SERVICES
How Can We Help You?
We create custom presentations that change minds and build businesses. Our services range from high-level storyflow consultation to hands-on scripting and slide design.
Delivering a TEDx and need a full talk from scratch? Major keynote coming up, but back-to-back meetings till then? Got a draft slide deck that needs a little love? We got you. Using our proven methodology, we partner with you from our first meeting to the minute you step onstage. The result: A presentation you feel confident giving, custom-crafted to your voice and your audience’s ears.
Story Development
Great presentations are a journey. They take your audience from Point A (their current state) to Point B (where you want them to go). You want some sort of transformation: For them to see, think, and feel things differently. Your idea may be compelling. But if your storyline is random, choppy, or dull, you’ll lose them. Or, you may have too much information and you need to simplify. You may have lots of data, but are short on stories. We help uncover a storyline that will hold your audience. One that will touch their hearts and move them to action.
Scriptwriting
Scripting can take many forms, from bulleted talking-point guidelines to a TED talk crafted down to the last comma. Scripting extends to on-slide copy, each word calibrated to support and enhance what you say. We’re experts at capturing your voice, cadence, vocabulary, and humor. Likewise, we write to your ideal audience: The words that resonate. The content that will move and persuade them.
Visual Design
Do your visuals match the strength of your ideas? You’re an expert at what you do. Don’t let your slides look amateur! Most slides we see out in these streets are way too busy. Neuroscience shows that people can’t easily listen and focus on visuals — two tasks that involve the same area of the brain. If your slides are too busy and cluttered, your audience literally can’t hear you. They should “get” your idea in a matter of seconds, and focus back on you.
Vision is our most dominant sense. As writers and designers, we take an integrated approach. Whether it’s a powerful, full-bleed photo with a single word, a custom infographic, or a funny image to get a laugh while you play it straight: Visual storytelling profoundly elevates and enhances your message
Strategic Support
Sometimes you just need targeted help. We love targeted. Here are a few ways we help clients succeed, rapid fire:
Slide Therapy: Professional upgrade to your working deck (visuals, flow, and sequence) to make it sing
Script Doctoring: Targeted scripting, editing, and ideation to get your draft across the finish line
Rapid Assessment: Laser focused deep-dive, with tailored feedback on scripting, visuals, and storyline
Genius Extraction: Identify your unique speaker genius and POV
Thinking Partner: Brainstorm and refine your big idea, through line, and call to action
Action Catalyst: Give you DIY assignments — and hold you to them
Add-Ons
Our interests are focused, our capabilities broad. Below are other ways we help our clients build their brand and expand their reach. Think of it as our not-so-secret Animal-Style menu. Don’t see something you want on here? Ask us.
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Your pitch is solid. Do your brand materials hold their own? Logo design and brand identity is in our blood. We’ve designed hundreds of logos for brands, from indie record labels to tech startups to boutique salons. This is the “brand wrapper” for your business. Your brand needs to reflect the core of who you are and what you have to offer. Make sure all aspects of your brand show up consistently, where every touchpoint is on point.
Cohesive event branding—integrating visuals, messaging, and show flow strategy
Logo design & usage guides
Systems, signage and collateral
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Your presentation doesn’t live in a void. It’s surrounded by a communication ecosystem. Think of it like your advance team or follow-up squad. It’s the one-pager you leave behind after your pitch, meant to be read and passed around. It’s the training handouts and workbook materials for your live workshop. They should reflect and reinforce your message, your voice, and your brand.
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When conference producers check you out as a potential speaker, they look for reassurance. Have you done this before? Do you have the credentials? What topics do you speak on credibly? Having a strong speaker presence is essential. Materials include:
Professional speaker bio
Speaker landing page (bio, core topics/talks, testimonials)
Capsule pitch for your signature talk
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Your presentation is locked. The talking points, sequence, and design is on point. Now, the talk needs to go through you. Your voice, tone, cadence, facial expression. The way you move your body through space. Once we have a presentation locked, we’ll run it with you, giving audience feedback and adjusting as needed. Many speakers find this is enough to help them rock it in the delivery.
If a speaker wants to go the extra mile, we have built relationships with a number of stellar delivery coaches. Using the presentation we’ve created together, they will coach you through delivering it powerfully. Delivery coaches appreciate working with us because they get solid content to work with. We love working with them too because performance is what brings our work together to life. -
Customized and delivered in-person or virtual. Our training distills hands-on lessons and insights – the same ones that have helped speakers garner millions of views on TED, secure venture funding, and build their businesses. Learn how to:
Understand your audience and how you can shift their thinking and behavior
Craft structures that engage right off the bat, plant the seeds of action, and leave your audience with a new world view
Simplify your ideas so they shine cleary
Integrate visual storytelling techniques that make every slide work for you
Adopt growth-mindset practices to manage stage fright, envision positive outcomes, and step out in front of an audience with confidence
Workshops are dynamic and interactive, putting principles into practice real time.
Presentations
Below are the types of presentations we typically create for speakers. They’re specific. But once you’ve got it, you’ve got range. That keynote you gave last month can morph into next week’s all-hands meeting. The VC pitch holds the seeds of your future TEDx talk. You now have a powerful addition to your communications toolkit.
Keynotes
You’re delivering a high-stakes keynote to an audience filled with your ideal customers, clients, investors, and new best friends. We apply practices gleaned from TED stages and the science of persuasion, to hook your audience and keep them from pulling out their phones. Command the room (live or virtual) and make your talk the one folks buzz about, with folks lining up to speak with you afterwards.
“We heard from customers that our CEO’s keynote and company product launch were a huge success and could not have gone better.”
– Pratima Rao, Chief of Staff, VP of Operations, Illumina
TED/TEDx Talks
TEDx talks are some of the purest forms of storytelling. A cardinal TED rule is “no selling from the stage.” But, once delivered: Your talk can become a foundational calling-card for you and your business. We work with you till every word and every visual rings true, and the talk is in your bone marrow. So once you step onto that red dot: You can deliver with confidence and conviction.
“The talk secured me with a presentation that was authentically and truly mine, one that gave me confidence — and ultimately a standing ovation.”
– Lisa Kristine, Humanitarian Photographer | Lucie Award Winner
Signature Talks
This is your “core” talk. It’s foundational to your expertise and unique POV. Certain elements will stay constant – for example, your origin story and throughline. Other elements swap in and out depending on the need. It’s a talk you can deliver over and over, adapting it to a variety of arenas, timeframes, and audiences. Recently we ran into an old client. We had created a signature talk for when her book came out. “I’ve delivered that talk hundreds of times,” she told us. “It’s still fresh each time!”
“Based upon my very enjoyable time working with Alimat, my speeches are more moving, more memorable, and pack much more meaning.”
– Chip Conley, Founder, MEA | NYT Bestselling Author
Pitch Decks
Maybe you’re an established business, going after that big-fish customer. Or a founder pitching potential investors or partners for your startup. You’ve got the KPIs. Guess what? You still need to tell a story! Too many pitches have a great idea, but the points are out of sequence. They’re deep on data, but lacking emotional hooks. They start strong, but fizzle out by the Big Ask. Our proprietary methodology leads prospects through the “gates of awareness” necessary to be primed to buy. A good pitch will build a story in the mind of your prospect — one where the outcome is that buying from you is the inevitable conclusion.
“We used the deck constantly. Our technology applies to many specific verticals, so it was impossible to have a one-size-fits-all deck. The pitch gave us a framework to tell the story broadly, and produce individual decks for each vertical. Having that quick elevator pitch, to the one-pager, to the full deck was critical.”
– Sean Eilers, CEO, Tiburon Media Group
Webinars and Virtual Events
Your audience might be scattered across time zones, sitting at kitchen tables or in corner offices. Your ability to connect with your audience and keep their focus can be more challenging than a in-person audience. From pacing and structure to visuals and interactive moments, we apply best practices to keep viewers engaged from your first words to your last. You’ll connect, inspire, and convert — without anyone sneaking off to check their email. The result? A virtual experience that’s personal, polished, and personal.
“Alimat turns informational sessions on our products and services into a compelling story – presentations we use over and over. They have the ability to turn a simple bullet-point outline into a visual masterpiece that keeps the audience engaged.”
– Shiran Witt, Director of Marketing, Blue Pacific Flavors
Internal Communications
When you’re speaking to your own team, whether it’s an all-hands meeting, a culture-shifting announcement, or a persuasive initiative that needs buy-in across the organization, we can help you craft a message that sticks. We work with you to clarify the “why,” shape the narrative, and build visuals that inspire pride and buy-in. The goal: a room (or Zoom) full of colleagues who feel aligned, energized, and ready to move forward together—because they see themselves in the story you’re telling.
“Their sophisticated design thinking and compelling storytelling makes them stand out from other specialty creative companies we work with. They really are team players and took time to understand all perspectives, and collaborated with all stakeholders at each step. I was always confident they would meet deadlines, do a thorough edit and ensure nothing was ever missed.”
– Shannon Farrell, Senior Account Manager, Grow Marketing
FAQ
You’ve got questions! Of course you do. It means you care. Over the years, a few questions come up again and again. Here are a few distilled answers.
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Complex projects typically take 10-12 weeks. This covers everything: Discovery, strategy, creative deliverables, revisions and refinement.
We’re generally not the “rush” team. We take our time to get it right - so that it will stand the test of time. That said: We’ve also turned around high-impact presentations in under 4 weeks, and shorter one-off projects in 1-2 weeks. The ultimate timeframe is driven by your goals, deadlines, and state of your current materials.
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We typically charge by the project, not blocks of time. In our experience, charging hourly can be problematic. It’s hard to compare “apples to apples.” Our hourly fee may be twice as much as a competitor. But, we may be twice as good – or fast.
Our flat project fees are all-inclusive: Discovery, strategy, creative deliverables, and revisions. The fee takes into account the scope of the project. When we speak we’ll have a detailed conversation about your needs, goals, and dreams. What’s your ideal outcome? How will we know we’ve succeeded? Our goal is that you get more than you expected from your investment.
Our proposals are conversations. We strive to make the conversation direct, clear, and collaborative. Our formal SOW puts in writing what we collectively agree. We clarify your ideal outcome, and agree on deliverables, process, revisions, and timeline. As we proceed, the collective vision – and therefore scope – may increase. In this case, we agree on a revised scope + fee in advance of proceeding. -
Working with professional writers can help for several reasons. You may be a stellar writer — but when you’re inside your own jar, it’s hard to see the label. You may have gotten in a rut with your thinking. Or, you have too many ideas and need to find the signal in the noise. We get you talking, asking insightful questions and following story threads you may not have considered.
We record and transcribe each session, which becomes the foundation for your script. So it really is what you said: Your voice, your content, your cadence. Our job is to sift, edit, interpret, and refine.Writing for a live presentation is a unique craft. Writing for reading vs. speaking is different, as is playing to a live audience, and structuring a story-flow experience. We’ve honed our skills over years working with a ridiculously wide range of speakers. Once we start working together, we’ll pour all of it into your unique situation.
If you DO want your “hands in the clay,” we have had much success collaborating with clients at the scripting stage. In this case we act as writing and editing partners, passing drafts back and forth. -
Yes and yes! Collaborating with talented in-house specialists is one of our favorite things. In our experience, working with a corporation’s in-house team can provide outsize results.
We recently created a keynote for the CEO of a Fortune 100 corporation, working closely with his in-house communications staff. It was an ideal meld of superpowers: The in-house team’s narrative chops and technical knowledge, combined with our storytelling and visual design expertise. With us “holding the keys,” the in-house team could toggle between our work together and other high-impact company projects. And the CEO could keep his focus where it belonged: Leading the company and setting the vision. -
Maybe not! For a recent TED talk, we determined the story was best 100% spoken, with no visuals. Slides done well should enhance and elevate what you say. Every slide should work FOR you. Many slide decks out there are cluttered and confusing. (Pro tip: The human brain can’t read AND listen at the same time. So if you’ve got a crazy amount on your slide? They literally can’t hear you.)
Slides should be simple, iconic, and powerful. They should reach the audience on a cognitive, emotional level. They should “get” it in seconds, then continue to focus on you and what you’re saying.
The visual may be a custom graphic, illustrating a dramatic data point while you tell the story behind the data. Or a full-bleed photo that evokes an emotion. A slide might be humorous to get a laugh while you play it straight. Or a single word, phrase or statement to drive your point home. Slides also give ballast to you as a speaker. Your deck can keep you grounded, or serve as a jumping-off point that keeps you on track. -
We’re watching, and experimenting with AI just like everyone else. It’s an exciting time!
AI is excellent for repetitive tasks, structure, outlining and targeted research. Ask ChatGPT to outline an online course, or spit out a draft outline for your TED talk and it can give you material to build on. But the blueprint isn't the building. It won’t have your DNA. Your language, your turns of phrase, your humor and unique POV. It won’t have your empathy or your emotional intelligence. It’s hard to capture wisdom. It won’t necessarily know to pull out your origin story, or to tease out data points that are missing. It won’t be able to read back your output and ask key, intuitive questions to flesh out your narrative. -
Our expertise is content and design: What you say and how you say it. Get this right and you’re well on your way to delivering with confidence. Once we have a presentation locked, we’ll run it with you, giving audience feedback and adjusting as needed. Most speakers find this is enough to help them rock it in the delivery.
If you want to go the extra mile, we can bring in a superb delivery coach to help get you to that next level. Once you have solid content to work with, delivery coaching is even more effective.
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First of all, know this: Creating a high-impact presentation is an investment. An investment of money, of time, of resources. Mostly it’s an investment in you and your future. It takes commitment. If you’re not ready to give any time, this may not be the time to start.
That said: Part of our value is, we give you back time. Our kick-off deep dive is structured to clarify your thinking and tease out new ideas. Then, we go off and create, bringing you deliverables and ideas to react to. Making every meeting and every moment count.We let you use your time appropriately – using your strongest skills on setting strategy and building your business. We’ve created keynotes for Fortune 500 CEOs who have ½ hour increments for review. We’ve also spent hours in live editing sessions side by side with our clients. (Then moving on to drinks after!) In our intake we’ll determine the best way to move forward.
