154 DELIVER THE EXPERIENCE
YouTube video clip from that portion of the announcement has
been viewed half a million times. Jobs had created a memorable
moment that people would talk about for decades. A genuine
showstopper.One Theme
The secret to creating a memorable moment is to identify the
one thing—the one theme—that you want your audience to
remember after leaving the room. Your listeners should not need
to review notes, slides, or transcripts of the presentation to recall
the one thing. They will forget many of the details, but they will
remember 100 percent of what they feel. Think about the one
thing Apple wanted you to know about MacBook Air: it’s the
world’s thinnest notebook. That’s it. A customer could learn
more by visiting the website or an Apple store; the presentation
was meant to create an experience and to bring the headline to
life. It struck an emotional connection with the listener.
Jobs had one key message that he wanted to deliver about the
first iPod: it fits one thousand songs in your pocket. The message”The brain doesn’t pay attention to boring things,” writes
scientist John Medina. It does pay attention to an “emotionally
charged event,” as Medina explains: “The amygdala is chock-
full of the neurotransmitter dopamine... When the brain
detects an emotionally charged event, the amygdala releases
dopamine into the system. Because dopamine greatly aids
memory and information processing, you could say the Post-it
note reads ‘Remember this!’ ”^4
According to Medina, if you can get the brain to put what
amounts to a chemical Post-it note on an idea or a piece of
information, the item will be more “robustly processed” and
easily remembered. As you could imagine, this concept applies
to business professionals as well as teachers and parents!The Mental Post-it Note