EMC commissioned the Privacy Index as a piece of original research — a 15-country, 15,000-respondent survey on attitudes toward data privacy, conducted by Vanson Bourne. The brief was to turn the headline findings into a global infographic plus a series of country-specific supporting pieces, all working as social shares and as embeds in the trade press coverage EMC’s PR team would seed.
The conceptual hook the survey surfaced — a paradox between consumers saying they cared about privacy and their actual willingness to trade it for free services — became the spine of the design. We built a left-vs-right comparison structure (“What people say” vs “What people do”), with the gap between the two columns visualised at country level on a sortable global ranking.
What worked editorially
- The say-vs-do framing translated directly into the press headlines that quoted the research — the visualisation gave journalists a ready-made angle.
- Country-level breakouts let EMC’s regional comms teams localise the story without commissioning new design work each time.
- Source attribution on every chart was non-negotiable for a research-backed piece — EMC’s research team needed every figure to be defensible.
If you’re commissioning similar work today
Research-led infographics need studios who can both design and participate in the editorial framing of the data. The combination is rarer than it sounds. Browse our enterprise IT studios or get matched with research-experienced partners.