How You Teach Your Data to Tell Its Story – More Relevant Than Ever!

Adobe Sum­mit in Lon­don has just closed its doors – but there have been some high­lights that deserve to be shared also with those that could not attend in person.

One of these def­i­nite­ly was the ses­sion about data sto­ry­telling. Deliv­ered by Chris Haleuah, this packed ses­sion was def­i­nite­ly one of the big take-aways with­in the row of more than a hun­dred break­outs (, yeah, lucky you if you picked the right ones!).

But lets get to the point, what was it about, what was there that would have been ben­e­fi­cial to ME? Well, quite a bit, lets try to pick out some ele­ments that you can put into prac­tise your­self immediately:

• What is the pur­pose of sto­ry­telling after all?

Data can tell a sto­ry – very often its an unex­pect­ed an excit­ing one. But only if you can give your num­bers a clear and con­vinc­ing voice. Our abil­i­ty to extract val­ue and insight from data – and com­mu­ni­cat­ing it – is going to be an essen­tial skill for every dig­i­tal mar­keter in the future.

• How can you lever­age the psy­chol­o­gy of sto­ry­telling?

It´s a known fact that audi­ences big or small will check out after about 10 min­utes. But the good news is – there are ways to get them back. Be aware that not every deliv­ery tool is cre­at­ed for all ways of sto­ry­telling though – analyse which types of data make most sense to be told in a sto­ry, like­ly the more com­plex and very impact­ful data is where your sto­ry zone should be.

• How can you com­bine data, nar­ra­tion and visu­al­iza­tion for max­i­mum effect?

There is three ways to com­bine these ele­ments with your sto­ry. With nar­ra­tive and data, we’re explain­ing what’s hap­pen­ing. Through data and visu­als, we’re enlight­en­ing the audi­ence with new insights. And final­ly — with nar­ra­tive and visu­als, we’re engag­ing the audi­ence emo­tion­al­ly. When all three com­bine, we’re influ­enc­ing busi­ness deci­sions and help­ing to inspire action and change.

• What is the sto­ry line that your data find­ings should follow?

As for every good sto­ry told (just like in movies, fairy­tales, etc.) your data sto­ry needs to be prop­er­ly struc­tured into a set-up phase, a lad­der-like build-up of ris­ing insights, the famous “aha!” moment and a clos­ing with the solu­tion and next steps. While this sounds real­ly straight for­ward it´s essen­tial that you reflect on a) what you want to bring across and b) what is of essen­tial val­ue for your audi­ence, before build­ing the sto­ry per se.

Want to get more val­ue­able insights like these? Mark your cal­en­dars ear­ly, Adobe Sum­mit 2017 is just around the cor­ner! For now, reg­is­ter here and watch the entire ses­sion again online: http://summit.adobe.com/emea/sessions/summit-online/