How do you teach CPR at scale? Use a well known song. The British Heart Foundation launched a campaign starring hard man Vinnie Jones, showing how simple ‘hand-only CPR’ can be, to the iconic track ‘Stayin’ Alive’, which is the correct tempo to perform chest compressions.
Making data concrete
Numbers only come to life when they are relatable.
Billions of people live in extreme poverty with almost no income, but that fact often feels too abstract to be meaningful. This prompted statistician Anna Rosling to launch Dollar Street, a project that uses photos to showcase the reality of living in poverty. Photographers have documented hundreds of homes in 50 countries so far, and in each home the photographer spends a day taking photos of up to 135 objects, everything from toothbrushes to shoes.
In 1776 James Watt needed a simple way to explain the power of his improved steam engine. So he framed it in familiar terms, claiming that one of his improved steam engines could produce enough power to replace 10 cart-pulling horses, or 10 ‘horsepower’ . In doing so he made the term a standard measure of engine power still used today.
When Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod to the world, he didn’t say: “the iPod. A 5GB MP3 player”. He said, “the iPod. 1,000 songs in your pocket.”
When Thomas Edison created the light bulb, he presented the unfamiliar technology in familiar terms. He set the power of the electric bulb at 13W – almost the same as the gas lamp – even though it was able to go brighter, and he copied the gas lamp tradition of using light shades, even though these were superfluous – their original purpose was to stop the gas flame guttering in the wind.
How do you demonstrate the thinness of a MacBook? You could say it’s only 1.8cm thick. Or, if you’re Steve Jobs, you pull it out a manila envelope.
In 1994, an American health organisation caused popcorn sales to plummet by 50%. A study had shown that a medium bag of popcorn contained 37 grams of saturated fat, so the organisation turned this abstract number into a terrifying reality; the same amount of fat as six Big Macs.
During Covid-19, the public was inundated with dates for lifting specific restrictions. To make things easy to follow, a developer created a handy timeline based on beer consumption (the number one priority for most of the UK).
In memory tests, only 6% remember a mundane fact: “160,000 trolleys are sent off to be fixed each year.” But recall triples when the same information is brought to life visually: “That’s the equivalent of 2 full Wembley Stadiums.”