Decluttering and mapping in ggplot

Dr. Nathaniel Cline

Agenda

1

Narrative Models

2

Examples

3

Your Turn

Narrative Models in the Business context

  • Using a conscious narrative structure adds quite a bit to your communication

    • embeds in memory

    • builds energy

  • We’ve introduced narrative models before and have said there are tons

    - you should absolutely take a creative fiction/non-fiction course!

A possible model

Steps to building the arc

  1. The big idea (the “ah-ha” moment)

  2. The tension ignited by the hook

  3. Finding the rising insights

  4. Solution and next steps

Example: Product Pricing

Progression

  • Set the plot

  • Tension built when products C,D,E significantly undercut existing price points at their launches

  • Restored a sense of balance when prices converged

  • End with a rec for pricing

  • All with a single visual

Another Example: Back to school shopping

Scenario

  • You are an analyst working at a national retailer.

  • You’ve just conducted a survey from the recent back-to-school shopping season.

    • people enjoy the overall experience of shopping in your store and they have positive brand association.

    • but inconsistencies in the service levels that customers are reporting across your stores.

    • Your team has brainstormed solutions to this and wants to put forth a specific recommendation to the Head of Retail: sales associate training should be developed and rolled out to create shared understanding of what good service looks like to provide consistent exemplary customer service.

Example: Back to school opportunity, Audience

  • Audience

    • the executive team, the head of retail
    • they care about having a profitable back to school shopping season, making customers happy, and beating competition
    • they need to agree that training is the right way to deal with inconsistent service, and approve the resources to train

Example: Back to school opportunity, At Stake

  • What is at stake?

    • benefits include better service levels and happier customers, repeat visits and new customers

    • risks of no action could be bad word-of-mouth, losing to competitors, lost revenue

Example: Back to school opportunity, Big Idea

  • Form your big idea

    • Let’s invest in sales associate training to improve the in-store shopping experience and make the upcoming back-to-school season the best revenue generating one yet

Topics to include?

  • Historical context

  • Problem we are trying to solve (maybe not data driven in the past?)

  • Different ways we thought about solving the problem

  • Course of action we undertook: survey

  • Survey customer groups

  • Survey details on competitors

  • Survey questions saked, dates

  • Data: how our store compares

  • Data: how this breaks down across stores and regions

  • Good news: where we are doing best

  • Bad news: where we are doing worse

  • Areas for improvement

  • Potential remedies

  • Reccomended investment in sales training

  • Resources needed

  • What this will solve

  • Project timeline

  • Discussions to have

Storyboard

Points of tension?

  • what are the points of tension here?

  • clearly the inconsistency in service levels

  • but how would we fit this into a narrative arc?

Putting into an arc

Putting it together

  • we’ve got a sense of the story

  • we know we need to walk them through the story in a meeting - what tools will we use?

  • what about after the meeting?

Your turn

Your turn

Your group should produce:

  • big idea

  • key elements/storyboard

  • A potential narrative arc

    • hook
    • rising action
    • ah-ha
    • declining action
    • resolution

Econ 255 - Data Storytelling