In this video I'm going to do a breakdown of this slide from BCG. I'll show you what they did that's
so effective, and how you can apply it to your own slide making. Plus I'll talk about their use
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The title for this slide says, "In face of nationwide traditional media slowdown,
NYC has been growing and gaining substantial national share".
In other words, the whole message of the slide is that the media sector in
the US has been slowing down, but New York's media sector has actually been picking up.
A great thing that BCG does here and in most of their slides, is to break up the key message
of the slide into different parts to make it easier for the audience to understand.
You can see that with these clear subtitles. The one on the left says "US media sector
has shed 40,000 jobs, while NYC created 40,000 jobs", and on the right it says "Subsector shift
has helped NYC overcome nationwide decline"". Both of these provide support for the title,
which is consistent with the Pyramid Principle that we've talked about in other videos.
The other thing that's great about these subtitles is they provide enough detail to help
me understand the key takeaway. In other words, they tell me what the takeaway is directly, rather
than just telling me what the topic is and forcing me to look for the takeaway myself. When you just
put a simple topic here you make the audience do extra work to understand the message, and
there's not as clear of a connection with the main takeaway of the slide. If this left subtitle just
said ""Media Sector Changes"" I wouldn't really know what they're trying to tell me. Likewise
on the right if it just said "Subsector Shift" I don't have a clear idea for what the insight is.
Then if you go down one more layer, you've got this nice table on the left that provides some
supporting data, and these text snippets on the right that provide some qualitative support.
And again here BCG is using the Pyramid Principle well to clearly communicate their ideas.
The highest level idea is on the top and attracts the most attention, the next level
idea is just below it, and the details come below that. By forcing the audience to process the
ideas in this way you make it easier for them to understand what you're saying, and why it matters.
Alright now let's talk about this table for a bit.
It shows the percentage of New York City media sector jobs as a percentage of total US
media sector jobs, broken down by category for 2002 and 2011. So for example, in 2002,
New York City had 8.2% of all US Broadcasting and Cable jobs, but in 2011 that number grew to 10.5%.
So what they're trying to show is that New York is gaining share in terms of US media sector jobs.
Now there's a few things here that I really like. First of all I think the design of the table is
quite good. The number one rule with tables is to never use the default PowerPoint formatting.
Things could have looked so much worse here and every time I see a default table on a
slide it makes me cringe a little, because it really only takes a little bit of effort
to make the table look much better. With just a few small changes like removing the lines,
adding color to the titles, and bolding the important text, they've made the table,
and the slide itself, so much easier to read.
Another think I like is how they've changed the color of this box and added
a dotted line to indicate that it's different from the data on the left.
This column is meant to show the overall growth of New York jobs,
so it's not a continuation or a result of these two columns about 2002 and 2011.
Separating this column visually helps me keep the numbers themselves separate.
I also like that they've decided to use a table here instead of a chart. Generally speaking you
should use a table when you want the audience to read the actual numbers,
instead of just looking at trends or exceptions in the data that can be seen visually. Tables
are also good when you have different types of data that you want to show in the same space.
Here they've got the change in percentage from 2002 to 2011, but they've also got the total
job growth percentage, the total change down here for all categories combined, and then also
salary numbers at the bottom. It would be really difficult to show all of this in a single chart.
Even if you had a chart and added text on top it, it would still be difficult to show everything in
a way that's clean and easy to understand. So I think a table is the right choice.
Now all that said, I do think they've made a pretty big mistake here by not
aligning the subtitle with the information in the table. The subtitle talks about how
the US media sector has lost 40,000 jobs, while New York has gained 40,000 jobs. But
if you look at the table, there's no mention of the total number of jobs.
In fact, there aren't even any absolute numbers at all in this main part of the table; they're all
percentages. Now I don't think the theme of the subtitle is off, it's still about job growth in
New York, but it's a bit confusing to not have that data in the table. If it were me, I would
just add a couple lines to show the total number of jobs for New York and the US. You could even
replace these salary numbers, because I don't see how those are helping support the message at all.
On the right hand side the text looks pretty good. Essentially what they're
doing with this text is providing reasons why New York has been able to overcome this
nationwide decline in media sector jobs. And they've done a good job explaining that in the
subtitle. I also like that they've kept most of these text snippets short and to the point,
which is really important when you're trying to save space on a slide.
I don't care for the 100% bolded text on this side because I think it makes it harder to pick out the
important points, but it's a nice clean font on a plain background so it still works in a way.
Plus the spacing between each line helps as well.
If it were me I would have unbolded the text and maybe highlighted a few key words, but
the overall look here is still fine because again, the text is simple and readable.
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