A scheme for the excitation of slow surface plasmon pulses using photonic interband transition in a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguide is proposed. An investigation the mode transition behavior inside the binary grating confirmed that the proposed concept can be understood in terms of the coupling of symmetric and anti-symmetric plasmonic modes. We observed that, although a binary grating that is optimized for a single frequency can excite slow surface plasmon pulses, it is inadequate for broadband mode conversion. To rectify this, a chirped grating was designed for the demonstration of broadband mode conversion by applying a cascade mode transition with different frequencies.