Vi har fått en pratstund med statistikföretaget Statista som växer snabbt i Europa. Vi hade faktiskt en intervju med dem redan i slutet av förra året så nu kände vi att det var dags att kolla läget och se vad som hänt under året. Följ med på en spännande resa i statistikens värld där tillväxt är en stark variabel.
Läs också: Statista ska erövra Sverige med sina tjänster
We talked to you, Robin, and your colleague Peter about Statista in October 2015. What has changed since then and where has the journey gone so far?
The western countries in Europe are really starting to incorporate market data and statistics into the way they work. We see this in our own growth rate: we’ve grown by another 55% since October 2015.
More and more companies, organisations, and governments, as well as the academic sector, are grasping the necessity and benefit of underpinning campaigns and strategic decisions with numbers and data. Nordic clients like Handelshögskolan, MAERSK, Stockholm University and Kauppalehti have come on board too.
In addition, there is now a Scandinavian editorial board working at Statista in Hamburg, consisting of 6 data journalists who focus on the Scandinavian regions specifically and who feed the platform with new data, studies, infographics, forecasts, etc. on a daily basis. Moreover, we are currently internationalising our Content Marketing & Infographics department.
Why did you choose to dedicate a whole department to infographics and how do you understand Content Marketing at Statista?
Well, offering the Statista platform as a worldwide business intelligence portal was always the focus of our business model. Then around three years ago, we asked ourselves, “Why not build something creative out of our data?”
We have access to 18,000 sources worldwide and upload 400-600 market data sets daily, so we are sitting on a literal mountain of data and numbers. That’s when we launched the infographic service in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. We separated a team of editors, graphic designers and project managers from the core business.
Essentially, we launched a creative agency. Now, seeing the success of this department, it is my job to internationalise this department and build a whole new international team.
Can you share any figures on the effectiveness and click rates of visualised data, such as infographics?
We are convinced that infographics, compared to other marketing formats, are easier to understand, easier to remember, more likely to be read and an asset for your Google ranking.
Consider this: 90% of the information our brain receives is transmitted visually and we process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. Studies show that website visitors only read 20% of text on a given web page. And humans remember 80% of what they see and do compared to only 20% of what they read.
I believe these are strong figures, especially when you consider that in 2015 researchers in the US found that the average adult’s attention span nowadays lies at around 8 seconds – 4 seconds less than in the year 2000. This is actually 1 second less than the attention span of a goldfish. This is a “darwinesque” survival of the fittest on the digital communication speedway!
Can you share a couple of examples of how companies have used “Content” and infographics for their Marketing Strategy?
Of course there are role models who got the idea right and “lazy ones” who struggle. One of my favourite examples, which really demonstrates how data visualisation can reduce complexity, is a microsite-like infographic page that Statista built for Deloitte – we compressed 250 pages into dynamic, interactive, easy-to-understand one-pagers.
Data and numbers provide great opportunities to play with marketing messages or corporate communication campaigns. Take the below example and imagine a Scandinavian cleaning start-up would create this infographic with a message like, “The Nordics might be most expensive for room service, but our rates are hard to beat when it comes to cleaning up the mess.”
All in all, I would like to see more B2B companies have the courage to step into the field of Content Marketing, as the messages, data and storytelling opportunities are endless.
In the last decade especially, we’ve observed a huge step from print to digital. Where do you see content marketing and data visualisation in the next decade? How do you think the industry will change?
I think both the beauty and challenge in this field is that change is the only constant. Who knows how we might include market data or infographics into virtual reality or applications like wearables in the next few years?
I also expect individualisation and interactivity to become stronger. I can imagine that on a technical level infographics will be able to react more and more based on your click-history and personalise their messages based on your browsing history.
Equally, I believe that we will see a further merging of text, image and video within data visualisation projects.
Any particularly random projects you’ve run so far?
Good question. An infographic on the “World Orgasm day” for the German start-up Amorelie certainly made us all smile. “Coffee in numbers” for Tchibo and a Giant Chart about the future job of “Data Scientist” were highlights, too.
On a last note: any topics you’d love to make an infographic on?
Two ideas I had lately that I believe are worth visualizing: “Possible life on Mars in numbers” or “The upside of the refugee crisis – economic impact visualized” (e.g. for a political think tank). We’re always happy to run projects and topics that haven’t been done before!