When Larry Jordan asked me if I knew anyone who might like to review his new book, Techniques of Visual Persuasion I immediately volunteered myself. After all who doesn’t want to “Create powerful images that motivate?” Plus, I always feel I can learn more about marketing and motivating people.
The first chapter of the first section – Persuasion Fundamentals – sparked off ideas as I was reading. It seemed like every new topic inspired and idea I could use to improve my marketing.
There is so much good information in the first chapter alone that I’m scheduling time to reread and apply the lessons.
The balance of the first section takes the principles from chapter one and demonstrates how it applies to create persuasive writing, images, fonts and colors. It’s a nice balance between the theoretical challenge and practical application.
The first section was the most valuable for me, because it was the newest material. The book is a nice balance between the techniques of persuasion and the techniques of creating persuasive writing, images and video. A marketer can rely on the practical production techniques, while the visual creator can learn from the techniques of persuasion.
In the areas of the book where I have some expertise, it was reassuring that none of the basics had changed! Larry carefully, and methodically, draws the connection between the theory and why (and how) it applies when you pull out the lights and cameras.
With such a visual subject, you would expect a well designed book, and New Riders delivered an all color, very handsome work. The illustrations are spot on and make understanding the “point” comfortable.
An unexpected, and welcome, inclusion is a chapter on Persuasive Presentations. Personal Presenting is a skill I continually strive to improve, so I devoured that chapter and will take a few new skills to my next presentation. (Perhaps Larry can write an extra chapter “Persuasive Zoom Presentations!)
The ‘Persuasive Practice’ for that is Pecha Kucha (or “little talk” in Japanese): a 20 slide, 20 seconds per slide presentation. Taking up the challenge I created a presentation of 20 Lessons from Learning to Sing. (I took up singing as a mature adult about six years ago.) It was an excellent challenge for me. Creating a precise 20 seconds from my verbose starting point was good practice.
The presentation has now become a 20 day series my vocal coach will be publishing later this month.
Techniques of Visual Persuasion is full of useful, practical information that both marketer and creative will find compelling, packaged in an entertaining and easy-to-read format. If you want to improve your persuasion techniques, and who doesn’t, then I thoroughly recommend Techniques of Visual Persuasion.
Disclosure: I asked to review Larry’s book and was provided with a review copy from the publisher. I received no other compensation.