Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is one of the three most reputable consulting firms in the world, along with McKinsey and Bain. In the world of consulting presentations, BCG’s slide decks stand out for their clarity, persuasiveness, and compelling graphics.
While most BCG presentations are confidential, some have become public over the years to give us a glimpse into how the consulting giant structures its decks. Below, we’ve collected over 40 BCG presentations that you can view and download.
We will also walk you through the strategies BCG uses to make its slide decks so compelling, and show you a quick way to create a BCG-style presentation yourself using AI.
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17 BCG industry and market analysis presentations examples
In these examples, you’ll see how BCG analyzes markets and industries for its clients. These presentations were created for large organizations to learn about new market opportunities, forecast future developments, and list industry-specific best practices.
1. Projecting US Mail Volumes to 2020 (2010)
3. Evaluating NYC media sector development and setting the stage for future growth: Final Report (2012)
4. The Media and Entertainment Industry in NYC: Trends and Recommendations for the Future (2015)
5. Sprinting to Value in Industry 4.0: Perspectives from and Implications for U.S. Manufacturers (2016)
6. Smart Cities – how to master the world's biggest growth challenge (2014)
7. The Electric Car Tipping Point (2017)
8. Decoding the digital opportunity in retail (2017)
9. Shifting Trade Rules and the Future of North America's Auto Industry (2018)
10. Global Challengers 2018: Digital LeapfrogsResearch Highlights (2018)
11. Russian Consumers and the New Economic Reality: Russian Consumer Sentiment 2018 (2018)
12. The Great Mobility Tech RaceWinning the battle for future profits (2018)
13. Digital consumer spending in India: A $100 Bn opportunity (Google collaboration) (2018)
14. Decoding the Chinese Internet 2.0: Get Ready for the Next Chapter (2017)
15. Seven Forces Reshaping Enterprise Software (2019)
16. COVID-19 - Urban Mobility Is Evolving in Unexpected Ways (2020)
17. What’s Chipping Away at Automotive Production (2021)
6 BCG strategic and policy recommendations presentations examples
BCG created these presentations to highlight strategic and socio-economic challenges faced by various governments and policy organizations. Flip through these examples, and you’ll see how BCG walks its audiences through different policy issues, their implications, and proposed solutions.
19. Reshaping NYCHA support functions - BCG Engagement: key findings and recommendations (2012)
21. Retail Banking in the New Reality (2020)
22. COVID-19 Therapies and Vaccines (2020)
23. BCG Telco Sustainability Index 2020 (2021)
7 BCG client engagement presentations examples
These client engagement presentations shine a light on BCG’s methodology for delivering tailored solutions for its clients’ needs. In these examples, you will see how BCG guides clients to data-driven decisions with slides that clearly show the results of meticulous research and analysis.
24. San Pedro Bay Clean Truck Program: CTP options analysis (2008)
28. Unlocking the growth opportunity of the 'Responsible Consumer' Unilever work session (2015)
30. Melbourne as a Global Cultural DestinationFinal Report (Summary) (2017)
13 BCG thought leadership and research presentations examples
These presentation examples show you how BCG assumes the role of thought leader in tackling major, complex topics that affect the world. Here, the consulting firm presents some of its most innovative ideas and drives the public discourse around them.
31. The Innovation Bottom Line: How Sustainability is Paying Off (2013)
33. True-Luxury Global Consumer Insight (2015)
34. The True-Luxury Global Consumer Insight (2017)
37. US CPG Growth Leaders: Who they are and why they win (2020)
38. Global Restart: Key Dynamics COVID-19 BCG Perspectives Series (2020)
39. The Economic Impact of Ford and the F-Series (2020)
40. The Race for Innovation Executive Perspectives (2021)
42. BCG Investor Perspectives Series Pulse Check #21 (2022)
43. The Future of Sales and Marketing Is Here Executive Perspectives (2022)
Why BCG presentations are so effective
BCG presentations are effective at delivering information and persuading their audiences because of these four principles used in deck creation:
- The Pyramid Principle
- The SCQA framework
- Color coding
- Quantitative research
Let’s take a more in-depth look at these four strategies below.
The Pyramid Principle
Much like McKinsey presentations, BCG slides make heavy use of the Pyramid Principle in building its presentations. This principle gets its name from the way information flows in a presentation. It starts with the main point or idea — think of this as the pointy top of a pyramid. Next, BCG breaks this idea out into several key arguments; this is where the pyramid gets wides going from top to bottom. Finally, each of the arguments gets rooted in various pieces of evidence, shaping the pyramid’s widest, bottom portion. This evidence comes from exhaustive research BCG performs when preparing the slide content; for added credibility, the consultants show all the sources for the evidence that backs up each slide’s principal idea.
BCG presentations start with an executive summary of the key information and provide supporting slides with increasing amounts of detail to make their key points. It’s particularly effective for delivering large quantities of information, as the viewers can easily understand how every argument and bit of evidence relates to the main topic. This approach informs, persuades, eliminates ambiguity, and keeps the spectators’ attention.
Situation, Complication, Question, Answer (SCQA) framework
One useful strategy when preparing a presentation outline is structuring the information you deliver in a story-like format. BCG understands the importance of the story format and makes use of the SCQA mechanism. Here’s how each of the SCQA components help shape the storyline in a consulting presentation:
- Situation (S): The Situation is the first element of the “story.” It provides an overall context for the viewers. Here’s an example of a statement that summarizes the “Situation” in the SCQA model: “Company X has been a leader in the electric vehicle industry for the last decade, with a strong presence in markets around the world.”
- Complication (C): The Complication is the second component of the narrative arc — arguably the equivalent of “conflict” in literature. It tells the presentation viewers how the situation has changed (or is changing), and lists the effects of this shift. For example, “Despite its successes, Company X’s position as the industry leader has slowly eroded due to market saturation and new players from emerging economies offering more innovative and economical electric vehicles.”
- Question (Q): The Question part of the framework gets the audience thinking whether the issue at the center of the presentation can be addressed or remediated. For example, one of the questions pertaining to our example above could be “Can Company X regain its edge in the industry in a market saturated with low-cost competitors?”
- Answer (A): The Answer element then presents the audience with a response that outlines one or several solutions to the complication. For example, “Yes, company X can regain its foothold as the market leader by investing in research and development while coming up with a more competitive pricing strategy.”
Color coding
BCG also has a simple yet powerful way of using color to highlight key takeaways in its slides. While most BCG slide decks feature the same white and green theme, you’ll notice that some slide elements are colored differently. This visual contrast immediately catches the viewers’ eyes, so they waste no time in finding the key takeaways on each slide.
Heavy use of graphics
While BCG presentations are often info-dense with slide content, they generally feature more graphics than their McKinsey peers. BCG consultants like to use data to tell stories, and some BCG decks — like this one on the implications of bionic technology — rely almost exclusively on charts, graphs, tables, and images to educate the audience.
Quantitative research to prove subjective points
Apart from color coding, graphics, a slide structure that follows the Pyramid Principle and SCQA principles, BCG presentations also lean heavily on survey results to back up their claims. This tactic lets the consultants reinforce points that may be construed as subjective with quantitative research. This technique contributes to BCG presentations’ one-of-a-kind ability to help clients make data-driven decisions.
A look at the typical BCG presentation and slide structure
BCG presentations can vary widely in the topics they cover, but their structure generally goes like this:
- Minimalist title page summarizing the presentation topic
- An executive summary overviews the key points that will be addressed in the body slides
- Agenda pages separate different sections of the presentation
- Graphic-rich body slides help BCG make establish its case
- The conclusion outlines BCG’s solutions in content-packed slides
Below is a more detailed look at each of these structural elements.
Minimalist title page summarizing the presentation
BCG’s slide deck front pages are less info-rich than their McKinsey counterparts. Where McKinsey’s front pages usually disclose or foreshadow some of the info that gets revealed further in the deck, BCG’s title slides generally contain nothing more than a clear, unambiguous presentation title.
Executive summary after the title slide
Most BCG presentations include a thorough executive summary soon after the front page. This section provides a succinct summary of the information that will appear in the slides that follow. In fact, BCG consultants are trained to write slides and summaries that allow someone to understand a presentation by only reading the titles of each slide.
For particularly long presentations that span several distinct parts (like this example on the competitiveness of the Malaysian iron and steel industries), BCG usually includes an executive summary for each part.
Agenda page
In lengthy presentations that are split into several parts, BCG usually prefaces each part with an agenda page. This page shows the current section in relation to the complete outline of the slide deck, so the viewers can keep track of the presentation’s progress.
Body slides structured using the Pyramid Principle and effective color coding
The body slides of BCG presentations follow the top-down Pyramid Principle. At the top of each slide is an “action title” that explains the key takeaway for each slide. Some slides have a subtitle that provides additional context, while others dive right into the supporting arguments and evidence, along with research sources.
The body slides are generally packed with graphics, and rely on color coding to highlight the most essential bits of information. For example, below you can see how BCG deviates from its green color theme with the use of yellow. In both stacked bar charts, yellow represents data points that support the arguments “Very few countries worldwide without domestic long steel” and “Long steel is a basic need”. BCG uses the yellow here to draw your attention to these data points because they reinforce the arguments, which, in turn, serve as the foundation of the statement made in the slide title.
Conclusion contains a roadmap for implementation of BCG’s proposed solutions
Like many management consulting presentations, BCG’s presentations typically end with thorough conclusions that discuss solutions to problems. These solutions are often presented with very detailed implementation strategies. Sometimes, these closing slides will depart from the graphic-dense format of the presentation’s body, and focus on written content.
Nonetheless, BCG structures these slides in the same top-down fashion that allows for clear and easy flow of information.
Build a BCG-style slide deck yourself quickly using AI
Whether you’re a novice or experienced presentation creator, it will take time to perfect the art of creating BCG-style slide decks. By harnessing the power of AI, you can make the process a bit faster.
While no AI presentation makers can generate a deck of the same quality as BCG makes for its clients, a quality AI slide creator like Plus AI can take some of the heavy lifting off your hands by auto-generating slide content. Whether you’re armed with nothing but an idea, or have extensive research compiled, you can feed what information you have to the AI slide maker and it will turn it into well-flowing slide content once it generates the slide deck. This way, you have an excellent starting point from which to fine-tune the presentation.
Also, Plus AI’s slide decks are perfectly formatted, so you don’t need to worry about ensuring the consistency of fonts, margins, and other elements.
How to create a BCG-style consulting deck with Plus AI
Follow these simple steps to build a BCG-inspired consulting deck with Plus AI:
- Open Google Slides or PowerPoint, then launch the Plus AI extension and click on “New presentation”.
- Choose one of three prompting methods. “Use a prompt” lets you quickly start from scratch if you don’t have any materials for the presentation yet — just tell Plus AI what the presentation is about, and it will get to work making the deck. On the other hand, “Upload a file” and “Slide by slide” methods are more suitable if you have materials on which to base the presentation.
- Prompt Plus AI. For instance, your presentation is based on WTO’s report about the effects of COVID-19 and trade tensions on global value chains. If you have the report saved on your desktop, you can use the “Upload a File” function to upload the entire document to Plus AI.
- Find a template you like.
- Click the “Generate Presentation” button.
- Edit the slide content. Plus AI will prepare the presentation in a manner of minutes, and you won’t need to waste time on tedious (but otherwise necessary) tasks like formatting. That said, you should edit the auto-generated deck and implement strategies like the Pyramid Principle and SCQA to align it with BCG’s slide design approach.
Learn more about using AI to create PowerPoint and Google Slides presentations
If you’re intrigued by the idea of making quality consultant presentations quickly with Plus AI, head to our resource library and find out how to use this tool effectively. You’ll learn how to make beautiful slides, prepare decks for a presentation, captivate your audience on the big day, and more.
