Speeches and decks for two Sage leaders
When two of Sage's most senior leaders needed to take the stage at the Finance Indaba, they came to ThinkStory for both the words and the slides. We wrote and designed for Gerhard Hartman, Vice President for Medium Business at Sage Africa & Middle East, and for Jordaan Burger, Managing Director at Sage MEA. Each needed a speech that sounded like them and a fully custom deck to match, held to Sage's brand to the last detail. Two leaders, two voices, one exacting standard, and a single hard deadline waiting at the end of it.
- Speeches that had to sound like each leader, in their own words and tone
- Slide decks that were fully custom and on brand, with nothing templatized
- Everything finished in time for the Finance Indaba, on a very tight clock
Written in their own voice
Writing for someone else is its own craft. We wrote each speech in the leader's own tone of voice, language and preferred style, so the words felt natural to say rather than read off a page. For Gerhard and for Jordaan that meant listening closely to how each of them actually speaks, then shaping the message to fit, so that on stage the speech sounded like them and no one else. When the words fit the speaker, the audience listens to the person rather than the script.
Fully custom, fully on brand
Nothing about the decks was templatized. Every slide was custom-designed and built to be extremely Sage-branded, on brand to the smallest detail, after many meetings with each leader to refine exactly what they wanted to communicate. We designed in Figma for full control over typography, layout and imagery, then did the careful work of moving each deck into PowerPoint so it held together when it was opened on the day. A template would have been quicker, and it would also have looked like everyone else's, which was never an option for Sage at this level.
Three weeks to the Finance Indaba
The hardest part was the clock. We had three weeks between the final briefing and handing over every finished speech and deck, all of it due in time for the Finance Indaba. Working around two senior leaders and their strict schedules made a taxing job harder still, with every review squeezed into the small windows they had. It was a genuinely difficult project to land in that time, and getting there took tight coordination and not a single wasted day.
Deliverables that set the standard
The work paid off where it counted, on the day. The speeches and the decks went out together, each pair made as one so the slides supported the talk instead of competing with it. The deliverables set the standard at the Finance Indaba, exactly the impression two senior Sage leaders needed to make on that stage. For a project this custom and this tightly timed, that is the outcome you work back from: not just finished on time, but the best thing in the room.
