VIDEO: How To Make Any Statistic Instantly Memorable
Golden State Warriors point-guard Steph Curry made a record 402 3-pointers in the regular season. The record is off-the-chart, literally. No other player comes close. Recently The New York Times ran a chart that put the record “into context.” According to the newspaper, Curry’s accomplishment “is the equivalent of hitting 103 home runs in a major league baseball season.”
A statistic left on its own doesn’t often tell us much and that’s why journalists like New York Times sports writers are trained to put statistics “into context.” Without context, a data point simply doesn’t mean much to people who don’t closely follow a particular topic area.
If you want people to remember a key statistic you must emotionalize the data by putting it into context.
Steve Jobs used this technique brilliantly. In 2001 Jobs introduced an MP3 player with 5 gigabytes of storage. The data—5 GB—meant very little to the average consumer and Jobs knew it. And that’s why Jobs said, “5 gigabytes is enough for 1,000 songs.” Jobs the showman didn’t stop there. He built the story one step further by adding, “1,000 songs in your pocket.” And with sentence Jobs created one of the most iconic taglines in product history.
Last year I met a woman who pioneered the growth of organic produce in North America. I gave her a suggestion on a TED talk she was preparing for. Her challenge was to show that even though sales of organic fruits and vegetables were rising considerably, the category is still very small compared to the rest of the industry. We started with a small dot in the middle of the slide, too small to be seen past the third row. The dot represented organic sales in one year ($30B).The next slide showed the dot consumed by a much larger circle representing total food sales in the U.S. ($740B).
I use this TED talk as an example to reinforce the theme of this article because of what happened about two months after the presentation. I met with a group of agri-business leaders who were not affiliated with the organic company. I asked them if they had seen any memorable presentations. One woman brought up the TED talk about the organic industry and, when I asked if she remembered anything specificially about the presentation, she recalled the comparison—the exact slide that put organic sales into context. “It was very eye-opening,” she said.
The number itself ($30B) wasn’t eye opening; it was the comparison that forced her to think differently about the topic.
Putting data into context can trigger a movement. For example, there are 9 billion K-cups sold ever year. These pods are made of plastic and are not recyclable. In 2014 a journalist figured out that placing the disposable coffee pods end-to-end would circle the globe about 10 times. The mental image of K-cups circling the planet 10 times went viral. It’s been cited repeatedly in thousands of articles and blogs and ultimately led the manufacturer to find a solution. Recently Keurig announced it would begin making K-Cups that are easy to recycle.
“Being able to tell stories with data is a skill that’s becoming ever more important in our world of increasing data and desire for data-driven decision making,” writes Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic in the new book Storytelling With Data. Cole worked in the Google Human Relations department (known at Google as the People Analytics Team). Her workshop on data visualization became so popular, she was sent to Google offices around the world to teach it. “No one tells us how to tell stories with numbers,” Cole writes. “This leaves us poorly prepared for an important task that is increasingly in demand…a growing desire to make sense out of all this data.”
Mastering the skill of taking data and making it relevant, memorable and emotional will set you apart whether your goal is to communicate the findings of a study, teach a class, raise investment dollars, pitch an idea, or pitch yourself in a job interview. This is a proven technique that will make your next pitch instantly memorable.