and we are all suckers for a crime show.

They first create a knowledge gap in the minds of the audience. They create a puzzle that the audience needs solved. What happened? Who is responsible? What explains this unusual situation?

The narrative builds the audience's investment in the result and brings them along until the mystery is solved.

In the case of a presentation the puzzle might be "How can I empty my Inbox?" or "If the previous models fail to explain this observed data then how do we explain this data and how do we fix these models?" or "How is a presentation like a crime show?"

I'll strongly second the previous suggestion to read the book 'Made to Stick'. (http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/book-discussion-chip-and-dan-heaths-made-to-stick.html) Because, these are academic presentations, you will have less leeway to incorporate all the suggestions or make drastic changes to the traditional format. However, consider each section of the book and how you might creatively apply each idea to your work.

Here is another suggestion from that book that comes to mind: During your presentation, you may want to pick some representative data points and explain their story. Politicians don't just say "X% of children are living without health care", they also say, "Yesterday, I spoke with Brenda Jones from Spokane who couldn't afford to pay for her four-year-old son's medication...".

To highlight a single point of data in this manner may seem unscientific. Well it is. Yet, people are not robots. You need to connect with them. You need them to understand and remember your message. So make your message a simple, unexpected, concrete, emotional story.