Cooperative Extension content doesn't have to be boring. We know how important visuals are in telling a story, yet we are very quick to ignore them when it comes to delivering our content. We can make statistics fun and engaging...even when we're not talking about beer.
Presented at ACE 2014 in Portland, Oregon during a five minute session. Slide notes are included.
Today I want to chat with you about a very important topic…
…Beer!
The U.S. consumed nearly 6.5 billion gallons of beer in 2012. Can you even begin to visualize how much beer that is?
That’s enough beer to fill around 9,800 Olympic swimming pools…9,800 pools full of beer.
That’s nearly 69 billion, 12oz cans of beer.
If we stacked those cans, the distance would stretch over 5.2 million miles.
That would be 11 round trips to the moon.
Or, 907 round trips between Portland and Charleston. Do you know which state consumes the most beer? Any guesses?
North Dakota. Folks in North Dakota…those of legal age of course…consumed 45.8 gallons of beer in 2012.
Here are the top 10 beer drinking states. Sorry Oregon, you are number 20.
Let’s look at these states a different way.
Your brain is wired to process this image 60,000 times faster than the text slide I just showed you. 60,000 times faster. The map is probably prompting some theorizing on your part…perhaps things you wouldn’t have noticed staring at the previous slide.
So let’s go back to North Dakota for a moment. Compared to the 6.5 billion gallons of beer the US consumes, 45.8 gallons doesn’t sound too bad. But let’s put those 45.8 gallons in perspective. 48.5 gallons is roughly…
3 kegs
1.33 cans per day, about 16 ounces
That’s 488 cans per year. Stacked, the cans would reach 196 feet…
…or a little more than the length of 2 NBA basketball courts.
Can you guess which state drinks the least amount of beer?
Utah at 20.2 gallons. Now let’s compare North Dakota and Utah.
North Dakota consumes 2.26 times more beer as Utah. Or Utah drinks 44% of what North Dakota does. Both states experienced an increase in consumption from 2011 to 2012.
Utah consumption increased by 5.28%, second only to North Dakota, which had a 9.45% increase. These increases might not sound enormous, but they amount to about 11.5 cans for Utah and 46 for North Dakota. You can also think of that as about a beer more per month in Utah and nearly four more per month for North Dakota.
So What? What does this have to do with infographics. Visual content is social-media-ready and social-media-friendly. It’s easily sharable and easily palatable.
90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. The brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text text alone.
Businesses who market with infographics grow in traffic an average of 12% more than those who don’t.
Finally, posts with visuals receive 94% more page visits and engagement than those without.
In closing, remember that at any given time, .7% of the world’s population is drunk. Cheers!
