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1. Message
This might seem like a boring step, but it’s a critical one. A common mistake I see a lot is people will pick a slide template, then try to force their message into that template. But that can create problems because it forces you to adapt what you’re saying to the logical layout of the slide. And before you know it, you’re trying to fill your slide with meaningless bullet points just because they’re there.Related: 7 PowerPoint mistakes that are killing your presentation
A better approach is to think about what you want to say first, then you can figure out the best way to present that information visually. Let’s say we wanted to build a slide about Spotify and their growth in the audio streaming market. Very simply, our message might be something like, “Spotify is expected to grow”, so let’s put that at the top of our slide.


“Customer Experience: The 14BN Risk” Oliver Wyman, 2018
Or this slide from McKinsey about innovation in the mining industry. The clear message is that companies are using innovation to address declining productivity trends, as stated here in the title. And again you can see that message clearly supported by these two quotes from mining company executives.
“Challenges in Mining: Scarcity or Opportunity?” McKinsey, 2015
2. Organization
Step number two in the MOVIE framework is to organize your information. Now that you’ve established a message for your slide, you can start organizing your data to support that message. This is going to make your slide more persuasive, and help your audience understand how you’ve reached your conclusions. This is where the Pyramid Principle comes into play. If you’ve never heard of the Pyramid Principle make sure you check out some of our other videos on the topic, or take a look at our advanced courses. Put simply, the Pyramid Principle is just a method for communication where you start with your main message, then break that message down into its component parts. When you do it right, each statement provides a summary of all the statements below it.Related: Consultant Explains the Pyramid Principle
And this type of approach is something you see used by top slide creators all the time. In this slide from McKinsey you can see the main message of the slide at the top, and support for that message in these two sections.
“Technology’s role in mineral criticality” McKinsey, 2017
In this slide from BCG the slide structure is even more pronounced, with three distinct sections that all support the main takeaway of the slide as spelled out in the title. And this works really well because the audience can read the title first to get an overview of the content, then dive deeper into the details with each of these three sections.
“Loose dogs in Dallas: Strategic Recommendations to Improve Public Safety and Animal Welfare in Dallas” BCG, 2016
If our main message is that Spotify is expected to grow, then we need to think about what information we can use to support that message, and more importantly, how we can best organize it. Let’s say for example that we’ve gathered the following data points from various sources including investor presentations, annual reports, expert interviews, etc. The first step would be to figure out how we can organize these data points into different categories. And reading through them, you can see a few themes emerge. For example, it seems like many of them are about podcasting, so let’s take those and group them together. Then give them a summarizing title.❝ Because the truth is, you don’t need to include every single data point you have. You need to tell a compelling story. And being selective with what you decide to include is an important part of that. ❞
Then a few of these are about the growth in users, so we can put those together as well, and we’ll add the title “Strong user growth”. Then these last couple don’t really seem to have a place, so we’ll just leave them for now. So now we can use these two groups to form the main content on our slide. Of course it doesn’t have to be 2 groups, it can be 3, 4, or sometimes even more. All you’re trying to do with this step is take the data you have, organize it into groups that support the title, and put them on your slide. And notice how well this slide’s organized now. The title at the top provides the main message, these subtitles help support that message, and the bullet points support the subtitles. The logic is clear, persuasive, and easy to follow. Now, it’s worth noting that this isn’t the only way to go about this. We used a bottom-up approach to organize our information, but another option would be to use a top-down approach, where you first decide on your subtitles, then go and find data to support those subtitles. Each method has its own pros and cons, so ultimately it comes down to whichever method works best for you. So with the basic organization of our slide in place, you might be wondering what we should do with these other data points. And the answer to that is to just delete them.
3. Visualization
The next step in the MOVIE framework is to visualize your information. This is going to help the audience quickly and easily understand the details of your slide, in a way that a text or numbers can’t really do. Without getting carried away, you want to try and visualize as much of the information as possible. Most simply that means trying to include charts where you have enough data, but that can also mean adding icons, graphics, or pictures. As long as those icons, graphics, or pictures help bring clarity to the message, instead of just being a distraction. Taking a look at our slide here it’s pretty easy to see where we could add a chart. In this section about user growth, we can probably just add a chart to visualize the growth. And although these three bullet points aren’t all the exact same, they do all cover the same general idea, which is that Spotify’s user growth is strong.Related: Choosing the Right Chart: A Consultant’s Guide
So to keep it simple, we’ll just add a basic line chart that shows Spotify’s monthly active users, broken down by quarter. That way the audience can get a clear picture of how consistently Spotify has been able to add to its active user base, which is going to help support our main idea that the overall business is expected to grow.

“Fintech New York: Partnerships, Platforms and Open Innovation” Kearney, 2020
Then even more subtly, notice how on this slide from Oliver Wyman they’ve used icons to help visualize what might have otherwise been a pretty boring, text-only slide. Even little things like this can really help the audience understand the content of the slide more quickly.
“Responding to Covid-19” Oliver Wyman, 2021
4. Insights
The next step in the framework is to make your insights clear. This is a critical step in the slide-building process that often gets forgotten – even by experienced slide creators. Most slides in the business world tend to be pretty dense – full of text, numbers, charts, and other visuals – and this can be overwhelming for the audience. In a live presentation the audience has to listen to the speaker, read through the information on the slide, and think of how they’re gonna respond. Even for a smart and well-informed audience, this can be difficult. So the solution is to make your insights crystal clear.Related: How to Design Effective Presentations: 5 Practical Tips from the Consulting Industry
In this slide from BCG notice how the title clearly and directly states the insight of the slide. Then notice also how the subtitles do the same thing. Instead of just stating a 1 or 2 word topic, they explicitly call out what it is they want you to know.
“The Open Education Resources ecosystem” BCG, 2013
Looking at our Spotify slide there are a few different places we can do this. First we want to highlight the main ideas of our slide, which of course is our working title, and then these subtitles, which are the support for that title. So let’s change this title to be a bit more clear and descriptive… Then we can update these subtitles as well to be very clear about the point we’re making…

“Making zero-emission trucking a reality” Strategy&, 2020
Going back to our Spotify slide, there are a few different things we can do to highlight the insights. First we can draw more attention to our title and subtitles with large text, bolding, and the use of lines.


5. Extras
The fifth and final step in the MOVIE framework is to take care of the extras. This can refer to things like formatting, alignment, footnotes, or anything else that’s going to help clean up the look and feel of the slide. Depending on your situation, this might also mean making sure your company’s template and guidelines are followed. If you’re enrolled in our advanced courses you’re going to automatically have access to our comprehensive slide checklist, which you can use to quickly and easily finalize your slide. But if not, just take a few minutes to look for typos, misaligned boxes, or anything else that looks out of place.❝ Make sure you have all your supporting details such as sources, footnotes, or anything else someone would need to understand the slide when looking at it for the first time. ❞
This might seem like a simple step, but any good slide creator is gonna take this part very seriously. Notice how on this slide from Accenture everything is perfectly aligned. There are no typos, and they’ve made sure to include units, sources, and footnotes. The truth is, the overall quality of your slide is a reflection on you, your team, and your company. And at places like Accenture they understand this really well.
“Fintech New York: Partnerships, Platforms and Open Innovation” Accenture, 2015
With our Spotify slide you might have already noticed a few things that can be done to improve the look of the slide. The first is to align these subtitles, both to each other but also to the margins of the slide. The next is to make sure we’ve got the details included for our chart. Then finally, we can add sources to the bottom of the slide.