Your CEO Will Hate Your Keynote (And Here's How to Survive It)

Every conference season, marketing managers face the same challenge: writing a keynote that doesn't suck. Your CEO walks into the conference room three weeks before the event with a slide deck from last year's presentation and says, "We need to update this for next week." Welcome to the circus.

Today, on the day of another Apple keynote, I thought I'd walk through my process for writing an amazing keynote presentation. I've authored keynotes for some of the industry's legendary CEOs and continue to do so today. I've delivered keynote demos on stage, participated in countless high-level executive meetings, witnessed and driven many last-minute keynote rewrites, and yes, I've seen my share of executive tantrums over keynotes. The good news is that there's a method to the madness.

Writing keynotes for executives isn't just about crafting compelling narratives. It's about translating strategic positioning into a story that resonates with thousands of people who didn't choose to be there. As I explore in Picks & Shovels: Marketing to Developers During the AI Gold Rush, the best product marketers understand that every customer touchpoint should reinforce a coherent strategic narrative.

Keynotes are one of the most important (and, certainly, the most visible) customer touchpoints.

Start with strategic positioning

Before you write a single slide, you need clarity on what strategic positioning you're trying to land. This isn't about product announcements or quarterly updates. It's about market position. Are you establishing category leadership? Challenging an incumbent? Creating an entirely new market category?

The positioning decision drives everything that follows. If you're positioning as the platform choice, your keynote should focus on ecosystem benefits, integration capabilities, and developer success stories. If you're positioning as the complete solution, your narrative should emphasize outcomes, simplicity, and business results.

Too many keynotes fail because they try to land multiple positioning strategies simultaneously. You can't be both the innovative disruptor and the stable enterprise choice in the same presentation. Pick one strategic position and build your entire narrative around it.

Craft your core narrative

Once you know your strategic positioning, develop the story that reinforces it. Every great keynote has a narrative arc that connects industry trends to customer challenges to your unique solution. But here's where most marketing managers go wrong: they start with their product instead of starting with customer reality.

The best keynotes begin with a truth that everyone in the audience recognizes. "Developer productivity has never been more critical" or "Customer expectations have fundamentally changed" or "Security can no longer be an afterthought." Start with something your audience already believes, then build your case from there.

Gather input from all stakeholders

This is where things get messy. You'll need input from product teams about roadmap priorities, sales teams about customer feedback, customer success about implementation challenges, and executives about strategic initiatives you might not be privy to. Everyone will have strong opinions about what the story should be.

Resist the urge to design by committee. Gather all the input, but maintain control over the narrative architecture. Too many cooks will turn your keynote into a feature laundry list that excites nobody and positions nothing.

Create a structured process for stakeholder input. Send specific questions rather than asking for general feedback. "What customer proof point best demonstrates our positioning claim?" is better than "What do you think about the keynote?" Specific questions generate useful feedback. General questions generate politics.

Synthesize input without losing narrative focus

Here's the hard part: you'll have brilliant insights from multiple stakeholders, and some of them might fundamentally change your story. The product team might have a technical breakthrough that doesn't just support your current positioning but suggests an entirely different strategic direction. Sales might have customer feedback that reveals you've been positioning for the wrong use case. Customer success might have usage data that shows customers are getting value in ways you never anticipated.

Stay flexible about your narrative. If stakeholder input reveals that your positioning assumptions were wrong, change course. The goal isn't to defend your original story; it's to land the most compelling and accurate strategic position.

When evaluating whether to include new elements, ask yourself: does this advance my current narrative, or does it suggest I need a different narrative entirely? A genuine product breakthrough might be worth restructuring your entire keynote around. A customer success story that contradicts your positioning might indicate you're targeting the wrong market segment.

This is where your positioning framework from Picks & Shovels becomes critical, but not as a rigid filter. Use your customer reality check, competitive alternatives analysis, and message architecture as diagnostic tools. When stakeholders propose off-narrative elements, investigate whether those elements reveal gaps in your market understanding or opportunities for stronger positioning.

There's an analogy I like to use from filmmaking. Every Hitchcock film has a murder in it. Sometimes they occur at the beginning, sometimes in the middle, sometimes at the end, and sometimes (like in "Rope," my personal favorite) they happen off screen long before the action even starts. But they're all masterpieces. The key isn't when the murder happens; it's that everything in the film serves the larger narrative.

The best keynotes often emerge when marketing managers are willing to abandon their original story in favor of a more compelling truth that stakeholder input reveals. Be ruthless about narrative focus, but be flexible about which narrative deserves your focus.

Prepare for last-minute rewrites

Accept this reality: you will rewrite the keynote the night before. Sometimes you'll rewrite it the morning of the presentation. CEOs and executive leaders operate at an altitude far greater than yours. They see strategic initiatives and market dynamics that you might not be aware of. When they show up for rehearsal and suggest major changes, it's not a failure of your process. It's the nature of executive communication.

I've watched CEOs completely restructure keynotes based on competitor announcements that happened the day before the conference. I've seen executive teams decide to soft-launch products because of customer feedback that came in during the final week. I've participated in late-night rewrite sessions because board meetings revealed strategic priorities that hadn't been communicated to the marketing team.

Don't take this personally. Most of the time, the keynote surgery is limited to the front matter and context. The core narrative structure and supporting evidence you've developed will remain intact. But the framing might change based on strategic context you weren't privy to when you started writing.

Build flexibility into your keynote structure. Create modular sections that can be reordered or replaced without destroying the entire narrative. Develop multiple opening options that can adapt to different strategic contexts. Have backup slides ready for different competitive scenarios.

Master the components of a great keynote

Every memorable keynote includes five essential components, all aligned with your strategic positioning:

• Strategic vision. Paint a picture of where the industry is heading and why current approaches won't work. Ground this in real customer challenges and market dynamics, not internal product roadmaps.
• Tactical execution. Prove you can deliver on your strategic vision through concrete examples, customer implementations, and measurable results. Developers especially need to see that you understand the practical challenges of executing your vision.
• Customer evidence and social proof. Let customers tell your positioning story through their own experiences. Customer testimonials, case studies, and usage data provide external validation that your positioning claims are real.
• Partner validation. Show that you're not alone in thinking this way about market direction. Partner announcements, ecosystem growth, and industry adoption patterns prove that your strategic vision has broader market acceptance.
• Compelling demonstration. Land your strategic positioning with a demo that makes abstract concepts concrete. The best keynote demos don't just show features; they demonstrate how your approach to the market creates better outcomes for customers.

Each component should advance your central narrative while providing different types of evidence for your positioning claims. Strategic vision establishes thought leadership. Tactical execution proves capability. Customer evidence provides social proof. Partner validation shows ecosystem momentum. Demonstrations make everything tangible.

Create emotional momentum with production elements

The best keynotes don't just inform; they inspire. This requires production elements that create emotional engagement with your strategic narrative. But avoid the temptation to let production values replace substance. Sizzle reels and dramatic music can't save a weak positioning story.

Sizzle reels work best when they establish industry context or customer challenges before you present your solution. Use them to get the audience emotionally invested in the problem you're solving. High-quality case study videos let customers tell your positioning story in their own words. Quantifiable data points provide concrete evidence for abstract positioning claims.

But remember: production elements should amplify your narrative, not distract from it. The voice of god introduction, dramatic lighting, and carefully timed music should all serve your strategic positioning. If your production elements could work equally well for any company in your space, they're not advancing your unique narrative.

Measure beyond applause

The success of your keynote isn't measured by audience applause or social media mentions. It's measured by how effectively it advances your strategic positioning in the market. Do prospects understand your differentiation better after hearing your presentation? Do customers feel more confident about their choice to work with you? Do partners see clearer opportunities for collaboration?

Track leading indicators of positioning effectiveness: sales team confidence in competitive situations, customer success team ability to articulate value propositions, product team alignment on strategic priorities, and market analyst understanding of your category position.

The best keynotes create organizational alignment around strategic positioning that extends far beyond the conference stage. When your entire company can tell the same strategic story with confidence and consistency, you've written a keynote that matters.

A great keynote isn't just a presentation. It's a strategic positioning tool that aligns your organization and clarifies your market position. As the ringleader of your company's strategic narrative, you're not just writing slides. You're orchestrating how thousands of people understand what you do, why it matters, and how it's different from every alternative.

The circus is waiting. Make sure your story is worth the show.

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