REVEAL A “HOLY SHIT” MOMENT 159
me tell you more about it.” Not very memorable, is it? By con-
trast, the actual introduction whetted the audience’s appetite
with every sentence. After Jobs outlined the revolutionary prod-
ucts of the past, a listener could be thinking, “I wonder what
this third revolutionary product will be. Oh, I see: Jobs is going
to announce three new products of this class. Cool. Wait. Is it
three? Oh my gosh, he’s talking about one product! All of those
features in one product. This I’ve got to see!”
Every Steve Jobs presentation—major product announce-
ments and minor ones—is scripted to have one moment that
will leave everyone talking. The product takes center stage,
but Jobs plays the role of director. Jobs is the Steven Spielberg
of corporate presentations. What do you remember most from
Spielberg’s movies? Spielberg always has one scene that sticks in
your memory for years: Indiana Jones pulling a pistol to kill the
STEVE’S WORDS STEVE’S SLIDES
“So, three things: a wide-screen
iPod with touch controls, a
revolutionary mobile phone,
and a breakthrough Internet
communications device.”
The three images appear on the
same slide, with the words “iPod,
Phone, Internet”“An iPod, a phone, and an Internet
communicator. An iPod, a phone—
are you getting it? These are not
three separate devices.”
Three images rotate“This is one device, and we are
calling it iPhone.”
Text only, centered on slide:
“iPhone”“Today Apple is going to reinvent
the phone!”
Text only: “Apple reinvents the
phone”“And here it is.” [laughter] A gag image appears: it’s a photo of
iPod, but instead of a scroll wheel,
an artist had put an old-fashioned
rotary dial on the MP3 player