Consulting firms love to use takeaway boxes, those small boxes
of text at the bottom of slides sometimes also called kickers.
You see them all the time from nearly every major consulting firm, like this
one from BCG or this one from McKinsey.
But what are they for?
And when should you use them Or maybe more importantly, when should you not use them?
And what's the difference between a title, subtitle, and a takeaway box?
In this video, I'm going to answer all these questions and
walk through some examples.
I'll talk about how to avoid the most common takeaway box mistakes and
how to properly use them to improve the quality and professionalism
of your own presentations.
Coming up.
Hi Everyone!
Paul here from Analyst Academy, where we provide PowerPoint presentation
design, and data visualization training to consulting, finance,
and strategy professionals.
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The takeaway box attracts a lot of attention on a slide.
For one, our eyes are naturally drawn to the top and bottom parts of a slide.
But another reason is that the formatting of the box tends to make it stand
out from the rest of the content.
Take a look at this slide from McKinsey for example.
It's not hard to notice the takeaway box and you can't help but read what it says.
So what that means is anytime you add a takeaway box to the slide,
you're taking attention away from other parts of the slide.
So if you're going to add one, you want to do it when the benefit outweighs the cost.
Generally speaking, there are two situations where you might need to
takeaway box: When you need to call out something that isn't immediately
obvious When you need something to help you transition into a future
slide let's take each of these one at a time, starting with the easier
one, transitioning to another slide.
Here's a really simple example of a slide about healthcare wearables.
The title says the healthcare wearables market is expected to reach
850 million in 2020 driven by new technology and institutional adoption.
Then in the body of the slide, you'll see a chart that indicates the
market size by year, and additional text on the right that talks
about the drivers of that growth.
Then take a look at the takeaway box.
It says, is this an attractive market for Wiz technologies?
So then the next slide could be a slide like this, that
addresses the question directly.
By setting up the slide like this, you sort of prime the
audience for what's coming.
In some cases, you're probably asking a question that the audience
is already asking themselves, but in this way you can better control
the narrative of the presentation.
All right, now let's talk about the second reason you might want to use
a takeaway box: to call out something that isn't immediately obvious.
And this one's a lot more tricky.
With content, heavy presentations, like what you see in consulting strategy
and finance, it can be difficult to pick up on all the nuances of a slide.
Even if you put the main takeaway in the slide, which you should be doing,
you can't always expect the audience to pick up on every little detail
of the slide, especially if that slide has lots of text or numbers.
So this is where the takeaway box comes into play.
It helps show the audience insights they might not have picked up right
away, but that you want them to know.
Let's take a look at this example from BCG.
It's from a deck about stray dogs in Dallas.
And this particular side is showing what happens to stray dogs that
enter Dallas animal services or DAS.
For example, in 2016, 37% were euthanized, 34% were adopted, 17% were transferred
and 9% were returned to their owners.
The main message of the slide is that 60% of dogs in Dallas animal
services achieve positive outcomes.
And that refers to these sections right here.
So everything on the slide, including the takeaway box should support that message.
The chart shows the number of dogs coming into DAS by year, broken down by
outcome type, and notice by the way, how all the positive outcomes are green or
blue while the negative outcome is red.
Then the takeaway box down here says each year DAS has increased live outcomes.
In other words, it's calling attention to the fact that the green section
has increased as a percentage of total outcomes every year.
In 2011 it's about 30%, but in 2016, it's closer to 60%.
You can see it visually in the chart itself, but you also get a sense for the
change with this section on the right, that shows growth rates since 2011.
Euthanized is going down while all the others are going up.
The takeaway box is calling attention to something that's already there,
but not immediately obvious.
Now you could argue that it is obvious, but not everyone is going
to think of it that way, especially because the title is telling you to
focus on the 60% positive outcomes.
So the takeaway box is just there to make sure the audience gets
all the insights you want them to.
An easy way to think about the takeaway box is to imagine you're
giving the presentation live.
What sort of information would you want to express orally?
If I was showing this chart to a client, I might add something like, " so as you
can see, live outcomes have actually been increasing over the last five years,"
but by instead adding that in a takeaway box, you make sure the audience sees it.
And it's there for people who don't hear the presentation live.
Now there's a few other really important things to call out here.
The first is that the takeaway box isn't adding any new information.
That's a common mistake.
You don't want to call out insights that aren't supported by the slide content
because it's confusing for the audience.
The second thing is you don't want to just repeat what's in the title.
Despite its name, the takeaway box shouldn't actually be the main takeaway
of the slide, that should be in the title.
Instead, the takeaway box should provide what's sometimes referred
to as a second order inference.
You could think of it as a second, less important takeaway,
but one that still supports the overall message of this slide.
This can be tricky of course, because you don't want to confuse your audience by
having multiple messages on your slide.
Notice how these are separate pieces of information.
Yet they're both supporting the overall message of this slide about
the growth in positive otucomes.
Is it perfect?
Definitely not.
But BCG does do a pretty good job here of stating a message, supporting
that message, then calling attention to other important information the
audience might not have noticed.
By the way, you might be wondering what this subtitle is all about.
You don't see them all the time, but BCG in particular likes to use them a lot.
In short they're just to help direct the audience a little bit more,
especially for data heavy slides.
They're usually more specific than the title, and they tell us
where to look to better understand the main message of the slide.
In this example, it's drawing attention to these two growth rates right here, which
are pretty important parts of the slide.
So to summarize, the title provides the main message, the subtitle supports
that message with more specifics to help direct the audience, and the
takeaway box calls attention to a less important, but still related
insight that might not be as obvious.
If you couldn't tell takeaway boxes are really easy to use incorrectly.
My advice would be to only use them if you're sure it'll improve your slide.
A general rule of thumb is to use them less than 20% of the time,
if you even use them at all.
And when you do use them, make sure it's to transition into a future slide, or
to call out a non-obvious insight that still supports the message of the slide.
If you're still a bit confused, then don't worry.
We've got a whole lot of examples of takeaway boxes over on our blog,
which you can check out right now.
We'll include a link down below.
And if you or your team are serious about building high quality,
well-structured presentations, make sure you check out our advanced
courses over at theanalystacademy.com.
Thanks for watching.