Michael Bay Meltdown Teaches What Not To Do

Persuasion Public Speaking // Lisa B. Marshall // // 5 comments

Oh my gosh, I was stunned. What happened to Michael Bay? A very well respected communication professional, director Michael Bay, was thrown off when the teleprompter failed during a live presentation at CES 2014 in Las Vegas. He was there to promote a new television from Samsung and unbelievably he chose to leave the stage leaving behind the executive from Samsung alone on stage. If you haven’t seen the video, from a public speaking perspective it’s quite remarkable. It’s a public speaker’s nightmare. Not knowing what to say, stumbling so badly you feel the need the leave the stage!

So what can we learn from this? I wrote a detailed post over at Quick and Dirty tips. Below are the highlights.

Prepare for the worst. Always have something to say – even if only brief comments.
Stay calm. When technology goes wrong, discreetly ask for assistance.
Stay cool. Don’t let the audience hear or see your reaction.
Continue. The most important lesson: Keep talking!! No matter what, the show MUST go on!

There are 5 comments .

MAYLAN NEWTON — January 8, 2014 @ 12:25 pm

Well at least the executive was professional enough to make the best of a bad situation

Reply »

intellgent human — January 29, 2014 @ 5:07 am

It’s difficult to “wing it” when the script (from what we heard) is insubstantial grandiose platitude. It’s difficult to remember and difficult to replicate because it’s not the way (even these people, I hope) normally speak. I suspect he was put off by the incongruity between what he started out by reading and the words which were forming in his mind post-autocue. He was obviously nervous in any case.

Lisa B. Marshall — January 29, 2014 @ 10:14 am

I agree that the script may not have been natural language…but that’s why had he just spoken in his own words –not matter what he said–it would have been effective. Because it would be clear that it wasn’t marketing hype, but his authentic ideas and words.

intellgent human — January 29, 2014 @ 5:58 pm

Well, saying almost anything would have been better than nothing but diverting from the dull vacuousness he originally indended to make his audience suffer only because his autocue broke would hardly be a Pauline coversion on the road to Damascus. It might even highlight the desperate nature of his original endeavour.

KMD — February 6, 2014 @ 4:30 pm

Honestly, it appeared that he was having an anxiety attack. When this happens you literally cannot think! He needed to get himself off the stage to calm himself.