The Economist Showcases the Anecdote as an Art Form
I’m a big fan of The Economist.
The writers have perfected storytelling for a business audience.
Of course, the writers toil in relative obscurity with a no-byline policy that leaves readers to wonder “Who the hell wrote that piece?”
So I can’t tell you who penned the masterpiece called “A Different Game,” addressing data storage in the context of business intelligence (or BI for those acronymiaks) and data mining.
Not exactly a topic that quickens the pulse.
But look at how The Economist jumps into the story:
In 1879 James Ritty, a saloon-keeper in Dayton, Ohio, received a patent for a wooden contraption that he dubbed the “incorruptible cashier”. With a set of buttons and a loud bell, the device, sold by National Cash Register (NCR), was little more than a simple adding machine. Yet as an early form of managing information flows in American business the cash register had a huge impact. It not only reduced pilferage by alerting the shopkeeper when the till was opened; by recording every transaction, it also provided an instant overview of what was happening in the business.
What a terrific anecdote.
I always wondered why cash registers had bells.
Also enjoy the way the reader is left to connect the dots that Mr. Ritty’s employees were stealing him blind.
After pulling in the reader with the Dodge City history, the story fast-forwards to today:
Sales data remain one of a company’s most important assets. In 2004 Wal-Mart peered into its mammoth databases and noticed that before a hurricane struck, there was a run on flashlights and batteries, as might be expected; but also on Pop-Tarts, a sugary American breakfast snack. On reflection it is clear that the snack would be a handy thing to eat in a blackout, but the retailer would not have thought to stock up on it before a storm. The company whose system crunched Wal-Mart’s numbers was none other than NCR and its data-warehousing unit, Teradata, now an independent firm.
I believe we have a sighting of symmetrical anecdotes.
But do we really need a definition of a Pop-Tart?
For the powers that be at The Economist, I can assure you that your readers - even those who sip sherry with an upright pinkie - know what a Pop-Tart is.
Furthermore, characterizing the Pop-Tart as “sugary” is a cheap shot. A little homework would have revealed flavors such strawberry are now made with “real fruit” and only 17 grams of sugar. Geez, a fuji apple rings in with the same 17 grams of sugar.
On the positive side, using Pop-Tarts as a bridge to explaining the benefits derived from business intelligence resonates:
Analytics—performing statistical operations for forecasting or uncovering correlations such as between Pop-Tarts and hurricanes—can have a big pay-off.
To gain a true appreciation for The Economist’s storytelling, check out a trade book’s story on business intelligence in which lines such as:
“For sure, BI analytic apps and dashboards are hotter than a recent Tiger Woods photograph.”
serve as “colorful” fodder.
The Economist piece goes on to share how heavyweights ranging from Nestlé to Wal-Mart to Li & Fung have got the sift-data religion before closing with one final quantifiable burst:
Visa, a credit-card company, in a recent trial with Hadoop crunched two years of test records, or 73 billion transactions, amounting to 36 terabytes of data. The processing time fell from one month with traditional methods to a mere 13 minutes. It is a striking successor of Ritty’s incorruptible cashier for a data-driven age.
Naturally, the story concludes with the “incorruptible cashier.”
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Revisiting the All-important Anecdote
The latest issue of BusinessWeek ran a piece called “The Leaner Baby Boomer Economy”
In short, the story looks at how major brands like Starwood Hotels and Mercedes are responding to baby boomers cutting back on their discretionary spending.
Like all compelling storytelling, the writer David Welch makes good use of anecdotes.
For example, he highlights clothing designer Vera Wang with the following insight:
“In one instance, Wang made a high-end dress using fabric that costs $5 a yard instead of $12 but used the fabric in several layers to give the garment a richer look.”
Is Wang worried that her customers will learn that she’s using a cheaper fabric?
No.
Because she has confidence in the end product and a value proposition that aligns with today’s consumer climate.
In the world of technology, companies often hesitate to share this type of information, rationalizing that it would hurt their business if known to the competition. But Wang isn’t worried about divulging proprietary company information because she recognizes the real secret lies in the how (execution), not in the what (multi-layer approach with the fabric).
A second anecdote and my personal favorite comes from Mercedes:
“Mercedes has quietly recruited 500 people aged 20 to 32 for a focus group it calls Generation Benz. Mercedes researchers are seeking their views on the economy, car ads, model designs, and more. The automaker sent 20 Generation Benzers into dealerships wearing flip-flops and other casual attire to see how much attention they received. Four of the 20 were ignored. The results, says Steve Cannon, vice-president for marketing, served as a wake-up call to Mercedes dealers.”
At first blush, this information could be interpreted as a negative hit on Mercedes; i.e., if you’re not dressed “right” you get ignored in Mercedes dealerships.
Instead, Mercedes shows transparency in learning from its mistakes which in turn makes for a good story. Plus the car maker recognizes that a) no company is perfect, so sharing a “blemish” is OK, and b) the bigger message, “we listen” comes through.
As shared in an earlier post The Enigma of Business Journalism, The Economist we analyzed the tech-related articles in The Economist, covering the April through November 2008 issues. Seventeen percent of the content fell under the anecdotal umbrella.
Kudos to the Mercedes PR department which I suspect proactively dug out the Generation Benzers anecdotes and made them available to the reporter. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Welch covers the auto industry so he interacts with Mercedes on a regular basis.
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The Engima of Business Journalism, The Economist
Cloaked with a veneer of secrecy that leaves readers to wonder “Who the hell wrote that article?” The Economist takes pride in baffling the garden-variety PR person.
Its editorial decisions can at times seem quirky for the sake of being quirky. I mean, do we really need 499 words devoted to ornithology and a bio-acoustic monitor that can distinguish the chirps from 110,000 species of birds from the hiss of a snake?
Yet, contrary to popular belief, this is not some niche publication only serving the British intellectualazzi. Its readership tips 1.3 million with about half of those copies ending up on American doorsteps.
For this very reason, when we supported the announcement of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk a few years ago, we zeroed in on The Economist to tell the in-depth story. It didn’t hurt that our homework revealed that Economist technology editor Tom Standage had penned a book that also took liberties with the same topic, “The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine.”
But more than serendipity, our continued success with The Economist comes down to building the right content that aligns with the book’s approach to storytelling. I touched on the importance of anecdotes using one example from The Economist back in July.
Taking this a step further, we analyzed the tech-related articles (list of articles included at the end of this post) in The Economist, covering the April through November 2008 issues.
Seventeen percent of the content fell under the anecdotal umbrella.
It just goes to show that even high-brow business journalism depends on the amusing, provocative or downright weird to keep the reader’s interest.
Economist Articles Analyzed:
November 14, 2008
November 5, 2008
October 29, 2008
October 22, 2008
October 15, 2008
October 8, 2008
October 1, 2008
September 24, 2008
September 17, 2008
September 10, 2008
September 2, 2008
August 27, 2008
August 20, 2008
August 12, 2008
August 5, 2008
July 30, 2008
July 23, 2008
July 16, 2008
July 9, 2008
July 2, 2008
June 18, 2008
June 11, 2008
June 4, 2008
The FAST track to better health
May 28, 2008
May 21, 2008
May 14, 2008
May 7, 2008
April 30, 2008
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