Visual storytelling helps your marketing department tell a story, convey meanings and company values, communicate the personable aspect of the brand. Telling your story through photography/visuals helps to elevate your brand.

Why do visuals work so well?

It’s because humans have evolved to survive threat as well as find food and reproductive mates through our vision. When an advertisement or social media post includes an image with a lot of text or a long caption, the human brain has to process each word like a tiny picture and that takes a while. In contrast, the images themselves provoke an immediate visceral response, creating less of a chance to be overlooked and a greater chance that the meaning will be quickly understood.

Images also help with memory. When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10 percent of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65 percent of the information three days later.

Image Capture by Michel Comte.

Photography is a particularly useful visual medium. It plays a unique role in triggering the network of brain regions that underlie empathy. Our muscles imitate what we see someone doing in photography and then transmit the info to the brain so that we have an emotional reaction. This causes a strong sense of empathy and is why photography can be so useful to capture someone’s attention. The image below, for example, is compelling because it conveys a sense of friendship and intimacy between the two individuals.

Image: The Duality of Photographic Storytelling with Rog and Bee Walker- Hypebeast

Visual content is situated right at the heart of storytelling. However impressive your content is, if there are no high-quality visuals, you could be killing your content.

The best brands have creativity, credibility, and strong visual representation, in the form of consistent colours, design elements, signatures, and photographs. Your brand photography can be a critical element when it comes to ensuring that you’re presenting a consistent, memorable brand to your consumers. Today’s consumers thrive on visual content, so you’ll have a much easier time attracting them with photography.

Feeling a Connection

At its deepest level, photography is simply a medium for telling a story. It’s a way to connect with your customers on a deeper level and create affinity that goes beyond your brand name or logo. As human beings, we’re all attuned to visuals, processing images more quickly and deeply than any text or sound. Of the 35,000 conscious decisions we make daily, a huge number are driven by the visual cues around us. For instance, you might make a specific choice to wear a certain outfit or eat a particular food item for lunch.

Some of the visual choices we make are habitual. We do things so often that we’re no longer aware of the decisions we’re making. On the other hand, many can be influenced by outside forces, like marketing, advertising, and personality. Your brand photography is just one of the many elements that you can use to influence customer decisions, by helping them become more attuned with your company and your brand story.

Using professional brand photography to reinforce what your company’s brand purpose and culture, is an excellent way for brands to take advantage of the visual drive in the human brain. Whether you’re running an online business, building a portfolio, or simply trying to transform your online presence, photography is one of the simplest and quickest ways to instantly connect with your audience.

Remember, a brand is something you design through experience, interactions, and design; so, brand photography is just another piece of the puzzle.

Done correctly, brand photography can complement your brand identity, and enhance recognition to the point where people recognize you based on just the visual elements of a picture.

Image Above: From Nike’s Gorgeous, Powerful Campaign Dedicated to Equality

The best brand photography should align with the values of your organization, tell your brand story, and differentiate you from your competitors (Nike does this well). Unfortunately, while most businesses recognize the value of visual content, finding a way to represent your brand consistently through images alone can be a daunting prospect.

Wrapping it up

It is equally important to realize the enduring psychological potency of photography as a marketing tactic as well as the trends that make it special today. With increasing accessibility to consumers through social media, the power of visual storytelling is at it’s highest potential. Consider collaborating with a photographer who can create customized, authentic, and relatable images to improve your brand.

Lastly, Photographs are the tool of visual storytelling. But to use them effectively, remember the most important part of any kind of storytelling: The audience.

If you offer a particular service, sometimes it can be quite difficult to find suitable stock images, and you would then have to use images that don’t fit with your business or describe what your area of expertise is. If your business falls in this bracket get in touch with us. We definitely can help you with your professional shoots as this will make it clear to your customers what you do and you won’t be using the same images as your competitor, who have probably used images from a stock library.