Want to Tell a Visually Interesting Story in PowerPoint? (Try Our New Asset: Photorealistic PowerPoint.)

One of the best things about working for The Content Bureau is that our clients trust us with the hard stuff—and we love a challenge.

Here’s one case where we had to develop a new type of asset for a longtime client—fast:

Background: One of our Fortune 500 clients asked us to produce a video for an upcoming sales pitch to a very high-profile retail customer.

The challenge: The client needed a pitch presentation within a week, and didn’t have the budget to do a video. We had to think of a visually interesting and personally relatable way to show a “Day in the Life” scenario with the product—with a relatively small budget, in a very short amount of time.

Solution: We brainstormed a number of different options and settled on a new asset that we call: photorealistic PowerPoint.

Description: We created a persona, “Jeanie,” and explained how our client could help this retailer reach Jeanie throughout the day. We used real-life images as our backgrounds and changed them as our subject moved through her day.

Screenshots and marketing messages popped up as appropriate when Jeanie interacted with the product, and the story was narrated through succinct subtitles that flowed through the slides. Finally, we layered in animation to give the story movement and make it feel video-like.

Example: Here are a few genericized examples from the deck.

Photorealistic PPT 1

Photorealistic PPT 2

Photorealistic PPT 3

Since we created this first photorealistic PowerPoint deck, we’ve gone on to develop many more—mainly for sales decks. But this technique can be used in myriad other ways.

Sound Like Something You Could Use?

We’d be happy to talk to you about the possibilities. Even if the task seems impossible, give us a call. We like the hard stuff.

By Allison Hayase