I agree with Artie’s suggestion. In the soft sciences and law, where I do most of my presentations, data is important, but audiences seem to be more open to the story-telling side.

In law, especially, where there are diverse backgrounds, a good mix of detailed paper or web backup and story-telling (story-showing?) slides seems to engage the heterogeneous audience pretty well. Perhaps there’s an analogy there to your situation?

I will note that doing these “good” presentations is much more time consuming (no surprise there). Tufte and Beyond Bullet Points are good resources.