subliminally reinforce their trustworthy images.

Are We Wasting $250 Million Per Day Due to Bad PowerPoint?

Here’s another bad PowerPoint/visual aid follow-up from last week’s workshop:

The cost of a poor PowerPoint presentation is staggering. Ian Parker in The New Yorker magazine states that according to Microsoft estimates, there are more than 30 million PowerPoint presentations made each day. If we assume some relatively conservative meeting parameters of four people per presentation, a half-hour presentation on average and the wasted time due to a poor presentation is one-quarter of the presentation time, we arrive at a waste of 15 million person hours per day. At an average salary of $35,000 per year for those attending the meeting, the cost of that wasted time is a staggering $252 million and change each day.

As you can see, not only do poor visual aids and PowerPoint presentations serve to confuse and bore your audience, but in a business setting they can be nonproductive and wasteful.