At the end of 2021, McKinsey wound up coverage of business, economies, COVID-19, and the historic talent crisis with a year in review. This package aimed to tell the story of the year through the lens of McKinsey Publishing, and entailed a massive collection showcasing the firm's most popular articles, reports, podcasts, videos, newsletters, webinars, and new features and experiences we launched this year. The year in charts feature was specially commissioned to offer a data-driven lens into 2021.
The Year in Charts crafts a narrative of this pandemic year out of selections from McKinsey's popular chart of the day series. This was the second year of this feature, and following last year’s success, we used new scroll and lock functionality to give this piece more visual heft and let the charts tell the bulk of the story. We also built in a narrative throughline that was echoed in the full year in review experience and related features.
Keeping in line with the positive reception we saw from 2020's Year in Charts, this piece was compelling to McKinsey readers. 2021: The Year in Charts drew about 1.7x the average traffic of a 2021 McKinsey article.
