Tiny Mantis is currently preparing to attend GDC.  The prep work includes arranging meetings with clients and creating presentations that are engaging and informative.  Yesterday, we had a chance to try out one of the presentations at a meeting with Scholastic.  While the presentation was informative, it seemed too long and too in-depth to be engaging.  When we returned to the office I had a chat with Tommy who also agreed that the presentation was too long and was missing one key factor, the old “what’s in it for me” mechanic.  Sure, we are proud of our history, our processes and our company but honestly, we hadn’t produced a presentation that was talking to the client directly.  Now, Scholastic is made up of the nicest people on the planet (as far as I can tell) and they very politely asked us to skip to the good stuff, mainly iPhone development, the reason that we were sitting in their office.  It was a very clear request to answer the question, “How can you help me?”  We did skip to the end and wound up having a very enjoyable meeting, but if Scholastic wasn’t so nice and patient, we might have missed our opportunity.

I am currently revamping the presentation to a) go quicker, b) highlight what we can do specifically for the customer, and c) hone the presentation to directly relate to the product.  For example, we had included almost every project we have worked on in the presentation.  You can imagine Scholastic’s suprise when some of our more bloody, riske titles appeared.  Not only were we providing too much information, but our bloody Caligula game was almost a turn-0ff to the Scholastic image.  (Thankfully, Viva Caligula was followed by some SpongeBob games so we didn’t look like complete maniacs.)  It was clearly something that they were not interested in.

How does this effect GDC presentations?  Well, now I am creating several types of presentations, one that is kid-friendly, one that is liscenced material friendly, one that is adult friendly, etc.  While this does create more work, I think that we will have a much more effective presentation for our one-on-one meetings with prospective clients.