Goodbye PowerPoint, hello infographic - the Oracle approach
- Summary:
- A good infographic can have a significant impact upon a company's ability to tell a compelling story. Oracle provides a useful example.
The other day I was running some analytics and discovered that over the last year, Oracle's most popular publicly available content type is the infographic. That was a shock to me because you'd think that as a highly technical company with a strong database community, Oracle would more likely have written content as its most popular content type. Coincidentally, I was talking to a vendor colleague about the kinds of presentation that senior and C-level executives prefer these days. The message was clear, no X-slide deck PowerPoints but a single page infographic. If possible.
I went back to see what kinds of collateral Oracle has lying around, where it's going and whether it makes sense. The last bit, 'sense making' is important to me. While I have seen many beautiful infographics, they're often so over engineered and tightly packed that I find myself swamped with information and switching off. In Oracle's case, I found that many of the examples are well executed. What makes an infographic work, at least for me?
- Address one topic that while likely complex, can be readily broken down
- Demonstrate the what, why and how of a solution in bite sized chunks
- Show a clear logic to the topic such that I can work out the discussion points without having to worry about additional explanations
- Relevant facts only, not throwing the kitchen sink at a topic
- Understated graphics that please they eye
- Ideally, pack it all into one screen but it's OK to scroll once
Viewing different examples, Oracle has not templated a fixed design as is normally the case with PowerPoint, but has worked out the main component parts to meet anticipated reader's need in each infographic. In short, the company has solid creative design skills that support the messaging in each infographic. You can get a sense of that by poring over the company's UK Pinterest page of which I took a snapshot, shown at the top of this story.
As I was looking through various sources, I quickly discovered that Oracle attacks the distribution in novel ways. The company's UK Pinterest wall has a modest 1.5K followers. You might think that 1,500 or thereabouts is tiny number for a global company but then remember we're not talking about meeting the detailed needs of folk inside the decision chain. We're talking about making an impact on people who's time is often ridiculously constrained such that a conversation can get started.
Pinterest is a useful resource because it allows content amplification to Twitter, Facebook and via email.
Next, I noticed that Oracle makes extensive use of large scale distribution platforms in an effort to reach the widest possible audience. In media circles, we get why large companies would play content in the FT, WSJ or even Forbes, even though we might well question the value of those placements for a variety ofd reasons, not least the obvious pay to play issue that exists in some parts of the media. But it is hard to question placing an infographic because these have to be effective across multiple dimensions.
Oracle has a library of infographics although I found that to be somewhat lacking. Perhaps they need to do some work with organizing the Oracle.com assets and with Google.
Oracle is not the only company doing this. For example, I saw some fascinating examples from Tableau. Check this on the business of influence. But from what I can tell having flicked through a dozen or so companies searches, Oracle has the most methodical approach to this topic. As such, it provides a useful vignette into the topic of what content works, but equally provides insights into how that is executed upon.
I guess we now need to hire a good graphic designer capable of distilling random thoughts!
Disclosure: Oracle is a premier partner at time of writing