When getting customers to buy a product, seeing is most of the believing. Is it enough to simply talk about the product? Or can we present it in a compelling visual that highlights its benefits? Considering that 65% of people are visual learners, it is certainly worth finding out. But, regardless of your learning style, the fact remains that 90% of the information that the brain receives is visual.
In other words, visuals are indispensable to helping your customer recognise, realise and retain the message behind your brand and product. Whether it’s video, images, infographics, or even memes, visual content should be designed to stimulate engagement with your audience.
For example, visuals consistently beat out boring old product descriptions — although it takes more than just any unimaginative image or video. The key is to make visual content as aesthetically-appealing as it is informative.
Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reveals that “the human eye can process entire images in as little as 13 milliseconds” (10x faster than the blink of an eye). This fact alone brings a whole new meaning to catching one’s eye. What vision does is find concepts. All-day long, our brain is trying to understand what it sees. “The job of the eyes is not only to get information to the brain but to facilitate in processing information rapidly enough to indicate what you should look at next”, says Mary Potter, the senior author of this MIT study.
What this means for marketers, is that the visuals we create have to tell a compelling story. The challenge here is two-fold: imagery that represents your brand has to be instantly likeable, and also align with the overarching message behind the brand. This is so that your audience enjoys a consistent visual experience when learning about your offerings.
Good commercial photography can turn this challenge into an advantage. Seeing the Instagrams, Pinterests, and even Tinders of the world, it’s not exactly news that photography is a highly prevalent feature in our daily media consumption. A strategically crafted photo not only entrances, but engages its viewer. Note the term, “strategic” here, as it is key to understanding the difference between a pretty picture and a commercially viable one that communicates intent and identity.
At Digital Negative, the latter is what we specialise in. It’s not to say our work isn’t pretty; far from it. Instead, we are driven foremost to understand your business and its goals, before we even bring the tripod out of its case. Building credibility, gaining awareness, crafting a brand narrative — these are all separate but related objectives that see the same product being shot in different ways.
The best commercial photography Singapore’s consumers notice has always featured a strong brand personality — whether they know it or not. By combining commanding visuals with powerful creative marketing concepts, you’ll have a visual marketing strategy that takes your brand farther than the eyes can see.
Photo by Nicolai Berntsen on Unsplash