Designing Storytelling Tools to Convey Technology Ideas
Technology executives at a major lifestyle retail brand were seeking to urgently elevate and mature the internal storytelling capabilities within their organization. The objective was to significantly boost business awareness, stakeholder understanding, and engagement in the crucial area of technology product delivery. There was a pressing need to enforce greater consistency and polish when communicating with executive leaders to ensure all information was crisp, concise, and powerfully on brand.
The Opportunity
A strategic opportunity existed to design a unified set of high-impact storytelling templates rooted in the brand's premium imagery, distinct typography, and core color palette. These templates would serve as a powerful framework, enabling technology teams to distill complex ideas into formats that were easily digestible, executive-ready, and immediately well-received. Crucially, before investing in expensive, robust training solutions, we focused on delivering practical, plug-and-play tools that teams could leverage right away to dramatically improve how their ideas were conveyed to senior stakeholders.
What We Delivered
To establish a gold standard set of storytelling templates that drove consistency and impact, we executed the following:
Conducted a Critical Meeting Moment Intake: We performed a deep analysis of the most common, high-stakes meeting moments requiring structured storytelling, including Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs), annual strategic planning sessions, sprint reviews, and executive readouts.
Audited Existing Communication Assets: We meticulously reviewed existing templates and fragmented slide decks used to convey complex ideas for key organizational moments across diverse internal audiences.
Developed an Executive Presentation Style Guide: We created a definitive presentation style guide, translating the core brand guidelines into actionable rules for executive-level communications.
Curated a High-Impact Image Library: We organized and refined a massive library of over 3,000 brand images down to 400 hand-selected, powerful visuals suitable for executive communication.
Designed 40+ Master Slides for Clarity: We created and perfected over 40 master slide layouts engineered for optimal clarity and best-practice visual communication, specifically tailored for technology-driven narratives.
Created 5 Dynamic Template Variations: We designed five distinct template variations within the overarching brand framework, allowing for necessary visual variety across different seasons, specific brand verticals, and various functional uses.
Crafted Self-Service User Instructions: We developed a comprehensive set of user instructions featuring clear storytelling do’s and don’ts, ensuring the templates were fully self-serve and scalable across the entire function.
Drafted a Strategic Rollout Message: We prepared targeted messaging to efficiently roll out the templates across the technology function, ensuring widespread access and immediate adoption.
Provided Recommendations for Sustained Excellence: We delivered strategic recommendations for ongoing template refreshes, specialized strategic meeting templates, and long-term storytelling capability training.
What Made a Statement
Leaders expressed overwhelming enthusiasm to immediately leverage the new presentation design and storytelling templates to articulate their strategic vision with greater authority throughout the organization. The significantly elevated designs instantly created a renewed sense of excitement and vital connection to the brand. Most importantly, there was a refreshed, galvanized energy within the teams to create content that rapidly accelerated momentum with stakeholders on mission-critical projects.
