Translating Company Collateral to PowerPoint

As a PowerPoint user, it is sometimes necessary to accurately translate a company's marketing collateral to slide format. Often, this information arrives in the format of a company brochure, or copied blurbs from the website, or a long Word document bogged down with New Age sales jargon and irrelevant "stuffer" copy.

It is your job to find the needles of information in the haystacks of hype, to reduce lengthy paragraphs to mere phrases, to provide your audience with only the information they need to know. Brevity is your goal, bullet points your craft.

When tackling these projects, which can be nothing short of arduous for lengthy documents spread across multi-page presentations, there are some best practices and tactics to make your life easier and the final product better.

1. Read the content several times. Sometimes it takes a few takes to understand exactly what is being said, especially if the copy is technical in nature. This step is especially critical for freelancers, who might not be as familiar with the corporate messaging as an in-house designer or marketing support person.

2. Print the document out and read it from paper. This can help comprehension, and makes it easy to highlight passages or make notes.

3. Highlight key passages. Look for "power words." These are the words or phrases that pop off the page, are descriptive, and reinforce the message with color and purpose. Use these words in your PowerPoint slides. For instance:

"In the past year, the company sales team has achieved a ten percent increase in numbers, well beyond initial projections. Leveraging our recently implemented database, profit margins continue to rise despite several personnel additions and our office expansion initiative."

Could be:

* 10% in sales over last year

* Better than projections

* Profits rise despite expansion

4. Bullets are always better than full sentences. They are punctual and easy to digest. Never use full paragraphs unless you specifically want your audience to not read what you have to say.

5. Trim copy to get to the core message. Eliminate frivolous and clich