Months of research, one massive slide deck. The findings are credible. The presentation isn’t. An executive audience walks out of the room informed but unmoved.
When data has to move a room
Data Storytelling ServicesThe agency work Nancy studied for decades, and the foundation of the award-winning DataStory® book and methodology.
Most organizations with strong data don’t have an analysis problem. They have a translation problem.
The findings are real. The stakes are high. And somewhere between the data and the decision-maker, there’s no data storytelling — just slides that inform but don’t persuade, visuals that display but don’t clarify, and a presentation the audience leaves without acting on.
Duarte has been solving this problem for enterprise clients for nearly four decades. The data presentations we’ve built have helped markets, shifted policies, and sparked decisions that changed industries.
Trusted By
Many of these relationships came to Duarte at a specific inflection point —
a landmark report ready to publish, a conference keynote built around findings, a dataset that had to reach a skeptical audience and get them to change their mind.
Freeman has partnered with Duarte for years to turn quarterly attendee research into the events industry’s most anticipated trend reports. When the data storytelling changed the way the information was shared, the industry changed with it.
When data has to drive decisions, leaders use Duarte’s data storytelling services.
Why Don’t Data Presentations Drive Decisions?
Most data presentations underdeliver because the translation work never got done.
The data is real. The analysis is sound. What’s missing is someone who knows how to find the data story inside the numbers and build a presentation that gives the audience what they need to feel, believe, and do something different.
The situations that bring organizations to Duarte tend to look like this:
The data is technically correct, but it’s visually overwhelming. Charts on every slide. Color without intention. The audience can’t find the insight, and the presenter can’t explain why it matters in thirty seconds.
The stakes are too high for the team to do it alone. A board presentation. An investor briefing. A flagship industry report that will define how the market sees the organization. The internal team doesn’t have the bandwidth — or the outside perspective — to get it right.
What Does a Great Data Presentation Do for an Organization?
When data is translated into a story people can follow and a visual argument they can’t ignore, it reaches further than the room where it’s first presented.
It gives leadership a clear frame for the decision on the table. It travels to audiences who weren’t in the room, like the committee members, the press, the sales teams who need to repeat the finding in every customer conversation. It gives an organization credibility it couldn’t manufacture any other way.
The organizations Duarte works with come away with:
- A data presentation where every data point earns its place because it advances the story, not just the slide count
- Visuals that make complex findings immediately clear to a non-technical audience, all without losing the rigor that makes the data credible
- A narrative arc the audience can follow, built around what they need to believe and do — not what the SME wants to say
- Design that signals the quality and importance of the work before anyone speaks
- A report, a deck, or a leave-behind that keeps making the case in every room it travels to
- A creative process that absorbed the hard work so the team responsible for the data didn’t have to become data storytelling and design experts
The organizations that produce work like this have been building it with Duarte for years. The DataStory® methodology didn’t come from theory. It came from the patterns Nancy Duarte found across decades of this agency work.
How Does Duarte Create Data Storytelling Presentations?
Every engagement is scoped to the client’s moment. There is no fixed formula, but the work is rooted in the Duarte Method™ that has helped industry leaders get the most out of their data presentations for decades.
Discovery and audit
We start with the data, the audience, and the decision the presentation has to drive. We ask the questions that surface the real story — the finding that matters most, the audience’s skepticism, the context they’ll be missing when they walk in. We audit existing assets before building anything new, so we’re not designing around a strategy problem that should have been solved upstream.
Story development
Story architecture before slides. We get alignment on the Duarte Big Idea™ that anchors the presentation — the single thing the audience needs to believe — and build the arc from there. This is where the data gets translated: from a collection of findings into a sequence the audience can follow to the conclusion the audience needs them to reach.
Creative production
This is where most clients feel the difference. We build visuals that make the data impossible to misread and hard to forget. Complex datasets made clear. Charts designed to direct the eye, not overwhelm it. Design that reflects the seriousness of the work. Built in the tools the client actually uses — PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides — so the assets are maintainable after delivery.
Extended formats
For organizations whose data story needs to travel beyond a single presentation — interactive experiences, infographic systems, documentary-style video, or dynamic HTML — we scope the format to the moment and the audience.
How Do You Turn Data Into a Presentation That Moves People?
Let’s talk through your data, your audience, and every room the presentation has to work in — including the ones you won’t be in when it gets forwarded.
What Data Storytelling Services Does Duarte Deliver?
Duarte’s data storytelling engagements are scoped to the moment.
Organizations typically need support for one of these:
- Data-driven executive presentations — board, investor, and C-suite presentations built around findings that have to drive a decision in a single meeting
- Research and findings reports — annual reports, industry trend reports, and quarterly findings translated into a designed business story that drives downloads, coverage, and leads
- Conference and keynote data presentations — main-stage presentations built around research, data, or findings that have to move a live audience to act
- Infographic and visual data systems — standalone infographics and visual frameworks that make complex data legible for a broad audience
- Interactive data experiences — dynamic HTML and web-based formats for findings that need to reach an audience beyond a single presentation or PDF
When the scope includes a main stage, full event production, or multiple executive speakers, see Keynote and Event Services →
Want to build this capability inside your organization? Explore Data Storytelling Training →
Proof It Works
Freeman — XLNC Quarterly Event Attendee Trends Report
Freeman has spent decades accumulating some of the most valuable research in the events industry. The question was how to make it move an industry that’s historically resistant to change. Duarte partnered with Freeman to translate quarterly attendee data into a designed narrative that gave event professionals a clear picture of where audience expectations were heading — and what to do about it. The XLNC reports now generate Freeman’s largest web traffic of the year. Up to 83% of downloads produce fresh marketing leads.
Al Gore — An Inconvenient Truth
Before An Inconvenient Truth was a film, it was a presentation. Former Vice President Al Gore brought Duarte reams of climate data and a single goal: reverse a trend the world wasn’t paying enough attention to. Duarte structured the most compelling findings into a presentation that met skeptical audiences where they were, customized the data for regional audiences across a national tour, and built the visual argument that ultimately became an Academy Award-winning documentary. It remains one of the most consequential data stories ever told.
Who this is for
Who Uses Data Storytelling Services?
This work is for organizations where the data is real, the stakes are high, and the presentation is the thing standing between the findings and the outcome they’re meant to produce.
The buyers who get the most from this work are typically:
- Heads of strategy and corporate development preparing board and investor presentations where the numbers have to tell a story that earns a decision
- Analytics, research, and insights leaders who own the data and are accountable for making it land with an executive audience that didn’t build it and won’t read the appendix
- CMOs and VPs of Marketing sitting on proprietary research that should be driving thought leadership, press coverage, and pipeline—but it isn’t because the story isn’t built yet
- Executive communications and chief of staff leaders supporting a C-suite executive whose presentation is built around data that has to move a room, not just inform it
The organizations that get the most from this work come in knowing that the data alone isn’t enough. They have findings worth acting on. What they need is a partner who knows how to make those findings unavoidable.
Talk with Our Team
It Usually Starts With the Data
Some organizations come to Duarte when the findings are ready but the story isn’t. The dataset is complete. The analysis is sound. The presentation is the problem.
Others come when the research is still being designed and the right questions haven’t been asked yet. Duarte has helped clients shape the survey instruments and research frameworks that make a data story possible before a single response is collected. Because the story you can tell is only as strong as the data you thought to gather.
Either way, the translation work takes time to do right. The audience’s skepticism has to be named and addressed before the slide copy is written. The story has to have internal alignment before all the visuals can be designed. The earlier the conversation starts, the better the output.
Many of these engagements grow into longer relationships. When the story works — when the data moves the room it was built for — the next ask is usually: how do we make sure this holds up everywhere the findings need to travel? Duarte can help with that, too.
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Frequently asked questions
Data storytelling services are a done-for-you engagement: Duarte turns complex findings into a presentation, report, or interactive experience that moves a decision. The work runs from finding the story inside the data through final creative production, built on the DataStory® methodology Nancy Duarte developed across decades of this agency work.
The training teaches your team to do this themselves; the services engagement has Duarte do it for you. Choose training when you want to build the capability in-house, and services when you have a specific high-stakes presentation, report, or data experience that has to land now.
Typically discovery and an audit of existing assets, story development around the Duarte Big Idea™, and creative production of visuals built in the tools you already use (PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides). For findings that need to travel, Duarte also builds extended formats — infographics, interactive HTML, and documentary-style video.
Heads of strategy and corporate development, analytics and insights leaders, CMOs and VPs of Marketing sitting on proprietary research, and executive-communications or chief-of-staff leaders supporting an executive whose presentation is built around data that has to move a room.
Yes. Duarte has helped clients shape the survey instruments and research frameworks that make a data story possible — because the story you can tell is only as strong as the data you thought to gather.