dogfood with data

My husband and I were watching TV one evening last week. One commercial caught my attention. It was a commercial for Eukanuba dog food.

I do not have a dog.

Still, there was something about the combination of music and video and text with a bit of data that left an impression. As a side note, I find it very interesting that because dogs have shorter lives, life-long studies are possible in a much shorter timeframe than for humans.

When I was searching for the commercial today (more than a week since seeing it), I did not remember the specific stats. But I did remember the message: their study showed dogs treated well on a diet of Eukanuba live longer.

I often get asked about the inclusion of pictures and videos when it comes to presentations in general. For me, the thing to think about is whether that picture or video will help you make your point and help that point stick with your audience.

Along those lines, I find this commercial to be an excellent example of storytelling with data. Enjoy!

tell your audience what you want them to know

It sounds simple. It sounds obvious. But how often do people give a presentation or send out a report or email without ever making it clear what they want you to know? 

Have you ever looked at a graph and thought, I'm not sure what I'm meant to get out of this? Or sat through a presentation or meeting only to realize once it's over that you're not really sure what you just witnessed?

I listened to a presentation last week where the person speaking put up a busy-looking, data-heavy slide. It wasn't a good slide, but the speaker was clearly comfortable on stage and knowledgable about his topic, so I was motivated to understand what he was trying to communicate. Then he said a few magic words: "what this is meant to show is..." followed by a clearly articulated statement. It is amazing how those simple words can make the intimidating accessible.

The effect these words had on me was to generate more patience on my part (and even a little curiosity) to understand what the slide was showing. The speaker knew what he wanted the audience to get out of it and walked us through the visual in a way that made sense. It still wasn't a fantastic visual - there are changes that could have made it more effective - but his words overcame this shortcoming.

Tell your audience what you want them to know.

It's simple advice, but the impact can be profound!

storytelling with data...scribed!

I was in Dallas earlier this week and had the opportunity to talk about storytelling with data with a few different groups. One of those was the DFW Data Visualization and Infographics Meetup. This afforded me the pleasure of meeting Randy Krum, president and founder of InfoNewt, and John Colaruotolo from Collective Next, who (as far as I'm concerned) is able to create magic with pens and a whiteboard. Here is the latter's creation, which he completed during my talk:

Download full-sized here.

My experience with meetups is that people tend to flee pretty quickly after the presentation and Q&A. This isn't surprising - in most cases, people have shown up after a full day of work and are understandably anxious to point themselves towards home when the 9PM hour strikes. 

But this meetup was different. After my talk, people congregated around John's whiteboard creation in awe. Taking it in was like reliving parts of the presentation they'd just experienced, but with a slightly different twist. For me, it was fascinating to see a visual replay of what I'd just said: seen and heard through someone else's eyes and ears.

I overheard one person describing this as a superpower. As in, "yes, John has a super power that many of us do not have." I thought this was an interesting perspective. And very cool - when you consider that probably most people you encounter have some sort of superpower that you do not personally possess. John's superpower was palpable. Or at least, I stood in awe. He was...

listening...

intepreting...

drawing...

ALL AT THE SAME TIME. 

Crazy. Brilliant. Beautiful.

That's all I have to say.

Well - not quite all. Big thanks to Randy (@rtkrum) for hosting a great event and to John (@johncolaruotolo, www.collectivenext.com) for capturing it on a (beautiful) whiteboard!