Page 178 - The Apple Experience

CHAPTER 12

Create Wow Moments

The brain remembers the emotional components of
an experience better than any other aspect.

—John Medina

When Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011, the world didn’t just

lose one of its great visionaries, but it also lost an astonishing corporate

storyteller. His presentations, “Stevenotes” as they were fondly called, had all

the elements of a Broadway production, including a cast, drama, heroes,

villains, and props. Most people use presentations to deliver information,

often dryly. Steve Jobs gave presentations that informed, educated, and

entertained.
The most memorable parts of Jobs’s presentations were what I call wow

moments. These wow moments were carefully scripted and exhaustively

rehearsed. It took an estimated 450 hours of work and rehearsals to create

and deliver the twenty-minute presentation to introduce the Lion operating

system in June 2011. Jobs was fanatical about each and every element of the

presentation from the lighting to the messages. He knew the content of every

slide, every font, and every color that was used on every slide. But nothing
was more important in a presentation than the moment when the audience

would gasp and say to themselves, I need that!