We live in a world driven by text-based narratives with brains that are tuned for a visual experience.
About two-thirds of people claim to be visual learners. Whatever the exact percentage really is, there is plenty of evidence to support this belief.
Our growing preference is to query a search engine verbally. As of 2017, YouTube alone reports more than 1 billion hours of video watched per day. We know our brains process images in as little as 13 milliseconds, which is much faster than how we process texts or writing of any kind.
In other words, how companies communicate today is not ideal for human brains.
Creating Visual Narratives
When we write a narrative for a company or brand, we spend significant time getting the writing correct. We obsess over the words, the channels our story will appear in, who the spokesperson will be and exactly what message we will release each time. We imagine our story building momentum over time. This is great, keep it up.
What is missing, however, is arguably equally or more powerful. I think of it as the long-lost cousin of text.
Our world is filled with video, data visualization, animation, photos, slides, screenshots, comics, GIFs, charts and infographics. Many choices, but one big problem: Visual content is often viewed as an accessory to our storytelling. It may help at the moment, but it can end up creating visual noise in the marketplace.
The most powerful narratives of the future will need to combine text and visual content in new ways that cut through the clutter, impact our subconscious and enable us to reach a world with many distractions. Text and video need to be one team, not two sorts of related initiatives.
In building stories ready for today’s audience, I believe a well-done visual narrative will have at least five key components:
1. Your Anchor Image/Memory: We often remember a visual image more than text. What is the memory that we want our customers to remember about a topic, brand or company? How well are we reinforcing this visual aspect of our story?
2. How You Unlock Interest/Impact: Are we looking to create an emotional bond that could be one of excitement, surprise or even fear? What is our goal?
3. Message Alignment/Consumption: How will our customers, current or future, be introduced to the visual part of our story? Will it reinforce the exact message we are aligning it with? If they do a search and only receive visual content, will it tell just as powerful a story or just look like a bunch of cool stuff?
4. Rationale/Role: People can get burned out by too much repetition of a message. How can we use visual content to provide a much-needed break for those we are trying to reach?
5. Urgency And Timing/Comprehension: We interpret information faster visually than via written content. Depending on the circumstances, we may want to lead with visual content due to the urgency of getting an important message across.
Technology can help with this process of telling stories visually, such as new storytelling platforms like Shorthand that are built to combine visual content that can improve the reach of a story.
It’s important to ask yourself when analyzing an audience: How can you show the same story in different ways across channels (such as Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest or Forbes)? This way, you can work to reinforce your narrative rather than repeating it in the same way on each channel.
People have personalities, and so do the channels they spend time on. They expect brands to have one too and show up to match the mindset they are in for each channel.
Steps To Get Started With Visual Narratives
The big takeaway for the business community is simple. Your story should be equally strong in its use of words and images. Whether you embrace this concept or you are a skeptic, do yourself a favor and try these things:
• Conduct an informal audit of how your brand, company or leader shows up online visually.
• Ask yourself if you are showing up most powerfully visually.
• Think of the 15 to 20 most common ways to create visual content and ask why you are not using many of these options.
• Study how visual content is either improving or decreasing engagement.
The list goes on.
Before you know it, you will likely realize you aren’t creating the best memories your company or brand is capable of producing. You are not using visual content in times of urgency to get across a message with more speed. And you have yet to build that elusive rhythm that creates powerful, long-lasting narratives.
I am confident the answer is not to do what you did for your last campaign.
Our media world is rapidly evolving, as is generative AI, which will make it easier than ever for our customers to decide how they want to learn about us. A touch of a screen will turn today’s white paper into tomorrow’s pictograph or audio abstract. A new app will analyze how a brand advertises nationally and answer the two or three questions we asked and deliver it in the format of our choice.
And that is really the key. If we know our brains love to learn about concepts visually, and we know technology is making this easier than ever to do, why not get ahead of the curve and prepare for how tomorrow’s story will be received most effectively?
Now, if only you could just touch this story and turn it into an audio abstract in Spanish that we can send to friends in Mexico.
Maybe next time you will be able to.