Data Visualization: Because Talking About Wedding Garbage is Hard to Make Exciting
Why Should I Care About Data Visualization? Great question.
It turns out weddings produce a lot of trash. Like, a lot. No one knows this better than Paige McQuillan, founder of Paige Events. Paige has dedicated her Bay Area event planning company to being eco-conscious, always opting in for the least eco-harmful sourcing options. After realizing the footprint the weddings and events she worked at left on our earth, Paige “[searched far and wide to find like-minded partners to produce a smaller footprint].”
As Paige continues to run her eco-conscious wedding planning company, she has taken strides towards communicating the environmental implications of weddings to her clients in one unique way. Paige has utilized two different forums to communicate data visualization, which help clients be more aware of how she wants to protect the planet.
Through an informative pie chart on her “Purpose” page, to an eye-catching infographic on her Instagram, Paige has not only established her brand identity, but made the otherwise subdued topic of wedding waste that much more interesting.
An organization, like Paige Events, utilizes data visualization rather than spewing tons of words and paragraphs at their clients and partners in order to establish themselves in two parts. The first part is being able to make it clear to their clients and partners that they are aware of the information they are putting out, they care about the purpose the information is trying to inform about, and the data is relevant to how their business is ran.
The second part of why Paige might use something like data visualization is to help her clients understand why and how wedding waste is a legitimate source of sustainability concern. It is unknown whether all of Paige’s clients care about wedding sustainability, but this type of visualization encourages her clients to consider the different options they can take throughout their planning processes. Data visualization, in this context, helps clients understand that their wedding, although an important and joyous event, will have global impact.
From a PR standpoint, this is genius. This sort of data visualization, that I’m going to dive into further, is a great example of strategic communication. Paige is dedicated to being an environmentally friendly event planner. It is a part of her brand image, and a part of her ethical criteria as a wedding industry professional. Paige Events uses this strategic communication to send the message out about their values and catch the attention of their audience — green-friendly couples.
Enough jib-jab, let’s analyze the infographic and data visualization Paige has utilized and consider the ways you can incorporate this kind of strategizing into your planning company.
Sharing Through Instagram
A few weeks ago I did a blog about 5 innovative event-related sustainable businesses — and one of them was Botanical Paperworks. The seed-paper invitations and stationery company has made their own global impact by encouraging their clients to choose plantable paper options. I love the idea of your guests planting their invitations and watching a plant grow from them.
Paige Events re-shared Botanical Paperworks’ collaborative infographic back in 2019 (linked above). The organization paired up with the eco-friendly wedding book, The Green Bride Guide, to encourage clients to consider the effects of wedding waste and how to choose more eco-conscious wedding options.
Paige Events utilized this shared infographic from Botanical Paperworks to express the strategic sustainability message of waste awareness to her own audience. By sharing this infographic by Botanical Paperworks, a much larger and more followed company, Paige Events is sending the message that they are in tune with relevant wedding companies and adhere to the same data information changing the industry. Although the graphic was not originally sourced by Paige Events, the infographic was tailored to a component of the industry that the company has aimed to shape themselves around — making their use of the post just as impactful.
Why This Infographic (Almost) Works
Talking about wedding waste is not a necessarily fun topic. It’s not a topic that you or a client might take the time to read pages upon pages about. However, for Paige Events and other sustainably-minded planners, this topic is extremely important. This is where an infographic comes in. The couple that might be scrolling through your page getting information about what kind of events you plan and your values could easily stop scrolling when spotting an infographic like this.
What works well about this infographic is its colors, information, and visual reaction. The colors utilized in this post relate back to strategic communication as they reflect the Botanical PaperWorks corporate colors — and blend in nicely with the hues of Paige Events’ Instagram aesthetic.
But design is not the most important part, the information is. The data shared through this infographic offers relevant information about the realities of wedding waste to clients and partners alike. My eyes were immediately drawn to that 400 pounds of garbage and then immediately shifted over to how much carbon is produced. As a client, I would find it surprising that more than 1 billion pounds of trash are gathered from weddings alone. The information within the infographic is not only relevant but helpful.
The only thing I would say is missing from this infographic is a call to action. Although taken from another source, Paige Events does not shape the post or information to relate back to how they actually work against these issues. The rest of this Instagram post does offer ways for having a more eco-friendly wedding, but does not tie in the company — losing a valuable strategic messaging opportunity.
For a sustainable wedding planner, like Paige Events, having a CTA for information like this encourages a client to seek out your company specifically. It also drives the message that your company works to actively counteract these unsettling statistics — not just inform about them.
Sharing Through Her Website
While the “Purpose” page could have offered a long-winded response about the different percentages of waste impact from weddings, it didn’t. And that’s a great thing! Paige Events has wisely chosen a visually appealing pie chart graphic that sends the message in a quicker and more cohesive way.
From the moment that I opened up this page, my eyes were immediately drawn to the pie chart. This is exactly the kind of response you would want from a client navigating through your site — especially when you have important data to share.
Upon further reading, I discovered that this pie chart infographic works to explain the makeup of garbage left from weddings. A client navigating through the Page Events website would be able to see this chart and then be able to determine how every single piece of material at a wedding is counted for when you consider our global footprint. Whether this given client is hyper-aware of sustainability or not, the numerical data is laid out in a way that at the very least informs the client about the different types of sustainable awarenesses you have implemented into your company practices.
Why This Infographic (Almost) Works
The data collected to make up this pie chart is incredibly relevant. I personally had no idea that all of these different sub-groups accounted for such varying results in wedding waste production. I found that being able to visually see the different kinds of percentages that make up for wedding waste is helpful for understanding how significant cutting out just one of these groups could be for lessening one’s wedding footprint.
One thing I didn’t like about this data visualization is that there is no header or title to give me any sort of sense for what this is specifically addressing. While the informational summary on the site explains how the company is committed to sustainability, I had to work out what these numbers all related back to.
What we can take away from this infographic is that the relevant yet complicated data, that a customer might not have the willingness or ability to understand, can be transcribed in a more simplistic and cohesive way. However, it is important to consider that numbers on a pie chart won’t exactly explain what a customer needs to know. Being as detailed as possible and explaining all of the information within an infographic to the best of one’s ability helps a customer understand the complicated information that much more simply.
Data In Action
When using data visualization and strategic communication, your actions actually have to follow through. As a company or brand, it is important to consider how impactful your shared data just might be. To post or otherwise produce data visualization means that you accept and acknowledge the ethics and information inside that content. No one likes to see performative activism.
No need to worry about Paige Events following through though, they’ve successfully nailed this part of the job. While Paige Events’ Instagram and website offer different types of data visualizations, they also show the data in action by posting photos of events where Paige specifically worked to cut waste in all the ways that she could.
In this particular wedding that I stumbled upon (linked above), I found no single-use plastic or products, no over-assortment of flowers that contribute to waste, and overall a sense of simplicity that ties back into Paige Events’ purpose. It’s just as she promised.
The beauty of data visualization? You can persuade your audience towards whatever you’d like the communicate with the right data. Would you consider using data visualization on your sites or socials? I’m curious to know. Send me a message from the chat box to your right to tell me more. More to come next week, so stay tuned!
XOXO,
Thalia
