There Is a Story in Every Business Deck. Here Is How to Find It.
Introduction: What Makes a Presentation Stick?
Frauke Havinga opened with a simple question: think of a presentation that truly stayed with you. Chances are it was not the venue or the slide design. It was that the presentation felt relatable — it spoke to your world, your experience, your life. That is the goal Frauke and her team at Mr.Prezident chase with every project, and increasingly, AI is how they get there.
The Problem With Most Business Decks
Most presentations live entirely on the rational side: graphs, bullet points, customer journeys, specs. They inform but they do not move people. To be convincing, a presentation needs to shift from the rational to the emotional — not by abandoning facts, but by wrapping them in a story that the audience can see themselves in. As Frauke puts it: in every static rational business deck, there is a story to tell. AI now gives anyone — designer or not — the tools to visualise it.
Four Client Projects, Four Different Approaches
ManCom — Bringing a Founder's Story to Life
ManCom, a Japanese lens manufacturer entering European markets, arrived with specs, timelines, and technical slides. Frauke's team found the story worth telling: the founder Keichi Tanaka, who first encountered a contact lens in 1950s Nagoya and spent months hand-crafting his own in his eye. Starting from a handful of archive photographs, they used Midjourney to upscale, colour-grade, and expand the images into a cinematic panorama — then filled in the unrecorded moments of his life using carefully authenticated prompts (real location names, accurate weather conditions, period-correct camera styles). The result: an interactive iPad presentation that sales reps brought directly into retailer conversations.
Akzo Nobel — The Body Shop of the Future
A paint manufacturer launching a new digital platform for car body shops had input slides that felt anything but homely — despite their own slogan calling it "the digital home of your body shop." Frauke's team used AI-generated illustration to build a visual walk-through of a body shop of the future, showing every department the platform would connect. The key to consistency: generate one reference image, lock in the prompt structure, and only change the central subject for each new scene. The result was a coherent illustrated world that body shop owners immediately recognised as their own.
Amsterdam News Channel — AI-Generated Personas
When a client needs to communicate who their audience is but has no image bank to work from, AI fills the gap. For an Amsterdam news channel pitching to potential advertisers, Frauke's team fed audience research into NotebookLM to generate three detailed personas, then used ChatGPT to create realistic profile images — people who looked like they genuinely belonged in Amsterdam, in their natural environment, reading the paper or listening to the podcast. Research-backed, visually real, and instantly relatable to the people being pitched to.
Schiphol Airport & CTP — Movement and Time
For Schiphol's history of flight presentation, existing archive photographs were brought to life using Sora — subtle AI video generation that added gentle movement without distorting the originals. For CTP, a business park developer, the challenge was telling a story of construction and completion using only one real photograph of the finished park. Midjourney worked backwards in time — showing the plot mid-build, then as an empty site — turning a bullet point list into a visual journey the audience could actually follow.
Final Thoughts: Start With the Story
The tools are available, the quality is improving fast, and the gap between a forgettable slide deck and a relatable visual story has never been easier to close. Frauke's advice: when you open your next presentation, look for the story first. Once you have found it, AI can help you bring it to life.
Join the Conversation
What is the most creative way you have used AI to bring a presentation to life — and what story is hiding inside your next deck? Share your thoughts below.
Comments