This is a slide from Bain about M&A spending in the tech industry.
And like a typical consulting slide, it's got a descriptive title,
a nice big chart and a clean design But
despite what you might think, this is actually not a great slide.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Paul, and I'm a PowerPoint presentation design and data
visualization instructor with Analyst Academy.
I've taught thousands of consulting, finance and strategy professionals
all around the world how to make more effective presentations.
And in this video, I'm going to rate and review slides from three
major consulting firms, McKinsey, Bain and BCG.
I explain what they do well, what they could have done better,
and what you can do to improve your own slide making
and this first slide
is from a BCG presentation called True Luxury Global Consumer
Insights, which essentially is a deck about the consumer luxury goods market
What strikes me right away is just how nice and crisp the overall design is.
There's a great use of color.
I really like the font that they used, and the chart itself just looks great.
I also like the background
because it doesn't distract from the content,
but they managed
to include some stylization, which fits with the rest of the theme of the deck.
The title of the slide
says 54% of true luxury consumers do not expect to resume
international leisure travel before six months.
And I like this title
because it's descriptive, but it doesn't try to explain all the data on the chart.
Instead, it focuses on the most important takeaway on the slide,
which is this 54% right here.
Then the main part of the slide, of course, is the chart, which shows
survey results that explain when people are likely to begin traveling again
after the pandemic broken down by country.
The chart itself is fine, but what I really like
are these extra details below the chart that help explain and interpret the data.
These circles show the average time frame for each of these countries
than these takeaway boxes down here.
Summarize the findings from this section of the chart that Europeans
and Russians are expected to resume international travel
sooner than non-Europeans in places like China, Brazil, US, South Korea and Japan.
By including this information to make it easier for me to understand
and sort through the data without having to guess what the key takeaways are.
Charts can be tricky for the audience when you leave them open for interpretation.
So spelling it out like this is always a good idea.
So overall, the slide is pretty good.
But I do have a couple small gripes.
The first is their choice to use a column chart instead of a bar chart.
Typically, but not always.
Column charts are used for comparisons over time,
but in this chart they just show a comparison between countries.
And at first glance, it's confusing
because the charts seems to be showing a trend over time.
That's because our brains naturally process visuals like this
from left to right.
If they were to use the bar chart instead and then moved some of this information
at the bottom to the right of the chart,
I think the side would have been a little more intuitive.
Another thing I think could have been improved is their choice of color,
specifically how they've ordered the colors
when you see what seems to be different shades of the same color, it's natural
to assign meaning to those different shades.
Like maybe the darker the color, the higher the number or something like that.
In this case, the lighter green shade represents six months
or sooner than the darker shade is six months to a year.
But then it goes to a light shade of gray for more than a year,
and then a darker shade of gray for not traveling ever again.
The colors look nice, but logically it seems to be a bit random.
Then finally, I wish there would have been a stronger visual emphasis on this.
54% number, given how important it is to the slides.
Main takeaway you sort of have to look for it on the slide amidst
a sea of numbers or visuals, even just bolding.
It would have helped it pop just a little bit more.
So overall, it's a great slide, but it could be made
better with some minor tweaks. So I'm going to give it an eight.
This next slide from Bain is about the Global Private Equity market,
and this slide in particular shows how investments, exits and funding
all reached record levels in the year.
20, 21 title says the buyout market outdid itself in 2021 roaring
to new records in value and exits while keeping the gas on fund raising.
So essentially just saying the buyout market is really strong
and if you look at the charts down here,
you can see each of these three categories investments, exits and fund raising.
They're all combination charts, meaning they show two different charts
on top of each other,
typically a column chart in a line chart, which is what they have here.
The challenge with these kinds of charts is that sometimes they can be confusing,
especially if there's a lot of data to sort through.
But these are simple, clean and easy to read.
One thing that Bain consistently does really well is to use standout colors
to highlight their main point,
while keeping the less
important elements of the chart in neutral colors like gray or black
the red column shows what they want us to see, which,
in the case of the first chart, is the total buyout deal value.
Then the deal count is shown for context.
Another great thing they've done here is to separate these
into three different charts.
Sometimes there's a temptation to put all the data
you have into a single chart, but that can make things even more confusing.
What they could have done here instead is put this into a single clustered
column chart, which still would have shown the data they wanted to show,
but it would have been much harder to see the insights
instead they've given each topic its own chart,
and it makes it really easy to see what they're trying to tell me,
which is that investments, exits and fundraising are all going strong.
They've also done a good job of including footnotes
and sources down here that explain what's included in each category.
It's easy to overlook this part or to just put the sources,
but they've done a good job of being thorough,
which is important when you've got a data heavy slide
the only thing I can think of that would have made this chart just a little bit
better is to include small icons next to each of these subtitles.
There's a lot of text going on here
that sort of blends together when you're skimming through the slide.
So just a nice small black icon that matches each topic
could have helped separate the text just a little
and make it a little easier to read quickly.
But overall, this is a fantastic slide, and Baynes done a really good job.
I give it a nine out of ten.
Here's another one
from BCG, and this one is about the media sector in New York.
The title says, In face of nationwide traditional media, slow down.
New York City has been growing and gaining substantial national share.
And right off the bat,
you can already tell they've structured this slide really well.
The title gives the overall takeaway of the slide,
but then they've split that takeaway into two parts.
But then not only that, the color, size and bowling of the title
means it's going to get the most attention
with these underlined subtitles getting the second most attention.
This is great
because this is exactly how you want the audience to process the slide
starting from the highest level idea, then going down through the layers.
Then the table over
here shows the percentage of jobs in each of these categories
that were in New York versus the broader U.S.
and they did it for 2002 and for 2011.
So you can see the change.
What's good about this table is how well designed it is.
Sometimes I see the default PowerPoint
design used for tables and it just looks so tacky
here.
They've added some color lines and bolding to help put emphasis
on the important parts, which really helps me as a reader.
Another good thing they did here was to actually use a table instead of a chart.
Charts are extremely common and are useful in the right settings, but tables
definitely have their place too.
In this case, they're trying to show different types of data.
The percentage of jobs that came from New York,
the growth in New York, jobs and the salary figures down here
showing all of that in a chart would have been pretty difficult
but despite this being a pretty good table,
they've made a critical mistake that I think really hurts the slide,
and that is that there's no real connection with the subtitle
unless I'm missing something there doesn't seem to be any mention
of either of these 40 K numbers from the subtitle.
In fact, the only absolute numbers
in this whole table are the salary numbers down at the bottom.
I still think the topic of the table matches, but the numbers are a bit
confusing to me and hurt the logical consistency of the slide.
Another complaint I have with this slide is the amount of bolding they were off
to a good start with the visual hierarchy of the title and the subtitles.
But then this section over here is just completely bolded.
That makes it a lot harder for me to read and process all this information
because it sort of blends together
without any real attention getting put on the key takeaways.
So overall, the slide starts off really great
and certainly has some nice initial structure and a good table,
but their lack of attention to detail really hurts the slide.
I'm going to give it a six.
This next slide is from McKinsey, and it's from a presentation called
Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained Workforce Transitions in a Time of Automation.
The title of the slide says by 2030 Automation has the potential to replace up
to 47% of work hours in the US in the earliest adoption scenario,
which is a pretty good title, it's descriptive and detailed
and seems to summarize the main takeaway from the slide.
Looking at the slide, it's primarily made up of this chart,
which is a stacked column chart that shows automation projected impact
on different jobs by country and broken down by different industries.
And this format is actually really common in consulting decks.
A main takeaway and the title supported by a single quantitative chart
or sometimes multiple charts.
So the overall structure of this slide is good, but unfortunately there's
a lot of other stuff here that just isn't very good.
For one, there's way too much color on this slide, which makes it really hard
for me to quickly make any conclusions about the data.
I can understand the temptation to use all these colors
because they're trying to show data from a broad range of industries.
But the problem is the breakdown
doesn't really add to the message in any meaningful way.
The message of the slide is about how automation has the potential
to replace 47% of work hours in the US, which is really just
talking about this number right here.
So everything else on the slide is just there for context.
And visually speaking, the breakdown of industries is very distracting.
In other words, it comes at a high cost
but doesn't provide a whole lot of useful information
they've also included all these other countries here,
even though the message is just about the US.
But this is a lot more appropriate because it provides context for the data
using just one number by itself doesn't provide a whole lot of meaning,
but putting that number in the context of numbers in the same category, i.e.
showing data from all these other countries,
not just the US, makes the data more meaningful
and then just like with our big
slide from earlier, I think a bar chart might have made a little more sense here.
What this looks like is a trend increasing over time,
but it's not these are categorical, so there's no natural order to them.
I can see why they chose a column chart
because a bar chart would probably have led to some whitespace on either
side of the chart, but white space on a slide isn't necessarily a bad thing.
So in this case, I think they should have done it.
So overall, I don't think it's that great of a slide.
The biggest mistake is their decision to make this a stacked column chart
and include all these different colors,
which in my mind makes this slide a lot worse.
So I'm going to give it a five.
Sorry, Mackenzie.
All right, here's another one
for Mackenzie This one is a bit older, but it's an absolute classic.
It's from a presentation they did back in 2010 for the U.S.
Postal Service, who was facing some real tough losses at the time.
The slide in particular talks about how their decline in mail volume
is even worse than what they had predicted five years earlier.
The title says volume declines have been worse
than expected when the current legal and regulatory framework was established,
then the slide is broken up into two parts
this line chart on the left and this box of implications on the right.
And this is a pretty common format in the consulting world
where you'll see a chart on one side,
then a list of bullet points on the other that provide either context for the chart
or explain the information in the chart or highlight
the takeaways of the chart, which is basically what they've done here.
Overall, the design of the slide
is a bit plain, and this was actually very common for McKinsey at the time.
They've since done a nice rebrand, but for a long time, McKinsey
slides were really nothing special.
From a design perspective.
The structure of this slide is pretty good with a nice, bold title
that captures the main takeaway of the slide.
But one thing I think they could have done
better is to make these subtitles a little smaller and less eye catching.
When you're building a slide, you want to have
what's called the font hierarchy, where the most important
and broadest ideas command the most attention.
Then the next level down.
In this case, the two subtitles attracts the second most attention.
But here it looks like these are both the same size.
So I would have liked to see these just a little bit smaller.
What I do really like about this slide though, is this excellent line chart.
First of all, they chose a line chart instead of a column chart, which to me
makes a lot of sense because it allows them
to make these forecast comparisons much more easily
and they've made these look really nice and easy to understand where possible.
It's a good idea to put your labels right next to the lines instead of in a legend,
because with a legend you have to constantly look back and forth
and it can get really confusing for the audience.
I also like this bold labeling here to show that these were forecasts
from 2005.
The whole thing sticks out without being obnoxious.
And it really helps drive home the point of the chart.
This text over here isn't too bad.
I like that they've used bullet points to make it a little easier to read
and even some bullet points to help separate the different layers of the text
building.
Might have made this text a little easier to parse through, but
it's a minimal amount of text, so I think you could go either way.
Overall, it's a really good slide.
It could have been better with
more modern design and smaller subtitles, but the chart really brings it home.
I'd give it an eight.
The final slide on our list is from Bain, and it's about M&A spending
in the tech industry, just like some of the other slides.
This one is just a title with a chart that emphasizes the message in that title.
And again, that's a completely acceptable
layout so long as the title and the chart match up.
The title says, To date, most U.S.
hyperscale or M&A spending has benefited consumers or enriched market dynamics.
Then looking at the chart, you can see that each bubble represents an acquisition
and those acquisitions are plotted along to axis.
The x axis
shows the acquisitions effect on consumers ranging from less value to more value.
Then the Y axis shows the market dynamics after the acquisition, ranging
from less competition and investment to more competition and investment.
So overall, the title seems to match with the message being shown in the chart.
Most of the bubbles tend to be on the right side
of this chart, and many of them are on the top. Right.
But unfortunately, that's about where the good things on this slide.
And the main issue with this chart is that there's too much going on.
The temptation with bubble charts like this is to introduce too many variables.
But just because you can doesn't mean you should.
The only really important part of this chart
is to show that most of the acquisitions fall within the bottom
and top right quadrants, whereas everything else is just noise.
In addition to the placement of the bubbles,
they've also shown the size of the acquisition
as represented by the Publicize,
the company that made the acquisition as represented by these colors.
More on those later.
Whether or not the acquisition was recent, as represented by this red line,
and whether or not the acquisition has been divested
or shut down as represented by the dotted line.
I'll admit that including one or two of these variables could provide
important context, but to include them all just makes the chart more confusing.
If it were me, I would have done away with the lines around the bubbles
because they're too hard to see anyway and really don't add much value.
And I would have probably also done away with the size of the bubble as well as
maybe even the coloring to represent each company.
Now, I know that might be controversial,
but remember the main message of the slide,
which is to show that M&A spending has benefited consumers or enriched market
dynamics, which is reflected in the chart by where the bubbles are.
The size of the bubbles, although relevant, is not the main focus
and just clutters the chart without providing enough benefit.
If I did use colors, though, I would have definitely chosen
different colors than what they have here.
What they've done is to use what's called a diverging palette,
where the colors are at two ends of the same spectrum.
So it looks like Microsoft is on one end of the spectrum and Amazon is on
the other end of the spectrum.
But in reality, these colors have absolutely no meaning whatsoever.
Any time you use a color in your chart, you want to do it with intention
because the audience is going to naturally assign meaning to those colors.
A better choice
here would have been to use colors that matched the branding of the companies
or just colors that were clearly distinct and not along any sort of spectrum.
Instead, their choice to make their chart pretty heart.
That's readability.
Overall,
it's a slide that looks nice but has a complicated visual
that really makes things hard in the audience.
So I'm going to give this one a six.
All right. That's going to do it for this video.
I hope you found it helpful.
Let me know on down in the comments what you think
I missed or what recommendations you have for future video.
And if you or your team are interested in learning more
about how to build high quality insight, rich presentations
make sure you check out our advanced courses at the Analyst Academy dot com.
Thanks for watching.