The 2013 Platypus Series

the 2013 platypus seriesby Daniel de Filippis

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Presentat ion Ski l l s - Branding - Creat iv i ty - Stor ytel l ing

presentationskills

is for

creativityis for storytelling

is for

brandingis for

Formats:Lectures, Workshops, Individual Trainings

What’s in it for you?You’ll be a better presenter after a single session. I guarantee it. You’ll also know what to do to keep improving your style based on your own strengths. You won’t take home lists of “dos and do nots,” that I also guarantee.

2013 series : a snapshot

Formats:Lectures, Workshops, Action Sessions

What’s in it for you?An appreciation for a more holistic view of branding and an understanding of how this can be a crucial advantage for your organization.

From an action session you’ll also take home a practical vision for your brand and insights you can put to work almost immediately.

Formats:Action Sessions

What’s in it for you?You will work towards understanding what the best “creative tools” for you are and how to use them effectively. Though the focus is group creativity, you will also discover useful individual creativity games and techniques for you to explore.

Formats:Lecture, Workshop, Action Sessions

What’s in it for you?You’ll take home a different way of doing what you’ve always done. A more powerful, compelling and sincere way of reaching out to your audience.This means you’ll learn how to recognize and collect stories, and how to make use of them naturally in your daily work.

Check out the blog posts in fol lowing pages for more informat ion!

Curious?�� Interested?

the platypus way Daniel de Filippis

Part bird, part fish, part lizard and venomous to boot, the improbably named platypus has thrived and survived

throughout the ages.

Perhaps, the world needs more platypus.

This year’s platypus series focuses on four main topics: Presentation Skills, Branding, Creativity, and Storytelling. You’ll find “blog posts” about each one in this document as well as on www.theprplatypus.com.

Most of the 2013 platypus series is available in lecture, workshop or action session format. You’ll find all the relevant information in each post.

For additional information, to request a tailored topic, to know more about my other work (consulting and facilitation), or just to tell me how amazing I am, feel free to drop me a line: [email protected]

Avoid needless jargon. It complicates things unnecessarily and makes simple concepts unaccessible to “non-experts.”

Encourage common sense, there’s an enormous need for it in the business world.

Facilitate even when you’re the expert. It pays off - a lot - to facilitate answers from your listeners rather than forcing one upon them.

Help people and organizations play to their strengths, not someone else’s based on standard “rules.”

Don’t hand out theories. Inspire inquisitive thinking.

No one has all the answers, but try to ask most of the questions.

Give people guidelines to explore, not policies to follow.

Always tell a story.

Brand Storyteller, Trainer & Facilitator

Over the past twelve years I have worked on a many brands, large and small, across a number of different industries both in-house and agency side. Almost five years ago, I decided it was nigh-time to set up shop on my own. I particularly enjoy working on start-up projects, the earlier the better, and with businesses with a strong social mission. My platypus series workshops & trainings reflect my consulting style and experience. Everything I do, I do the “platypus way.”

If you would like to get a sense of what I do and how I think, check out my blog: www.theprplatypus.com

Contacts!Daniel de Filippis+44 (0) 7449 [email protected]

Click�� to�� join�� the�� platypus!

Check out the blog at www.theprplatypus.com for more stories!

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Hey, remember that great conference we went to?Yeah, me neither.

*tl;dr:No one cares about just the facts, we are drowning in facts. Even less people care about how well you memorized your speech or put your powerpoint together.

The one thing all great speakers have in common is the ancestral human capacity to tell an unforgettable story, which is exactly what people will remember you for and be influenced by.

You probably remember the plot for the last movie you saw even if you hated it, you also probably remember close to nothing of the contents of the last conference you attended... unless the speaker was... different (and good) - funny how so many aren’t, right?

But what makes a good speaker? How well her slides are put together? Did she even have any slides? Was it perhaps the deluge of facts she effortlessly rolled off her tongue? Or did she? Was it her body language, gestures, tone of voice? Hmmm... getting closer...

I can still feel the chills, that signature human clutching somewhere inside you when you are completely gripped by, and cheering on, something you find yourself, perhaps surprisingly, believing in. I recall sitting on the green summer grass outside a large amphitheater, I can still visualize the thousands of people there clapping and cheering. I remember her story about a young woman glove-maker, and her final remark about the past, the present and the future not being perfect.

It was in Seneca Falls, New York, it was the summer of 1998, I myself was a 16 year old high-school student attending a college summer program.

The speaker was Hillary Clinton, she was celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first women’s rights convention.

Mrs. Clinton had no slides, but she told one hell of a story.


presentationskills

is for

Presentation Skills are useful to just about anyone that has to communicate in their daily lives - so pretty much everyone!

People in persuasion-based work (Sales, Marketing, Communications, Management, etc.) can gain a lot from learning to recognize and build on their existing strengths.

Tailored Topics

Formats

The presentation skills topic is mostly tailored to the level, previous experiences and needs of the participants.

Lectures, Workshops, Individual Trainings

Who is it for?

Lectures, Workshops,

TrainingsTrainings, usually one-on-one, are tailored to each individual. For best results I ideally ask for prospective trainees to send me a video of a recent presentation they have performed.

What will you take home?You’ll be a better presenter after a single session. I guarantee it. You’ll also know what to do to keep improving your style based on your own strengths. You won’t take home lists of “dos and do nots,” that I also guarantee.

*tl;dr = too long; didn’t read



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Branding is not egyptology...

*tl;dr:Branding is not something exclusive to marketing and communications departments. In fact, it’s the single one thing your organization is always doing whether you or your employees realize that or not.

Approach branding as a holistic discipline and ask yourself what stories you are telling about your brand every day.

... for one because it shouldn’t be something mysterious, and secondly because it has little to do with pyramids, although marketing departments across the world have us all almost convinced it does.

I once asked the Human Resources director of a luxury hospitality brand I was consulting for if I could have some of his time to talk about the brand. He looked at me as I had grown multiple sets of horns and frankly replied: "You should know to talk to the marketing director, not me. I have nothing to do with branding." It took me a few seconds to adjust my thoughts and I asked him the following question:

"How many customers talk to the hostess of your five star restaurant in a single day? How many exchanges with annoyed guests does your assistant concierge have to deal with every week? How many rooms does each of your cleaning ladies have to tidy up in a year? I'm guessing quite a few, yes?"

"Yes, of course, but I don't have the numbers on me at the moment, why do you ask?"

"Now, how much do these people make in year? Probably not nearly enough for them to live your customers' luxury lifestyle. And yet, they talk to more people - customers and guests - than any of your marketing, comms and branding people. Every day. So I ask you, how important is it that they understand and love their brand? How much influence, collectively, does your staff have on the story your brand tells every single time there's a transaction of any kind in your hotel? I won't play at quantifying this, but my hunch is, much more than the marketing department sitting in their offices. And you my friend, are responsible for each and every one of them.”

Pyramids and other marketing tools can be important, but they don't build brands alone. Don't build pyramids, build a brand across your entire organization that people are excited to be a part of and make others a part of too.

The Branding topic is particularly useful to budding entrepreneurs, start-ups, and for non-profits and social businesses seeking to compete for attention in a big brand market.

I would also personally recommend it to any marketing director that can’t conversationally define what her brand is about in a single sentence without using any jargon.

Tailored Topics

Who is it for?

Formats

The Branding topic can be tailored to meet specific needs and interests - a Branding lecture series for an Entrepreneurship course of study for example - for the lecture and workshop formats.

The action sessions are always prepared for the specific brand that we’ll be working on with you.

No lazy cut & paste “models” here!

Lectures, Workshops, Action Sessions

What will you take home?An appreciation for a more holistic view of branding and an understanding of how this can be a crucial advantage for your organization.

From an action session you’ll also take home a practical vision for your brand and insights you can put to work almost immediately.


brandingis for




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Don’t be afraid to be creative.

*tl;dr:You don’t need to know how to draw, but you do need to learn how to problem solve. Creativity is about that, and many other things. At its core letting go of your fear of being too creative can have a very positive impact on your professional, and personal, life.

So often I hear professionals comment that they aren’t creative, or that they don’t need to be for their job, or that they were bad at drawing when they were in school. And it makes me a little sad. Ask a young child if they know how to draw and they respond with an enthusiastic “of course!” Now try asking an adult.

Can you picture that more than slightly uncomfortable shake of the head? That inward-looking slouch of the shoulders? Yes you can, you yourself might be one of those people! Picasso clearly said it better than I ever could, “Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.”

Daniel, I don’t need to be an artist!

You probably don’t, although it wouldn’t hurt you to be for sure! What you do need, however, is to solve problems day in and day out. And feeding your creativity is an excellent way to do this. Whether its learning the structure behind brainstorms - or the hundreds of different other creative exercises out there - or discovering all the ways that you are already creative and nurturing that, you’ll be surprised at how effective a creative attitude will be in your daily professional life.

And it’s fun. The world needs more fun.

If you often problem-solve, make use of brainstorms, or work in groups, then you will benefit from sharpening your creative structure and learning to feed your creativity.

Tailored Topics

Who is it for?

Formats

I offer Creativity as a hands-on action workshop aimed at improving the creative process of teams working together. It is not team-building, but it is definitely group-based work.

I tailor all sessions to your line of work, so this requires a bit of preparation time on my part as well as a bit of initial involvement on yours!

Action Sessions

What will you take home?You will work towards understanding what the best “creative tools” for you are and how to use them effectively. Though the focus is group creativity, you will also discover useful individual creativity games and techniques for you to explore.


creativityis for




So, what’s your story?

*tl;dr:

You most probably remember the general plot, highlights, characters etc. of any - good or bad - movie you’ve seen or book you’ve read, but hardly anything about most conferences, presentations and, dare I say it, lectures, no matter how factually accurate.

You can hide crucial facts in a story, the opposite is not quite as easily achieved!

We spend so much time telling each other all sorts of stories. Yet, we tell very few stories at work, whether in our presentations, or through the brands we’re responsible for. We wrap everything in fact, numbers, percentages and box them in pyramids and models of all shapes and sizes.

But here’s the thing.

Humans don’t think in numbers, percentages or even facts. We aren’t even a particularly rational species to be completely honest. The most rational of us still probably makes most of his daily choices with his “gut” or “heart;” we remember things that we can relate to through our own experiences. We are persuaded by people we trust, people whose stories we know, not purely by the objective validity of the points they may make.

And yet... we insist on a purely fact-driven strategy when presenting anything to anyone in a business setting. You’re probably thinking “I’m hardly going to tell a prospective client a fairytale at my next pitch, Daniel.” Fair enough. Then let me ask you this, “how is it you most probably remember the general plot, highlights, characters etc. of any (good or bad) movie you’ve seen or book you’ve read, but hardly anything about most conferences, presentations and, dare I say it, lectures no matter how factually accurate?

You can hide crucial facts in a story, the opposite is not quite as easy to do!

Storytelling Basics is appropriate for those of you that have “heard about this storytelling stuff” and are trying to figure out what, if anything, it has to do with business.

Storytelling in Presentations and Storytelling & Brands are for people that truly want to learn more about the powerful storytelling approach.

Subtopics

Who is it for?

I do three kinds of different storytelling sessions, Storytelling Basics is an overview on storytelling principles in business. Storytelling in Presentations is my “advanced” presentation skills module for those that want to really take presentations to the next level. Storytelling & Branding is an advanced branding session on making your brand come alive through the power of storytelling.

Lecture, Workshop, Action Sessions

What will you take home?You’ll take home a different way of doing what you’ve always done. A more powerful, compelling and sincere way of reaching out to your audience.This means you’ll learn how to recognize and collect stories, and how to make use of them naturally in your daily work.

Formats


storytellingis for




Daniel de Filippis+44 (0) 7449 [email protected]

Click�� to�� join�� the�� platypus!

If you didn’t find what you were looking for, drop me a line! Past tailored workshops have included Blogging

for Social Causes, PR writing workshops, Events for Political Communication, Pitch

Process for Agencies, How to Work with your Agency, and many more!

the 2013 platypus series















































Documents

The 2013 Platypus Series