If you’re looking for a sample report with mixed text and graphics, “PwC’s 26th Annual Global CEO Survey: Winning today’s race while running tomorrow’s” is a good one for students to analyze. With open access, the report is designed as a webpage built around survey questions. Here are a few points to explore with business communication students:

Audience Analysis and Communication Objectives: As a public document, the report provides information for business leaders, but the primary objective is to market PwC’s work. The report starts with a hook: “Evolve or die, say 4,410 chief executives in our 2023 CEO Survey. But are they spending enough time on business reinvention? Many tell us no.” In other words, hire PwC to help you survive.

Organization: The introductory paragraph follows classic business writing principles: convey the main point (the conclusion or recommendation) and preview up front. The organization is clear in the last paragraph: “We’ve organised this year’s survey summary into nine tough questions—which naturally fall into three groups—about what it takes to operate in our dual-imperative world.” However, the sequence of groups and questions within them don’t follow a logic I can follow.

Writing Style: As expected for this type of report, the tone reflects a strong sense of urgency (“The race for the future”). Still, I find myself tripping over some sentences, like this one:

Last year’s optimism, reflecting hope that economic conditions would continue improving as the global pandemic eased, was dashed in 2022 by shocks such as Europe’s largest land war since World War II, knock-on effects like surging energy and commodity prices, and accelerating general wage and price inflation.

“Dashed,” “shocks,” “knock-on effects,” “surging,” “accelerating”—that’s a lot to take. Students also might have fun omitting extraneous words, for example, “Last year’s optimism, reflecting hope . . .”

Graphics: Of about 15 charts in the report, only one is a line chart. The other are rather traditional versions of bar and column charts but offer lessons in choosing stacked and other formats—ways to incorporate multiple data points.

Site Functionality: Report navigation is clear with the organizational structure in table format, shown above, and right-side mouse-over links. You might consider a report assignment that includes bookmarks within Word documents or PDFs that students can create easily. The downloadable graphics are a nice touch. Users get pages—with the PwC logo, of course—they can slip into any deck.

You’ll find other lessons in the report. Overall, it’s a good example of clear content, but, for me, the marketing purpose overshadows the message.