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Don't Tell Me Why I Should Buy Your Product, Show Me

This article is more than 6 years old.

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Motion pictures have been entertaining and informing the world for a century. From the early political movies in Europe, through silent films and the golden age of Hollywood, in historical documentaries, and to the medium of television, ‘movies’ have long captivated audiences. And where people are looking, businesses want to pitch their products. Advertisements before or during movies can reach a lot of buyers.

Since then, the Internet has arrived in a big way, providing unlimited opportunities to publish and reach the masses at relatively low cost. Businesses latched onto the web and websites exploded with advertising copy, white papers, manuals, e-books, instructions, catalogs, blogs, news, and subscriptions. Content was king!

It should come as no surprise that the massive quantity of information on the Internet has become overly burdensome. There’s just too much to read and absorb. So marketers are rediscovering that pictures tell a story more easily and more accessibly than written content. The pendulum is swinging from quantity to quality, and communicating through pictures and videos is proving to be much more effective.

Enter Ski Utah, an organization whose mission is to promote skiing and tourism in my home state. For years Ski Utah has run advertisements in major ski and travel magazines. Then, Ski Utah produced an infographic that visually explained how Utah’s snow is formed, and why it really is the ‘Greatest Snow on Earth’ (Utah’s former slogan). The response was dramatic and the success of the campaign was measureable. Brandon Ott, Content Director Ski Utah, says, “This infographic gave tourists an easily digestible nugget that told our story at a glance. Until we showed them why, people didn’t really know that our snow is dryer and more powdery because of the way Mother Nature makes it.”

Jason Coulam, CMO at Avalaunch Media, was instrumental in producing the Ski Utah infographic and explains why imagery is so important. “Every business has a concise story that explains what they do—an elevator pitch. But to be impactful and memorable, the pitch must be accompanied by a visual.” Coulam continues, “Visual content is so much more consumable. Companies should slow the flow of content and visualize it at the same time.”

Infographics provide a mix of eye-catching graphics and abbreviated written content designed to deliver information quickly. If designed well, they are entertaining to look at and the viewer can pick out desired information quickly without having to read through lengthy text. However, they are static and less interactive than an even more engaging medium: video. “If a picture paints a thousand words, then video—at 30 frames (pictures) per second—can tell a much richer story in a very short time,” says Coulam. “That’s why we recommend video, and sometimes interactive video, as the medium of choice for certain marketing situations.”

Videos are the latest iteration of movies for the masses. In addition to action on the silver screen in theaters and on television, videos now appear on the screen on your lap or in your hand. Delivering content of every kind, videos can take on a life of their own. ‘Viral’ videos, viewed and shared over and over, can be well-crafted advertisements, whether full of humor or pure nonsense, but in any case they are entertaining and appealing far beyond written content. Why? Because they convey more information, and they do it faster than a lot of words. People love to be entertained, and watching a video or glancing at graphics takes less effort than reading text.

In the book Flicker: Your Brain on Movies, Jeffrey Zacks, a professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, says that identification with a character, combined with music and a screen filled with emotional faces, can trigger a strong reaction in viewers because they automatically try to identify with the people or situations they see on a screen. If the actor smiles, the viewer wants to smile. If the actor uses a particular product or service, the viewer considers how he or she might do likewise. Zacks calls it the Mirror Rule, which suggests that it’s a good idea to mimic the visual input that you’re seeing.

Another component of effective marketing is repetition. Jon Gillham, CEO and Co-Founder of AdBank adds, "Companies can increase product recognition through B2B sales with effective retargeting to get their message in front of people who visited a website multiple times. The Rule of Seven is an old marketing saying that a prospect needs to see your message at least seven times before they become a customer. Targeted advertising is a great way to get your message in front of the right people enough times to increase product recognition." By combining the frequency of retargeting (or other methods of getting your message in front of prospects multiple times) with visually appealing graphics and videos, marketers can avoid some of the viewer fatigue that plagues the industry.

While traditional content marketing will never go away entirely, every company should consider visual and video marketing. Entertainment and business are converging to catch the eye of prospective buyers. Movies, once the business of entertainment, are now the entertainment for business. Talkies will never be the same again.

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