Insider Intelligence calls itself “the leading research, data, and insights provider.” But the main insight they provided last week was about the importance of following the Data Story Mandate.
The company promised readers its January 18, 2024 Chart of the Day would offer insights into what “worldwide” retail executives think about customer experience. And in case you missed it, Insider repeated that claim three times: In the email title, the chart title, and the descriptive copy.
The problem? This data is far from “worldwide.” If you follow the asterisk in the chart title you’ll see this survey covered just three countries: Canada, the UK, and the US. Important as those countries may be, in 2020 they accounted for just 30% of global GDP and only 6% of the global population.
The Data Story Mandate tell us “first and foremost, ensure your data copy is credible, relevant, and factual.” This data story fails on the second count: Insider used data that wasn’t specifically relevant to its copy, and so made statements the data can’t support.
I’m glad Insider put an asterisk in the chart. But they know most readers will ignore it, or copy and paste the incorrect statement from the un-asterisked text. And in case you’re wondering if Insider simply repeated this error from the original source, I haven’t seen Bain & Company claim the data is global.
The solution? Describe the data correctly, of course. If you want to tell a story about global data, you need to find global data. Insider knows how: Their recent Chart of the Day about AI in shopping also promotes “worldwide” insights — but this time the source data actually covers 26 countries.
But if this is the only data Insider could find, they should have made statements about “US, UK, and Canadian retail executives.” They could even describe “retail executives in key countries” (ideally including the list of countries in both the chart and the text.) But by passing this data off as “worldwide,” they’ve misinformed their readers and told and incorrect story.
What’s the best or worst data copy you’ve seen lately? Post it in the comments below or on LinkedIn. And if you want good data delivered to your inbox, subscribe here.