Recently found the site Information is Beautiful, and was amazed at the sheer beauty of otherwise boring and depressing information.

Data points by themselves are pretty dull, and don't tell you a lot. (You sold 1,000 gadgets through your site yesterday — is that good or bad? Who knows. Depends on what you did last year, your costs, etc.)

The larger picture requires perspective, but even that's not quite enough. A set of numbers isn't convincing by itself; it's just a lot of data points instead of one.

Pulled together correctly, though, even very boring information can be made to sparkle.

The author of Information is Beautiful takes information which would be hard work to summarize and absorb, and puts it into formats which show connections and set up the mental framework for comparisons. And then conclusions (correct or incorrect) start clamoring into the mind.

A recent post was about the gender balance on social networks. Interesting from an audience perspective (who are they reaching? who's really active?), but also fascinating as the author laid over the data assumptions about dominance and worldview. (Specifically, not "female trending" but matriarchy, or equality, or patriarchy, which is a bit provocative.)

(Side note: Another wonderful, and much linked, graphical representation of data is Indeed.com's ratio of job seekers to open jobs.)

There are obvious applications of all this for marketers — how's your pricing page looking? your next slideshow in front of the board?

Data is boring; presentation can be interesting.

Awhile ago, I met some friends in Ghiradelli Square. They hadn't been out to San Francisco for awhile and so underestimated the traffic. I had time to kill. If you've ever visited the Square, you know there's not much there. I ended up reading the ads (which I'm inclined to do anyway).

One caught my eye for a Ghiradelli Sunday which featured a big image of a hot fudge sunday (which is good — it looked appetizing) accompanied with the text:

"Now, 33% more fudge!"

Ummm.... Really?

What consumer says to herself, 'Well, I wasn't going to get an ice cream but since there's 33% more fudge, I'm going to rush right out, stand in line, fight for a table and have one!'

No one needs an ice cream; people usually buy ice cream emotionally, especially in a tourist spot (i.e., 'Ice cream's not really good for me, but I'm on vacation so I feel self indulgent.')

Mixing in an analytical appeal (33% more!) kicks in the wrong part of the brain. The part of the brain that reviews choices rationally, worries about calories and what's already been eaten on the trip, analyzes the price and how much the trip is costing, and generally moves the consumer into the wrong mental state.

An emotional appeal based on 'stopping and smelling the roses' or 'enjoying an authentic San Francisco tradition' would have worked better with this audience and kept people in the right state of mind.