A picture paints a thousand words .... even if its wrong
In my aggregator this morning was a blog post containing the graphics in top row of the above illustration (click image to enlarge,) being representations of how the market capitalization of a range of banks and insurance companies had shrunk. A dismal picture indeed. The comments below the blog post included a few readers howling that the circles are misleading because they are scaled according to their diameters, not their areas. So I reconstructed the circles myself, using their areas as the scale (see graphics in the second line above.) The readers are right. Not only that, but the original author of the graphics showed Citigroup (down from $255bn to $19bn) and AIG (down from $99bn to $4bn) as having the same sized "before" (grey) circles, which is doubly misleading.
The bar charts in the third line present the picture more accurately. An excellent example of how one needs to be so very careful when presenting data graphically, to ensure that the picture is accurately translated. An error in presentation can completely discredit the underlying message. Graphics in a strategic communication (or anywhere else) also need to be instantly understandable so they must be simple, unambiguous and clinically to the point.
No need to trash the firm concerned and the content of the original blog post is irellevant to the message in this one, so I haven't linked to it.