Every week, somewhere in the world, a room full of executives sits through a week of business presentations. Competent content, competent delivery, competent slides. One after another, hour after hour, day after day.
By Friday, most of it is gone.
Not because the presenters weren’t prepared. Not because the content wasn’t relevant. But because nothing made it stick. No moment of surprise, no emotional hook, nothing that separated one presentation from the next in the memory of the people who had to sit through all of them.
Making a business presentation that people actually remember requires something most presenters never think to include. At Marvel Experiences, it’s something we think about every day.
Why Most Business Presentations Don’t Land
The standard advice for business presentations focuses on structure, clarity, and delivery. Know your content. Keep your slides clean. Speak with confidence. It’s good advice, and most experienced presenters follow it.
The problem is, so does everyone else.
When every presenter in the room is competent, competence stops being an advantage. Your audience isn’t comparing you to a bad presenter; they’re comparing you to every other polished, prepared, professional who stood in the same spot before you. In that context, doing everything right is just the entry requirement. It’s not what makes you memorable.
What makes you memorable is giving your audience something they didn’t expect. Not a better slide deck, a story worth carrying home.
How to Use Storytelling in Your Next Business Presentation
Data informs. Stories move people. And in a room full of competent presenters, the one who understands that distinction is the one people remember.
Business presentation storytelling isn’t a technique for creative industries or charismatic speakers. It’s a discipline anyone can apply, regardless of the content they’re presenting. The right story doesn’t distract from the message. It becomes the message. Here are the principles we come back to every time.
Start with the Emotion You Want to Leave Behind
Most presenters start with their content. The smarter question is: how do I want my audience to feel when I sit down?
That question changes everything. It shifts the focus from information delivery to emotional design, and once you know the feeling you’re working towards, the right story becomes much easier to find. Inspired. Reassured. Energised. Proud. Define the emotional destination first, and the content and narrative that get you there become far clearer.
Find a Story Your Audience Already Carries with Them
You don’t need to tell your audience a new story. You need to remind them of one they already love.
Familiarity is an advantage, not a shortcut. A story your audience grew up with, or lived through, or has told their own children, carries emotional weight you simply cannot manufacture from scratch. When you connect that existing feeling to your business message, you’re not just making a point; you’re activating a memory. And memories are far harder to forget than arguments.
Let the Narrative Carry the Business Message
A well-chosen story doesn’t need a footnote. If you find yourself explaining why the parallel works, the parallel probably isn’t working.
The goal is to find a narrative so well-matched to your business message that the connection feels inevitable, not clever, not constructed, but obvious. When that happens, you don’t need to spell it out. The audience arrives at the conclusion themselves, and that conclusion sticks in a way that a slide full of supporting arguments never will.
Be Prepared to Make Yourself Uncomfortable
If your presentation idea feels completely safe, it probably isn’t memorable enough.
The best storytelling choices in business presentations are usually the ones that give you pause, the idea that makes you think, “Will this actually work?” That moment of apprehension isn’t a warning sign. It’s a signal that you’ve found something genuinely different from what everyone else in the room is going to do.
How We Helped a CEO Make His Annual Presentation Unforgettable
One of our clients is a smart, successful New Zealand-based CEO of the local office of a renowned German manufacturing company. Over the past 20 years, the company has gone from a business with a reputation in one small sector of its industry to a consumer powerhouse with a brand that Kiwis lust after.
As their communications partner, and based on the brand profiling work we have done for this business, the CEO now gets us to help him write the business plan presentation he makes in Germany each year.
The business content is set in advance and not up for discussion. What he asks of Marvel Experiences each year is this: how do we take his presentation and transform it from the mundane to the memorable?
He knows he will be presenting to a group of German executives who sit through presentation after presentation, hour after hour, day after day. All of them are the same. All delivered by competent CEOs from around the globe.
In 2023, we packed our CEO off with The Little Engine That Could, drawing a parallel between that story and the soul of New Zealand. When he expressed some apprehension about presenting a children’s story to a room of senior executives, we knew we had done our job.
When he asked, “Will this work with my audience in Germany?” our reply was simple: “Yes, because the audience is human. They are mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, uncles and aunts.”
We can write this blog only because we were right. The audience loved the story and the portrayal of New Zealand as the little engine that could.
In 2024, with a difficult year behind the business, our CEO went to Germany with the story of Ernest Shackleton in Antarctica and how a New Zealander, Frank Worsley, known as Shackleton’s Captain, helped overcome insurmountable odds to save every single man on the Endurance crew.
Ready to Find the Story Behind Your Message?
At Marvel Experiences, helping clients find the story behind their message is part of how we work. If this has got you thinking differently about your next presentation, take a look at what we do or get in touch today.