The Springbok Story

Financial Storytelling

In Jaws, the shark doesn’t appear until two-thirds into the film. The mechanical model kept breaking down, so Spielberg had to improvise. Instead of showing the shark, he created the sense of it lurking beneath the surface. What you couldn’t see had far more impact than what you could.

As Gaping Void puts it in their article The Art of Saying Less: "It’s what goes unsaid that’s interesting. The gaps people fill in themselves make a message powerful."

Financial storytelling works the same way. You don’t need to show everything or spell it out. Give your audience space to connect the dots—and your message will land stronger.

The Story Behind the Visual

After South Africa’s 16-point loss to Australia in the Rugby Championship on 16 August, that’s all anyone talked about. No need to spell it out—everyone knew. But there’s more to the story if you let the audience fill in the gaps. That’s why I created a visual that highlights the story, not every detail.

About the Data

Source: Wikipedia for Rugby results and Flagpedia for the Flag images

The Visual

Visual type: I first tried a 2D bar chart, but the axes made it difficult to include both the country and the match date. Instead, I used the REPT formula to build a 2D bar chart equivalent.
Download a free toolkit on how to create a lollipop chart with the REPT formula here

Why it works: I can organise the data like a table—without it feeling like one.

Visual Tip: I used the IMAGE function to add each country’s flag (available in Excel 365 or Excel for the web). I first tried Geography data types, but since it grouped Wales and Scotland under the UK, it returned the wrong flag—so IMAGE was the better choice.

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