In my book, "Power Up Your Power Point Presentations", I share the importance of making the first thing you say, do or show your audience be unique. The primitive brain looks for the what is different from the norm. So the first slide needs to be different from what the audience expects. And because of the way the eye focuses on a flat object such as a power point slide, you need to make sure your slides are not all the same, and yet all your slides only contain the most important information. Here is a recent research study on eye tracking that discusses how the eyes track information that supports the "Make it novel and unique" trick.

"Records of eye movements show that the observer's attention is usually held only by certain elements of the picture.... Eye movement reflects the human thought processes; so the observer's thought may be followed to some extent from records of eye movement (the thought accompanying the examination of the particular object). It is easy to determine from these records which elements attract the observer's eye (and, consequently, his thought), in what order, and how often." [8]
"The observer's attention is frequently drawn to elements which do not give important information but which, in his opinion, may do so. Often an observer will focus his attention on elements that are unusual in the particular circumstances, unfamiliar, incomprehensible, and so on." [9]
"... when changing its points of fixation, the observer's eye repeatedly returns to the same elements of the picture. Additional time spent on perception is not used to examine the secondary elements, but to reexamine the most important elements." [10]