A few tips from the Pitch Avatar team to help make presenting, promoting and/or teaching content aimed at the younger generation more effective.
A presentation can be an excellent way to convey information to children – provided it’s designed with the audience in mind. How to do this? Here are a few recommendations from us to help you answer this question:
- Don’t turn the presentation into a lesson. Most presentations created for children are essentially educational, even if the content is meant to be social. This often leads to a ‘teacher’ tone that may not resonate well with young audiences. To put it bluntly, that’s not the best way to connect with your audience. Instead, let the presentation “speak” to children as an equal, delivering thoughts and ideas not as a superior mentor, but as an equal interlocutor offering truly interesting and useful information.
- Use as many illustrations as possible – video and animation are ideal. Even with adult audiences, presentations rich in visuals are more effective than those that rely solely on talking heads and text slides. For children, visuals are even more crucial. When creating content for a younger audience, prioritize video and animation. Modern AI technologies allow you to generate video slides, clips, and even full animations without requiring specialized professional skills.
- Interactivity is key to maintaining children’s attention. Just like with “adult” presentations, remember that attention spans can be short, and children’s focus can shift even more quickly. Children’s attention tends to wane more quickly, so it’s crucial to actively engage them in the presentation. Don’t just offer opportunities for questions and comments – encourage them to participate. Incorporate interactive slides that allow for various manipulations, and make sure to include contests and games. These elements are particularly important for children’s presentations and can be even more effective if you offer prizes, even if they are virtual or symbolic.
- Children’s products and services need to be ‘sold’ first to children and then to parents. Let’s focus on commercial presentations aimed at children. Traditionally, content promoting children’s products and services is often created with parents in mind. This seems logical – after all, adults pay, not children. However, the benefits that parents see in children’s products (something like “it’s useful,” “it develops,” “it will help with learning”) often do not touch the strings of the child’s soul. Moreover, what parents view as advantages might come across as drawbacks to kids. Don’t believe me? Imagine a presentation about a children’s summer camp that talks about discipline and routine, proper nutrition, and mandatory study hours to help prepare for the next school year. An ideal commercial presentation for children should be crafted to captivate their interest in the product or service, while also aligning with parental approval. In other words, when creating such a presentation, prioritize the interests of children. However, it’s also important to review the presentation from the parents’ perspective to ensure it meets their approval.
- Create presenters and speakers that children will trust. One challenge with presentations for children is that they often struggle to engage with the presenters, who are typically adults. This is especially true for teenagers, who may view adults with a degree of mistrust, questioning, “What do they know about our lives, desires, and problems?” They should only demand, restrict and prohibit!” – this, or something like this, children often evaluate even those adults whom they treat well. Attitude is an attitude, and interests are interests. In general, this is a normal situation, directly related to both upbringing and the process of growing up. But in the case of presentations, this is a problem. The presenter needs to establish trust with the audience to ensure that the information is received without subconscious rejection. For presentations aimed at children, you can create presenters and speakers that the audience will naturally trust and relate to. Let child speakers engage directly with the young audience, or use entirely fictitious characters like superheroes, aliens, or dinosaurs – anything that resonates with children. The key is to ensure that these presenters are relevant to the topic and captivating for the audience. For creating AI-based speakers, you might consider using tools like our Pitch Avatar presenter assistant.
In conclusion, let’s reiterate our initial point: a presentation is an excellent method for engaging a children’s audience. The most important thing is to always keep the children’s interests at the forefront.
