Visual imagery: the invisible and the indelible
Imagery that speaks to our
human needs and shared humanity results in an indelible
and lasting connection.
It’s a visual free-for-all out there. We are bombarded with images all day, every day. On our computer monitors, on TV screens. Any and every surface in our public spaces. Even our cell phones have the capacity to store and display images by the hundreds. It’s downright overwhelming.
As a result, people seem to have developed a kind of mental spam filter. In sheer self-defense, we tune out much of the visual environment. We look but don’t see. We see but don’t react. We react but don’t retain.
This is a big problem for marketers. Like it or not, we are visual communicators.
Indelibility
Some images get through our mental spam filters and imprint themselves permanently on our psyches.
A jubilant sailor kissing a girl in Times Square. A 13-year-old Afghan girl with haunting green eyes. A lone student standing in front of a column of tanks.
These images are decades old, but most of us can recall them instantly. Why? Because of their humanity. We need no back-story to relate to these images. They require no explanation. We see them, we feel them, we cannot forget them.
Learning the lesson
Our mental spam filters are no match for the iconic power of images that speak to our shared humanity. So marketers, take note. In creating a visual language for a brand, the right photographic direction is every bit as important as the right logo, corporate colors, and typographic style. Whether in still images or moving ones, content, color, tone, lighting, and composition all work together to stop a hand from turning a page, from hitting the fast forward button, from clicking past. As the media landscape becomes more and more frenetic, the power of authentic, vivid, human images becomes more and more crucial.
