In a post last week, I shared with you my most recent demo video. Over the years, I’ve had several different versions.
In this post, I share my four primary demo videos from over the years. Although I’ve had other videos for specific purposes (e.g., a Personality Poker demo video), they aren’t included here.
I’m sharing this to help other speakers evaluate their own demo videos. Besides, some of these are good for a laugh.
So with that as background, here’s the evolution of my speaking video, starting with my first one from 2002…
2002: Style over Substance (3 minutes)
This video contains primarily footage of me speaking at a large Accenture event (where I worked from 1986 – 2001), combined with some clips of speeches I did in Singapore. You’ll notice in the opening montage, I am playing the saxophone in one clip. This is from Nice, France when I used to play my saxophone during my speeches. You have to love the double breasted jacket and the dot matrix fonts. As I was just starting out speaking professionally, my goal was to feature large stages where there was more of a focus on entertainment than content.
2009: Unedited Video: TEDxNASA (6 minutes)
7 years later, I decided to retire my first demo video and replace it with my unedited 6-minute TEDx talk I gave to 1,700 rocket scientists. The title of the speech was “Rocket Science Isn’t Always Rocket Science.” The premise is that sometimes the best sources of innovation come from outside your industry. The video proved to be very effective. I had clients say, “If you could deliver that much value in 6 minutes, we can’t imagine how much would be delivered in 45.” This is the only completely memorized speech I’ve ever given, so I certainly didn’t feel relaxed. Regardless, it had a positive impact on my business.
2014: Longer Clips with Social Proof (6 minutes)
My next demo video was created in 2014. It was over 6 minutes and 30 seconds long. Maybe too long. The goal was to show longer clips (2 2-minute clips) that would give people a good sense of my content and style. Because we designed this through the lens of a sales video, there is a lot of social proof included. At the time, this helped me stand out from others who were newer to the business. But this “in your face” approach has hurt me in recent years as people no longer want to be told how great a speaker is – they want to see it. And the voiceovers were a tad cheesy.
2018: Pure Content
My latest video was designed to be pure content. No selling. The only “sales” aspects are some client logos that are subtly shown for a second, and two client testimonials which flash briefly. In an earlier version, we had a testimonial that I decided to remove because it was solely about my speaking style, and I wanted only to focus on results. Our goal was to create a video that was so compelling from a content point of view, that people would want to share it to learn about innovation (not necessarily about me). There is no point where I talk about me as a speaker. We didn’t include any clips of me on TV. I only talk about innovation. I hope you enjoy this!