This blog is an extension of my previous blog post - "Data Visualization - How to tell a story that sticks with your audience", here:  http://mmmahmood.blogspot.com/2019/05/data-visualization-how-to-tell-story.html

The Visual (aka the story):


Applying the McCandless Method - Verbalizing the Above Visual:

1) Introduction the graphic by its name (and its story)
This graphic shows the top two revenue generating movie categories in the United States. In this graphic we see that post 2000, PG-13 rated movies generated twice as much revenue as R rated movies.

2) Explain the graphic by answering your audience’s questions
The blue line represents the revenue generated by PG-13 rated movies and the gray line represents the revenue generated by R rated movies. Both movie categories are evaluated between 1990 to 2016, based on data from the IMBD 5000+ dataset.

3) State the insights your graphic produces
The key message in this graphic shows the large increase in revenue from 1990-2016 in the PG-13 rating compared to the stabilizing of revenue in R rated movies. The year range was chosen because the standardization of PG-13 became more prominent in the 1990’s. Prior, PG and R were more prominent due to a lack in standardization around movie category ratings.

4) Offer examples that support your insight
The audience should notice that in 1999 R rated films gross more revenue than PG-13. This can, in part, be attributed to the release of the Matrix. With that said, while the Matrix was technically
rated R many believe that it was mislabeled and should have been rated a PG-13 film . Had the film been rated PG-13 the spike in revenue would have continued to be in PG-13’s favor. Similarly, the audience should notice a massive spike in revenue for PG-13 in 2012. This can be attributed to, in part, the release of the Avengers.

5) Tell them why the insight matters to them 
While PG-13 and R-rated films grossed roughly the same amount until 1997, the data shows that from 2000 – 2016, PG-13 movies saw a significant increase in revenue. More than twice as much as R rated movie revenue, which stabilized after the release of the Matrix.

The difference in revenue now is significant enough that it would take the mislabeling of multiple Matrix caliber titles to close the gap in the future. Given the data, we can expect PG-13 rated films to continue to gross at least twice as much as the next highest grossing category, R rated films.