You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world.
via ted.com
Sometimes I think TED is all about going ‘wow’ a lot with little real significance (as in: it’s easy to go ‘wow’ at someone moving pictures around on a virtual desktop with their hands but not so attractive when someone wants to urge action to save lives). But Hans Rosling shows the data in such a witty, engaging way with a serious undertone. So this is nothing to do with social media, marketing or copywriting, but one of those snippets that should be compulsory viewing no matter where you’re from.
Unless otherwise stated, everything Brendan says on this site is his own opinion. So there.
Did you really just suggest that being able to convey data in an exciting way isn’t anything to do with social media, marketing or copywriting!!!
Can you tell that to the millions of infographic makers, please?
Yes, I did! And no, I can’t.
When I say ‘nothing to do with social media’ I meant ‘not really about how to engage with audiences in a more compelling way than your competitors.’ But I suppose this is compelling, if not engaging. If people could add their own data to it and build it into something new – like the Intel Museum of Me app – then that would be more ‘social’.
You could also say it’s the kind of thing that goes viral, but that’s an effect, not a strategy. Private emails between two individuals can go viral, from a beginning that is decidedly not social.
Not to do with marketing? There are obvious marketing applications for the animated display (and I’m looking into how to use Google’s Motion Chart widget for precisely that after discovering you can download Hans Rosling’s software but not use your own data with it). So maybe it is about marketing, in a way.
It’s certainly not about copywriting!
With hindsight I probably shouldn’t have said what it wasn’t about.