Clear Line Charts
A New York Times opinion article illustrates the power of the line chart. With the title, “This Is Tax Evasion, Plain and Simple,” the author describes the U.S. corporate rate over time and compared to other countries.
The authors argue that countries have reduced corporate rates to compete for businesses, and over time, the rate has become too low. The chart at right compares the U.S. to other countries, while the chart below shows the change in U.S. wage and corporate taxes since 1950.
Additional charts show that companies have moved money to tax havens abroad, but economies and workers have not benefitted.
An economist and a writer and graphics editor paired up to produce the article. We see the influence of both—the data, plain language, and charts paint a vivid picture.
AstraZeneca's Data Problems
AstraZeneca has been accused of presenting “outdated and potentially misleading” data about the vaccine that has suffered implementation trouble in Europe. In a press release and a CNBC interview with the president, the company reported a 79% effectiveness rate, despite later results between 69 and 75%.
A group of independent experts wrote a letter to U.S. government officials to express their concern, as The Washington Post reports:
The DSMB is concerned that AstraZeneca chose to use data that was already outdated and potentially misleading in their press release,” the letter states. The data “they chose to release was the most favorable for the study as opposed to the most recent and most complete. Decisions like this are what erode public trust in the scientific process.”
The company promised a review: “We will immediately engage with the independent data safety monitoring board to share our primary analysis with the most up to date efficacy data.” But damage is already done.
The Washington Post explains, “But it appears to be the latest in a series of self-inflicted wounds from the team behind the vaccine, which has had months of stumbles involving messy science and bungled communication.”
This latest misstep only complicates a possible U.S. rollout and breeds more skepticism in those who fear the vaccine. Fears in some populations, such as Black Americans, are based on understandable mistrust of the healthcare system, and this news will not likely inspire more participation in plans for herd immunity.
As an issue of credibility, AstraZeneca is caught in a public quagmire. What might have been a small misstep is now viewed as part of a larger, potentially intentional plan to deceive, whether or not that is true. The company’s integrity is in question because they have not been fully transparent about the vaccine results.
Fauci: "Numbers Don't Lie"
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the lead infectious disease expert in the U.S., was asked whether the nation has the worst COVID outbreak, and he said, “Numbers don’t lie.”
CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta interviewed the doctor at a Harvard School of Public Health forum. Dr. Gupta asked, “We're not quite 5% of the world's population, yet represent 20-25% of the world's infections ... I mean, that has to be the worst. Is it not the worst?"
Dr. Fauci responded, “Yeah, it is quantitatively if you look at it, it is. I mean the numbers don't lie.”
The doctors are looking at infections per capita. Of course, we could look at other measures. In this interview, President Trump considers the number of deaths as a percentage of those infected.
Discussion:
Do numbers lie? Can they? What about this book: How to Lie with Statistics?
Find evidence to both support and dispute the claim that the U.S. is the “worst.” What measures can you find? Which do you find more meaningful?
Should I Go Outside? A Visual
Researches created a visual to help people make informed decisions as communities re-open during the pandemic. The group has a consulting firm that helps organizations assess risk, and the visual is a representation of their work.
The COVID-19 Risk Index uses color coding to identify the likelihood that you’ll contract the virus during various activities, such as visiting the hospital, grocery shopping, or going to the dentist (which I did yesterday).
Discussion:
How effective do you find the visual for helping you assess risk? On what criteria do you base your analysis?
What, if anything, is missing from the index? How could you adapt the tool for local regions?
Motion Charts
A New York Times article, “What Does Opportunity Look Like Where You Live?,” includes motion charts depicting life expectancy, commute times, and other variables across the U.S.
Although imperfect, the charts show changes over time. The movement is an effective way to dramatize differences between groups, as Gapminder has done with UN data for years.
Discussion:
The bubbles move when they are first loaded on the page, but I can’t seem to “interact” with them the way I expect to with an “interactive graphic.” What did you expect? Could these be improved?
Some charts have a truncated axis; for example, one about life expectancy starts at 60. What are the implications, and should this be avoided?
What, if anything, surprises you about the data presented?
COVID-19 Crisis Communication for Reopening the U.S.
What comes after we “flatten the curve” of COVID cases? New York Times opinion writer Charlie Warzel warns that, without a clear communication strategy for what’s next, people will distrust leaders.
Warzel cites six communication guidelines from the report of a working group at The University of Minnesota, The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRP).:
Don’t Over Reassure.
Proclaim Uncertainty
Validate Emotions—Your Audience’s and Your Own
Give People Things to Do
Admit and Apologize for Errors
Share Dilemma
Discussion:
How should U.S. officials communicate now? What do they need to accomplish, and how well are our current leaders meeting the challenge? In other words, do you agree with Warzel that our leaders are falling short?
Read the entire report. What other principles does the group recommend?
Analyze the report: the audiences, objectives, writing style, organization, and so on. What are the strengths, and how could it be improved?
Similar COVID-19 Ads
Are all COVID-19 ads the same? A digital marketer compiled excerpts from recent ads showing similar images, music, and phrases. He titled his video, “Every Covid-19 Commercial Is Exactly the Same.”
Sean Haney describes why so many ads are the same:
What's the deal? In reality, many companies have found themselves short on cash, almost overnight. They needed to get a message out - and quick. They asked their teams to throw something together. Since they can't film a new ad because of social distancing, they compiled old stock b-roll footage and found the most inoffensive royalty-free piano track they could find. This, combined with a decade of marketing trends dictated by focus groups and design-by-committee, released a tsunami of derivative, cliche ads all within a week of one another. It's not a conspiracy - but perhaps a sign that it's time for something new.
A Morning Consult report offers guidance for companies. From 2,200 Americans at the end of March, we learn how companies should communicate. For example, people say they are more likely to purchase from a company that provides “a public statement about support being given to laid-off employees” compared to other types of statements.
Discussion:
What’s your view of these company ads? How do you react when you see them? Do you react differently to different companies’ ads?
Read the report. Analyze the audience, objectives, tone, organization, visuals, and so on. What principles of business communication are followed?
What else do you learn from the report about how companies should communicate during COVID-19?
Improving Column Charts
So many charts about COVID-19 could be improved. Here’s one from a Business Insider article, which compares death rates for the flu and COVID-19.
Discussion:
What issues do you see in the graphic? (Hint: Check the x axis, and describe what the percentage on the y axis represents.) How would you fix the problems?
What are the consequences of designing charts in this way?
Find another recent chart to analyze. In what ways does the graphic convey information accurately, and how does it fall short?
Misleading NY Covid-19 Chart
Thanks to Carl Quintanilla for posting this example of a misleading chart. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been lauded for his leadership during the coronavirus crisis, yet critics say one of the mainstay charts in his news conferences shows a skewed story.
When he shows this chart, Governor Cuomo describes, the decreasing numbers of new hospitalizations. The chart title is clear: “Change in Total Hospitalizations.” But what does the visual imply?
Similarly, he shows “Change in ICU Admissions” (approx.00:35 in the video).
Discussion:
Watch the first minute of the news conference. Is he clear, or could he be clearer in his explanation?
What’s your view of the two charts? Are they misleading? What are the possible consequences of showing the data in a misleading way?
How, if at all, should these charts be changed?
Luckin COO Fabricated Sales Data
Luckin’ Coffee, China’s largest coffee chain, is suffering the consequences of publishing false sales numbers. Ernst & Young discovered the misconduct, which took place in 2019, during an audit, concluding that “management personnel engaged in fabricated transactions which led to the inflation of the Company’s income, costs and expenses.” An investigation blames the chief operating officer and others.
A report details “the fraud and the fundamentally broken business,” including “smoking gun” evidence and “red flags.” The anonymous authors compare video recordings of store foot traffic to reported sales.
In response to the news, Luckin’s stock declined between 75 and 80%. Starting in February, when the anonymous report was made public, the company has been posting notices about the situation on its website.
Discussion:
Analyze the anonymous report, including the audiences, objectives, organization, writing style, etc. What works well, and how would suggest that the writer improve the report?
How well did the company address concerns? Begin with the first response in February.
What leadership character dimensions does this situation illustrate?
Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong
Two students sent me Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s news conference as a positive example. I can see why: he gives a model speech, balancing emotional appeal and straight talk. He is proud of Singapore’s response, and yet he is honest about the challenges ahead. The PM also gives examples from other countries and the lessons learned.
Discussion:
What are the strengths of the Prime Minister’s speech?
Assess his delivery skills.
How have leaders in other countries followed this example—or how have they fell short?
Which leadership character dimensions does the PM demonstrate in his speech?
Confusing Pie Chart
A former student sent me this chart, and he didn’t have a source, but it’s a good example of what not to do when creating pie charts. What problems can you identify?
Discussion:
What principles of creating pie charts are followed, and how does the chart fall short?
Is the pie chart the best choice for this data? What would be a better choice and why?
What does the text imply?
Email Scammers
Remember those quaint email scams that were riddled with grammatical errors? A Wall Street Journal article describes new, sophisticated training for email scammers in Africa. A Nigerian is quoted: “You know how you guys play baseball when you are growing up? Here many of us learn fraud.”
Former scams involved people sending email asking for money for people in trouble or promising big returns on small funds. Today’s scams involve hacking into accounts and people learning about connections, for example, what vendors a company uses. A fake invoice to a known vendor is more likely to get paid. Using a grandson’s real name could lead a grandmother to Wal-Mart to send money to him, which happened to my friend’s mother.
About $1.7 billion was lost to email scams in 2019, and complaints are rising steadily. The article describes a “grooming” process “like organized crime.”
Discussion:
We hear a lot about victims’ vulnerability, but what creates a culture of scammers? What makes people vulnerable to commit this fraud? For more about this, watch The Weekly documentary about love scams on Facebook.
What’s your view of the bar chart in the WSJ article? How could it be improved? Would you prefer a more creative graphic, or does this work as is?
Comparing Headlines About the Market
How does the media describe the recent stock market decline? Let’s compare a few headlines:
Dow falls 1,191 points -- the most in history (CNN)
Coronavirus Drives Stocks Down for 6th Day and Into Correction (New York Times)
U.S. Stocks Slide Into a Correction as Virus Fears Show No Sign of Easing (Wall Street Journal)
Dow's point drop worst on record as stocks fall into correction (Fox News)
Dow drops 1190 points amid coronavirus fears, S&P 500 sees fastest correction in history (Yahoo Finance)
Of the five, Fox is the only one that didn’t place a headline about the market at the top of its web page.
Discussion:
What do you make of these headline choices, including placement? What might the wording indicate about the media group’s beliefs or audience?
In class after a previous decline, I took issue with headlines like CNN’s. Do you see an issue? (Hint: What does a raw number tell us?)
Report Criticizes Airline Safety and Oversight
A U.S. Department of Transportation report criticizes the Federal Aviation Association and Southwest Airlines for lax safety standards. A New York Times article summarizes the report findings:
“The report found that the Federal Aviation Administration had allowed Southwest to routinely provide inaccurate data to pilots and to operate more than 150,000 flights on planes whose airworthiness had not been confirmed.
“The agency also failed to investigate concerns raised by its own representatives ‘ranging from senior executives to local inspectors’ over Southwest’s safety culture.”
The DOT includes “Four SMS Components,” the FAA’s own description to fault safety culture in both organizations.
Discussion:
What business communication principles are illustrated in the report? Who are the primary and secondary audiences, and how well does the report meet its communication objectives?
The report does a particularly good job of using “message titles” (also called “talking headings”). What are some examples?
What else do you notice about the report? Consider the writing style, organization, and other features. What could be improved?
Tips for Writing Headlines
An infographic written by Feldman Creative and designed by Infobrandz offers tips for writing headlines, particularly for online content. The advice focuses on capturing attention, which makes sense in our cluttered online world: posing a question, focusing on the reader, using a colon or m-dash, and using visceral language.
Read the entire infographic on Ragan.com. Some of this advice is useful for email subject lines, which may inspire receivers to read or delete your email.
Discussion:
Read the past 50 or so subject lines of emails you have received. Which of these principles are followed? What differences do you notice in marketing and other emails?
What advice do you find useful from the infographic for online content? What about email subject lines that you write?
Wells Fargo Earnings Call
The Wells Fargo scandal of creating fake accounts became public in 2016, and the company is still suffering the repercussions. Profit is down 53%, and stock performance is lagging.
On an earnings call, Charles Scharf, who has been the CEO since October 2019, explained the bank’s current position:
I was honored to be chosen to lead Wells Fargo because I believe this is an extraordinary company that plays an important role in this country. We came out of the financial crisis as the most valuable and most respected bank in the US, but as you know, we made some terrible mistakes and have not effectively addressed our shortcomings. These circumstances have led to financial underperformance, but we have one of the most enviable financial services franchises in the world and employees that want to do what's necessary to again be one of the most respected and successful banks in the US.
Discussion:
Read the earnings call transcript. What’s your view of how Scharf and John R. Shrewsberry, EVP and CFO, addressed concerns?
How well has the bank recovered its image since 2016? What examples of their communications can you cite?
What could bank executives have done differently in the past four years?
How well does the line chart work to compare Wells to other leading banks? What could be improved?
Data in the Uber's Safety Report
Uber published its first safety report, and the company is lauded for its transparency. A Wall Street Journal article leads with the number of sexual assaults reported during the last two years: 5,981. Of course, any number is too many—no one should be assaulted in an Uber or anywhere else. And sexual assaults are notoriously underreported, so we have no idea how many have actually occurred.
At the same time, a skeptic might want to know the total number of rides in order to put the number of reports in context. The report does provide this information (see the report for footnotes):
The report makes additional attempts to put the numbers in context:
All of that work culminates in the Safety Report that we are sharing with you, the public, today. To put US safety challenges in context:
• In 2018, over 36,000 people lost their lives in car crashes in the United States alone (3)
• Approximately 20,000 people were the victims of homicide in 2017(4)
• Nearly 44% of women in the US have been a victim of sexual violence in their lifetime—which means that more than 52 million women live with that experience every day (5)
Every form of transportation is impacted by these issues. For example, the NYPD received 1,125 complaints of sex offenses in the transit system during the same time period covered by this report.(6,7) In the United States alone, more than 45 rides on Uber happen every second. At that scale, we are not immune to society’s most serious safety challenges, including sexual assault. Yet when collecting data for that portion of our report, we found there was no uniform industry standard for counting and categorizing those types of incidents.
The 84-page report is incredibly detailed and includes external reports for credibility and the number of charges for various types of assaults.
Discussion:
Analyze the report: the audience, communication objectives, organization, writing style, format. What works well, and what could be improved?
Does the context in these examples convince you that the numbers aren’t so bad? Why or why not?
Otherwise, how well does Uber address the safety issues? How do you assess the report credibility? What other questions do you have?
Microsoft's Diversity and Inclusion Report
Microsoft’s 2019 Diversity and Inclusion report is the company’s sixth since 2014.
In the introductory letter, we learn about positive changes in demographic data:
In technical roles alone, we have 49% more women, 48% more Hispanic/Latinx, and 67% more African American/Black employees than we did three years ago. And beyond population growth, this year’s snapshot shows diversity representation has risen in every demographic category we track.
The report includes a few dazzling graphics, such as the one shown here.
Discussion:
Read the entire report. What principles of business communication are followed?
What suggestions for improvement would you suggest to the report authors?
What’s your view of the graphic shown here? What is the main point? How else could the data be shown?
Although the report writers acknowledge that some of the diversity increase in technical roles is attributed to employee growth, what other questions might a skeptic ask?
SoftBank's Vague WeWork Slides
SoftBank already took a financial hit because of its investment in WeWork. Now, the company is facing criticism about its data analysis and presentation.
A deck SoftBank Group (SBG) used to justify its WeWork investment includes several “hypothetical” and vague slides, like this one.
If you’re having trouble reading the footnote, here it is:
This hypothetical illustration is provided solely for illustrative purposes, reflects the current beliefs of SBG as of the date hereof, and is based on a variety of assumptions and estimates about, among others, future operating results, the value of assets and market conditions at the time of disposition, any related transaction costs and the timing and manner of sale, all of which may differ from the assumptions on which this hypothetical illustration is based. There are numerous factors related to the markets in general or the implementation of any specific operational plan that cannot be fully accounted for with respect to the hypothetical illustration herein. Any targets or estimates are therefore subject to a number of important risks, qualifications, limitations, and exceptions that could materially and adversely affect the hypothetical illustration presented herein. Accordingly, actual results may differ materially from the hypothetical illustration presented herein. For the avoidance of doubt, this illustration does not reflect actual results or metrics from the company.
The slide title is also odd: the illustration isn’t hypothetical, but the profitability is.
Discussion:
How might this chart affect SoftBank’s credibility?
What other examples in the SoftBank deck are problematic?
What leadership character dimensions are illustrated by this situation?