This is how to mobilize support
But no audience.
Communications people want something very different. Those looking for juicy headlines with good images and short text. Infographics that do 1 thing at a time. Material to fill a mailing, a homepage or a tweet, and that’s how you reach supporters.
Careful scientists clash with communications people. Where I go, one of either group is always unhappy.
What if you saw all information as one thing? One unit, from raw data to conclusion. Not a separate report, nor a mailing, but “a thing” for effectively spreading an idea, a substantiated idea, which as yet has no particular form. In designer language, this is called medium-free thinking.
I see two questions:
1 What should we do to spread our idea?
2 What should we tell people to establish our authority?
The answer to question 1 is “something that works” (reaches the reader), the answer to question 2 is “something that is right” (convinces the reader). Those two things have to come together. The golden mean, of course, is “something you can easily send that is derived from something that is totally right. You send out a mailing or investor summary, you post an article on LinkedIn, and you tweet the best infographics. Always with a link to the full report.
Research > report > infographics
How does such a thing work. Two examples: the Access to Medicine Index and Superlist reports.
- 0) The study. A hefty document that will not be sent out, except to some reviewers.
- 1) The plank (old printing term for “all the pages in a row”). What topics should be covered in what order in a concise version of the report?
- 2) What parts of it should be ready to use or send separately?
- 3) What findings or insights were gained from the research?
- 4) How do you make the findings fit for 1 tweet, 1 powerpoint slide or 1 video?
- 5) Are there any findings that you can broadcast on specific occasions?
- 6) Within the report: what is the distinction between raw data, filtered data, its interpretation by our experts and their opinion about it?
- 7) Your tables and research data, do they have a public-friendly version? And is the web version different from the print version?
This already looks quite a bit like a communications strategy, or something else with -strategy behind it.
Chicken or egg?
You strategize and have meetings for a very long time, and only then start making things. I’ll tell you: the pages made will force you to adjust the strategy again. A much better option is to start making stuff right away. simultaneously, strategy forms, simply because everything you create raises questions. Does this work? Who exactly is it for? What exactly does it say?
The same goes for textual content: if you write that first and then create the assets, this written text will not fit will not work. With me, writing and design go hand in hand. Really much more efficient.
Most importantly?
You can show your report when you are on stage and everyone is watching.
(See photo in header: Jayashree Iyer with the 2018 Antimicrobial Resistance Benchmark at the World Economic Forum in Davos)
Questionmark Foundation collects data on supermarkets. What are supermarkets doing to move toward a sustainable food system? Little, it turns out, but something. And it will surprise you which supermarkets contribute the most. (www.thequestionmark.org)
Superlist reports kick off with 1 spread with a summary and that single key infographic. The rest follows.
Each subtopic has its own chapter that again begins with a summary and a figure. All of these components are also available separately as social media stuff.
For Access to Medicine Foundation (which measures what Big Pharma is doing for access to medicine in poor countries) I made a huge pile of reports, slides and stuff for the media between 2012 and 2022.
Also with the Access to Medicine Index, the report starts with an Executive Summary, which contains everything + 1 central figure: The Index.
Did I say everything had to be short? Well, this is short for investors and decision makers. Any shorter and they won’t trust it and won’t read it. Of this typical page (called the report card) we have built increasingly sophisticated versions over the years. Of course, this data is also on web. However, on screen, it’s hard to get an overview and see details at the same time. On web, you can compare and filter the data by company and by item, though.
Radial diagrams in Antimicrobial Resistance Benchmark 2018. Exotic.
The briefest message, visual chic, with the Executive Director.
True story: ‘Klaas, can you design this page first so we can write?’ See, that makes sense. Writing first yields things that don’t fit, designing first gives the writers information about each component on the page: the length of the introduction, the size of the captions to the figure.
Pretty full, but nice and full, lots of info.
There is a separate version for investors: thin, yet with everything an investor wants to know. (Investors interested in the Access to Medicine Index represent $18 trillion in assets)
Image for newsletter header.
Each report contains between 50 and 300 figures, which can be prepared as a selection, with customized text, for web and socials.
Maps are also always needed: where is it, how many countries?
Reports on subtopics have different covers and format. The report on the right most closely resembles a scholarly article, which starts right on the cover.
Compact information can become super-high density. It looks like “wow, they know a lot,” but also like “gee, do I have to read all this? Depends on the readership if this works well.
Perhaps this is finest: 1 observation, explained and accompanied by a figure. Want to know more? Read more on the website or in the report.
