On Tuesday evening, the White House’s enhanced State of the Union address bridged the gap between a traditional live feed viewing experience and a future built on richer, multimedia-heavy staging. While the enhanced format initially fell somewhere between feeling like a glorified PowerPoint presentation and a more behaved version of Colbert’s “The Word” segment, the added visuals greatly amplified the points the President was making after the initial distraction value leveled off.

As PowerPoint and Keynote presentations are the norm for most product launches these days, the White House’s seamless digital execution will mean that multimedia-rich online presentations will become table stakes in no time.

As we prepare for the second screen experience of the future, here are five tips brands can take from Tuesday’s selection of sidebar content.

1. Show the human side of the story with compelling photos of human connection

2. Bring stats to life with simple diagrams

3. Highlight what you want people to remember by highlighting specific key words

4. Explain relationships with visual analogies

5.Use charts and graphs to back up data-heavy claims

Have thoughts on visual-heavy presentations of your own? Paint a picture with your words in the comments.

This blog post originally appeared on WaggenerEdstrom.com