can fit in a Twitter post:
”The new iTunes store. All songs are DRM-free.” (Changes to
iTunes music store, January 2009)
”The industry’s greenest notebooks.” (New MacBook family of
computers, introduced in October 2008)
”The world’s most popular music player made even better.”
(Introduction of the fourth-generation iPod nano, September
2008)
”iPhone 3G. Twice as fast at half the price.” (Introduction of
iPhone 3G, July 2008)
”It gives Mac users more reasons to love their Mac and PC users
more reasons to switch.” (Introduction of iLife ‘08, announced
July 2007)
”Apple reinvents the phone.” (Introduction of iPhone, January
2007)
”The speed and screen of a professional desktop system in the
world’s best notebook design.” (Introduction of the seventeen-
inch MacBook Pro, April 2006)
”The fastest browser on the Mac and many will feel it’s the best
browser ever created.” (Unveiling of Safari, January 2003)
Keynote Beats PowerPoint in
the Battle of the Headlines
Microsoft’s PowerPoint has one big advantage over Apple’s
Keynote presentation software—it’s everywhere. Microsoft com-
mands 90 percent of the computing market, and among the
10 percent of computer users on a Macintosh, many still use
CREATE TWIT TERLIKE HEADLINES 45
Headlines That Changed the World
When the “Google guys,” Sergey Brin and Larry Page, walked
into Sequoia Capital to seek funding for their new search-
engine technology, they described their company in one
sentence: “Google provides access to the world’s informa-
tion in one click.” That’s sixty-three characters, ten words. An
early investor in Google told me that with those ten words,
the investors immediately understood the implications of
Google’s technology. Since that day, entrepreneurs who walk
into Sequoia Capital have been asked for their “one-liner,” a
headline that describes the product in a single sentence. As
one investor told me, “If you cannot describe what you do in
ten words or less, I’m not investing, I’m not buying, I’m not
interested. Period.” Following are some more examples of
world-changing headlines that are ten words or less:
”Cisco changes the way we live, work, play, and learn.”—Cisco
CEO John Chambers, who repeats this line in interviews and
presentations
”Starbucks creates a third place between work and home.”
—Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, describing his idea to early
investors
”We see a PC on every desk, in every home.”—Microsoft
co-founder Bill Gates, expressing his vision to Steve Ballmer,
who, shortly after joining the company, was second-
guessing his decision. Ballmer, currently Microsoft’s CEO,
said Gates’s vision convinced him to stick it out. With a per-
sonal net worth of $15 billion, Ballmer is glad he did.
PowerPoint software designed for Macs. While the actual num-
bers of presentations conducted on PowerPoint versus Keynote
are not publicly available, it’s safe to say that the number of
Keynote presentations given daily is minuscule in comparison
with PowerPoint. Although most presentation designers who
46 CREATE THE STORY
are familiar with both formats prefer to work in the more ele-
gant Keynote system, those same designers will tell you that the
majority of their client work is done in PowerPoint.
As I mentioned in Scene 1, this book is software agnostic
because all of the techniques apply equally to PowerPoint or
Keynote. That said, Keynote is still the application that Steve Jobs
prefers, and the Twitter-like headline he created to introduce the
software was certainly an attention grabber. “This is another
brand-new application that we are announcing here today, and
it is called Keynote,” Jobs told the audience at Macworld 2003.
Then:
Keynote is a presentation app for when your presentation
really counts [slide reads: “When your