Humor is such a subjective area. Culture, emotions, demographics, gender, delivery, age and a hundred other variables will determine whether your attempt at humor will soar or bomb. Whatever your strategies for adding levity to your presentation, PowerPoint can be a valuable part of your speaking humor toolbox.
There are dozens of possibilities. The silly photo in a business context (above) can be seen as funny in and of itself (or maybe not?). The same for a slide of a mocked-up book cover, a cartoon or strange sign lifted from the internet. A image with a few words can serve as a setup for a verbal punchline or the reverse — a slide can deliver the punchline to your verbal opening.
There can be two advantages to using slides for your comedy:
- You don’t have to be a natural “comedian.” Using an intrinsically lighthearted image may be all that is needed to build some humor into your presentation. Often, the less actually said, the better — let the slide make the point.
- If your PowerPoint based jokes fall a little flat it doesn’t necessarily suck the energy out of the rest of your presentation. There is some distance between the content of the slide and you the speaker.
The sure way to give this a chance at working is the same as with any other part of delivering presentations: experiment and rehearse and then rehearse some more. Then give PowerPoint a try to lighten up your performance.
