- Hi, everyone.
Paul here from the Analyst Academy.
And in this video, I'm going to do a breakdown
of a Deloitte consulting slide
from a presentation called Consumer Privacy in Retail.
I'll show you what I think they did well,
what they could have done better,
and what you can do to build your own
consulting style slides, coming up.
(upbeat music)
If you wanna download the full presentation yourself,
it's publicly available and accessible,
so we'll be sure to provide a link to it in the description.
And if you're interested in learning more
about how to build slides
and use PowerPoint like a consultant,
be sure to check out our full courses
@theanalystacademy.com.
All right, so here we have our slide
and like I mentioned, it's from a presentation
on consumer privacy in retail.
And this particular slide is talking about
compliance costs in consumer businesses.
The title says consumer businesses may have historically
had lower compliance costs than other major industries;
however, privacy regulations
will likely change that dynamic.
And so far I like what I see,
the title is the most important part of any slide.
And I can see that this title is a full sentence
like it should be
and it provides a nice summary of the slide.
If you've seen my other slide breakdowns,
you know that I talk about this point quite a bit,
which is that the title of your slide
should provide a summary of the main points of the slide
so that the audience can understand
what you're trying to tell them
as quickly and as effortlessly.
So that the audience can understand
what you're trying to tell them
as quickly and as effortlessly as possible.
(notification chimes)
And the other reason is that you want them
to have the information they need
to process the rest of the details on the slide
in the way you want them to.
Notice how the title has the largest font
of all the texts on the slide.
And this is because that's what they want you to see first.
They want you to get the main idea,
then go into the details of the slide to find support
for the main idea.
The concept behind this is the pyramid principle
which is really just a way of communicating
where you start with your main idea first,
then go into the details.
Which is exactly what's happening here
when we read the summarizing title first,
then read through the rest of the slide.
We actually did a full video explaining
the pyramid principle and why it matters.
So if that's new to you, be sure to check that out.
I'll include links in the description below.
The slide is essentially broken out into two parts.
This part on the left that shows compliance costs
for each industry,
and a list of regulatory compliance requirements
on the right.
And the whole idea of the slide
is to connect these two charts
and essentially make the point that despite
compliance costs being low for retail,
which we can see in the chart on the left,
the difficulty of data privacy regulations
are going to affect the retail industry.
And what they've done really well is connect
these two charts together.
First of all, they have this box of text
in the middle that very clearly spells out the connection.
And this is a great principle to follow in general,
which is that you don't wanna make any assumptions
about what your audience understands
about the data and its connection to your message.
You wanna clearly explain as many things as possible
and make it easy for them to grasp the insights.
Will a smart person being able to understand that
consumer privacy laws are directly applicable to retail?
Yes, especially someone that already
has an interest in the topic
and is reading your slides,
but with so much information coming at them all at once,
your audience will need as much help as possible
if you want them to understand and more importantly
be persuaded by your message.
Then the second thing that they've done well here is
the color connection.
Notice how the color of this pyramid matches
the color of this top bar.
This is very subtle, but it definitely makes a difference
in helping the audience see
how these two data points are connected.
I also like how with this bar chart on the right
they only colorize the important bar
and left the rest of them, this light blue color.
So they don't stand out as much.
Again, this helps direct my attention
to the parts of the slide that matter most
and away from the supporting details.
I would have liked to see the same thing
on this chart here on the left,
with the main pyramid staying the blue color,
but the other colors both being something more neutral
and less eye catching.
For example, if they were both the same color
as these other bars on the bar chart,
I think it would have helped to focus the attention
of the slide, more on the data points that matter most.
The retail pyramid and the top bar of the bar chart.
Another thing that's interesting about these two charts
is the choice of titles.
Notice how they explain what's in the chart
but they don't call attention to the actual insight.
For example, on the left here,
the title of this chart is,
average compliance cost by industry
which just tells me the type of information that's in there.
But there's nothing that says
what they want me to get out of the chart.
For example, it could instead say something like,
compliance costs for the retail industry are low.
That way I don't need to make my own interpretation
of the data.
I get the takeaway that they want me to get.
And this is something that consulting firms
usually do pretty well,
rather than leaving me to find the insights myself,
they spell it out for me really clearly.
So it's not how I would have personally titled this chart
but there's a couple of reasons why it still works here.
The first is that both charts are pretty simple
especially this chart on the left,
there's not a whole lot of interpretation
that needs to happen.
The data is pretty straightforward.
Then the second reason is that the insight
is very clearly spelled out in the slide title,
which I talked about at the beginning of the video.
Another thing about this slide
that's important to notice is the use of icons down here.
This is a small design choice
but I think it's effective.
Rather than just using simple titles,
they've added visual depictions of the industry
to make it that much easier to understand them quickly.
Anyone who reads the words healthcare knows what that means
but having a small and subtle icon
will just make it that much easier to grasp quickly.
And again, remember your goal is to make it as easy
as possible for your audience to process
and understand the information on the slide.
So small stuff like this really makes a difference.
Then one final thing I have to address is,
the choice to use pyramids here
instead of regular columns.
It's a little unconventional
and I can't say it really adds to the slide,
but here's why it works.
There's only three columns
and they're all very clearly different sizes.
When you change the shape of a standard chart
you run the risk of making it harder
to compare the categories,
but in this case, it's not hard at all.
Plus the precise differences here
don't really matter anyway,
what's important is just the relative size
of the retail category.
They're just trying to show that it's small.
So having it be a different shape, isn't a huge deal.
It's really just about aesthetics.
Again, it's not my favorite choice.
I think regular columns could have looked nicer
but it doesn't hurt the readability of the slide.
All right, that's gonna do it for today's breakdown.
I hope you found it helpful.
If you're interested in more stuff like this
be sure to stay connected with us here on YouTube
or on some of our other social media channels.
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and you can find links for all those
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And if you're really serious about learning
how to build high quality presentations,
make sure you visit us @theanalystacademy.com.
We've got lots of great stuff there
including some free downloads
like our top 50 PowerPoint shortcuts cheat sheet.
So be sure to check that out.
If you're interested again, links in the description below.
Thanks again for watching today.
Be sure to check out this next video
that's all about different PowerPoint hacks
that are really gonna level up your slide building skills.
It's a fantastic video and I know you'll enjoy it.
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