CHAPTER 1

The Rise of Visual Storytelling

We’ve all heard marketers proclaim that “content is king,” but the rise of visual social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram coupled with Facebook’s multimillion-dollar acquisition of the latter have ushered in an era in which the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” is more relevant than ever. Today marketers are turning to visuals to amplify social media engagement—and for good reason.

But simply posting images, videos, and other visuals isn’t enough. Companies that go beyond creating and sharing content to embrace visual storytelling are emerging as the leaders of the pack and are being rewarded with engagement, referral traffic, and even sales. The rise of visual social media platforms has also resulted in the “Now! Economy,” in which consumers welcome real-time marketing in the form of snackable bits of visual content. From creating Pinterest boards to make meal planning easier to sharing images and videos that will brighten someone’s day, consumers are gobbling up visual content as it’s relevant to them.

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Instead of relying on text-heavy content, a successful visual storytelling strategy requires a “show, don’t tell,” approach with the goal of generating more potential for engagement, conversation, and sharing.

In a time when social media and blogs are estimated to reach 80% of all active U.S. Internet users, engagement and action have become the new gold standard.⁴ Whether it’s using Pinterest to find favors for a baby shower or watching a YouTube case study that encourages a meeting with a new service provider, visual storytelling is helping companies to break through the clutter and propel action as never before.

Take Sephora, for example. The company has noted that its Pinterest followers spend 15 times more than its Facebook fans.⁵ The company has more than 200,000 followers on Pinterest, with boards such as “Travel,” “Nailspotting,” “Beauty How-Tos,” and others. Sephora also has a board containing its “Most Popular Pins,” which shares the pins that are generating hundreds of repins and likes.

Or the Calgary Zoo, which generated national headlines and interest in its annual report by swapping a traditional PDF for an Instagram. Proclaiming its 2012 annual report “The Year of the Penguins,” 55 photos and captions served as the report pages and content, telling the story of what the zoo had accomplished over the course of the year in a unique, highly visual way.

And who hasn’t heard of the visual storytelling revolution that Blendtec generated after launching the viral “Will It Blend?” series? Inspired by an R&D video that blended wooden boards together, the company’s marketing team decided to invest $100 in other wacky supplies and began sharing videos on its YouTube channel with the simple question “Will it blend?” One of the favorites among the consumers was the video that blended the latest iPhone into tiny pieces.

The Evolution of Visual Storytelling

Visual storytelling has not been an overnight sensation, but instead it has been the result of a continued evolution of social media platforms, along with user and company behaviors. From the late 1990s to mid-2000s, sites such as blogging platforms, Myspace, Delicious (formerly Del.icio.us), Flickr, and Facebook created early opportunities for visual engagement. If you look closely at these platforms, you’ll see that all of them were created in response to the massive flow of content on the Internet, much of which was visual. Even back then, blog entries with visuals performed better than those without. Myspace offered users multiple opportunities to personalize their user profiles, from the background to the music and content shared. Flickr rose in popularity as an early photo sharing site, and today it still houses a passionate community of photo enthusiasts, plus professional and hobbyist photographers.

Besides the content shared, perhaps one of the most important qualities these early social media platform leaders had was the ability to bring like-minded individuals together online. Just as today, when there are so many social media platforms to engage on, like-minded individuals always seemed to find their way into the online communities that best reflected their interests. The key then, as it is now, was to identify what brings people to a social media platform, understand what value they derive from the platform, and determine how your company could fit within those engagement best practices.

In addition to community engagement, the activity on these platforms also reinforced that users were looking for ways to easily share and organize content, imagery, visuals, and videos. From following your favorite bloggers on LiveJournal, to curating a branded profile on Myspace complete with your favorite songs and music videos, or building photo albums on Flickr, it’s no surprise that the saying “Content Is King” was born—and subsequently overused for years to come. Content has always been the hook for inspiring action or engagement across social media channels, but the rules have changed as platforms have continued to evolve.

The evolution of Facebook’s layout from 2004 to 2013 offers a unique look at the continued changes social media platforms are taking to pave the way for visual content and storytelling. Facebook has evolved from a text-heavy format favoring user profiles and group pages to a vibrant News Feed filled with colorful photos, videos, and more. With newcomers like Pinterest, Instagram, and Vine, it’s clear that Facebook users also crave clean layouts and the ability to quickly scroll through content in order to find what they’re looking for. The rise of mobile users on Facebook also indicates that users want a seamless experience regardless of the device they’re viewing the site on.

When Facebook first launched in 2004, it was simply a directory of user names, interests, and contact information. You had to navigate to a user’s profile to learn more about that person or to leave a comment on his or her Wall. The layout was text heavy, and the most prominent image was a user’s profile photo. Joining groups and sharing your interests on your profile helped Facebook users to foster engagement and cultivate an identity for themselves on the site.

Facebook took first steps toward a more visual experience on September 5, 2006, with the News Feed and the Mini-Feed. The News Feed was visible on your Facebook home page, and it offered a personalized collection of information curated by your activities, groups you belonged to, photos your friends were tagged in, and more. The Mini-Feed offered updates on what had been changed to a user’s Facebook profile.⁶ Rather quickly users began to see the value in reading their friends’ status updates and seeing photos as part of a stream of news. The experience ultimately paved the way for today’s Facebook News Feed layout.

The continued shift toward a more visual Facebook user experience continued from 2007 to 2012. From tabs, to apps, groups, and pages, users began to “like” the pages created by companies and public figures as a way to showcase their interest in them. In 2007, Facebook was filtering an average of 30,000 News Feed story updates into a customized stream of 60 stories for each user every day.⁷ As a result, securing a text placement in the News Feed was equated to getting into the first page of Google’s search results.⁸ However, brands couldn’t secure this premium placement without paying, developing an app, or inserting an ad next to News Feed items.⁹ In 2008, apps boomed in popularity, and status updates emerged as a tool that companies could use to share valuable content and images within their pages or groups. But this content was mostly distributed either through an inbox message or an update notification to view the post.¹⁰ Users could then decide if they cared to learn more and visit the page, app, or group, requiring the content to work that much harder.

In 2011, the launch of Facebook Timeline completely shook up the Facebook user experience—in a good way. Promising you an opportunity to “tell your life story with a new kind of profile,” images, videos, and interactive content rose in prominence over Facebook’s previous text-heavy environment. Users now had the opportunity to craft a highly interactive, sharable, digital, scrapbooklike layout with a cover photo, they could use large images, and they could organize important historical information about themselves. Featuring a similar experience for brands, Timeline for brands allowed brand pages to promote visual content in a completely new way, with the results to prove it. In 2012, just one month after the introduction of Facebook Timeline for brands, visual content—photos and videos—saw a 65% increase in engagement.¹¹

In 2013, Facebook announced its first major update to its News Feed since the launch of Timeline in 2011. At the press conference to introduce the News Feed redesign, Mark Zuckerberg said, “How we’re all sharing is changing, and the News Feed needs to evolve with those changes. This is the evolving face of News Feed.”¹² The changes introduced a stronger focus on images, mobile optimization, and access to multiple feeds. Of the more than 1 billion monthly active users that existed as of December 2012, 543 million monthly active users were now using Facebook’s mobile products.¹³ According to Facebook, shifting user behavior also showcased that 50% of status updates now included an image, and posts with images far outperformed those with just text alone.¹⁴

Compared to the earlier years when companies curated experiences around highly branded pages, apps, and groups, the new rules of Facebook engagement dictate that the majority of interactions happen in the News Feed. Users now visit Facebook to catch up with what their friends are up to, seek out specific information, or share content, such as vacation photos. This behavior is consistent across many social media platforms, except for Pinterest, which is more focused on the sharing and categorizing of visual content.

While challenging for brands to hear, the reality is that users in most cases are not going on social media sites like Facebook to view brand-generated content. Meaning, brands now must strive to be a welcome interruption inside the News Feed. Visual content must be attention-grabbing and prompt action or affinity in order to remain relevant, or it risks being “unliked.” On Facebook, users can also hide anyone in their network, including companies, from their News Feed, which is worse than an unlike, as brands cannot measure how many people still like them but have hidden their status updates from their News Feeds.

These changes, coupled with the introduction of EdgeRank, an algorithm introduced by Facebook to determine where and which posts will appear on a user’s News Feed, have placed a greater value on visual engagement and storytelling within the digital news stream.

With more engagement on Facebook taking place in the News Feed than ever, quality images and videos stand out more than text status updates, and they generate more engagement. The more frequently users reward company posts with positive engagement, the better chance those posts have of making it into their fans’ News Feeds. Engagement and sharing from those fans will help to reach new audiences through the “friend-of-friend” effect, prompting fan growth and increased engagement.

As a result of EdgeRank, companies cannot rest on their laurels. Each piece of content must be generated with affinity, weight, and timing in mind. How often someone engages with a brand’s content, coupled with the volume and sentiment of those interactions, helps dictate what Facebook users deem interesting.

Over the past several years Facebook has been criticized for the introduction of an algorithm that decides what people see or not see. Marketers have been complaining that they work hard to grow their Facebook fans to large numbers, only to have the algorithm “choose” whom to serve the relevant content to, thus allowing only small numbers of fans from the overall fan base to see every single update that brands post.

The History and the Rise of Visual Storytelling

Fast forward to the present, and there’s a proliferation of social media platforms as never before—with impressive audience sizes to match. From Facebook to Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, SlideShare, and Vine, each platform offers unique opportunities for visual storytelling and engagement. The wealth of social media platforms relates back to user behavior and how consumers prefer to receive information and connect online. Mobile use has skyrocketed globally, with 6.8 billion mobile subscriptions at the end of 2012, which is equivalent to 96% of the world population.¹⁵ With cameras in the vast majority of people’s pockets, it’s no surprise that platforms such as Instagram and Vine have been specifically designed for mobile audiences and then subsequently acquired by social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Similar to past adoption patterns of social media platforms, people are continuously looking for tools, resources, and communities that will make their busy lives easier. Facebook has always been the grand dame for keeping tabs on friends and family, but the rise of platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, and SlideShare has been fueled by people’s desires for solutions that add value. It’s why people turn to Twitter for real-time information when a breaking news event happens or to Pinterest for interior design tips and meal planning. SlideShare is now a go-to resource for business information and education.

Another contributor to the rise in visual storytelling is the on-the-go nature of people’s lives and their interest in sharing user-generated imagery and visuals in real time. With smartphones always within an arm’s reach for many consumers, the ability to snap a photo or record a video and share it on social media channels has never been easier. It’s why social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, and Vine continue to boom in popularity—they facilitate ease and convenience of sharing in the moment.

So why is the sharing of visuals and videos so important to both consumers and companies? Delving deeper into research around user behavior on popular web and social media sites reveals that the proof is in the visual pudding.

Research indicates that consumer interest in visual content isn’t necessarily just a preference; it’s actually easier and faster for humans to process. The right picture can go further than just telling your story visually; it can make you feel emotions, evoke memories, and even make you act differently.

Humans are wired to process visuals differently than text and to respond differently to pictures than to words. Although human communication has existed for about 30,000 years, it has been only in the last 7,000 years that humans developed a written language.¹⁶ Although our wonderful brains translate marks and squiggles into words, it doesn’t come as naturally to the mind as processing images.

Let me show you what I mean.

Read this word:

GIRL

What does it make you think of? Do you have a specific girl in mind? What age is she? What is she doing? Does that word itself evoke any emotions?

Now look at this image:

What does it make you think? What does it make you feel?

Images don’t just paint a thousand words. They can communicate some things far more specific than words—specific emotions, specific feelings, specific moods, things that are almost impossible to convey using words. Do you think that if 100 people heard the word “girl,” they would all think of the same thing, exactly? Would they all feel the same thing? But looking at a picture like the one on the previous page, the majority of people will think and feel something very similar.

Images act like shortcuts to the brain: we are visual creatures, and we are programmed to react to visuals more than to words. In the 1960s, Professor Albert Mehrabian showed that 93% of communication is in fact nonverbal.¹⁸ By this he meant that most of the feelings and attitudes of a message come from the facial expressions and the way the words are said, and the rest, only 7%, derives from the actual words being spoken. It isn’t even just the meanings of a message that are conveyed more precisely by visual information. Even issues of trust and credibility are carried by images far more so than text.

Dan Roam, an expert on visual storytelling and an author of the international bestseller The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, says:

We live in a world that is very noisy. There are a lot of conversations and buzzwords around us. The number one way out of this noise is just to become visual. To show things with pictures. For thousands of years people have been drawing. If you think about the history of communication from then till now, it goes through all the different periods of time where people are trying to find ways to share information with each other. For the longest time, it was through telling stories around the campfire, reciting poems, and singing songs. That was the technology that was available. All along, all we wanted to do was share pictures with each other. Painting was the only way to convey a message visually. Then came writing and the printing press. Now let’s jump forward to today. Holy smokes, what do we have available? It’s like mankind’s greatest dream is available at our fingertips. I want to share a story with you, and I want to share it with you visually: all I have to do is take a picture and e-mail it to you. I put it on Twitter, or I post it on Facebook, Flickr, or Instagram. It’s no surprise that we are sharing billions of images on those networks. It makes perfect sense—we’ve always wanted to share pictures with each other, but we never had the right technology to do it. Now we do. That, to me, is the biggest trend in marketing and communication, period. The “simple” technologies that we now have are enabling us to do what we have always dreamed of doing, which was to easily share ideas with each other in pictorial form.

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We can’t get away from the importance of visuals in our everyday communication. That much is clear. But what does this mean to marketers?

Creating images that make the viewer think and feel a certain way is big business to advertising: getting the right visuals is at the very heart of business branding. In 2001, Pepsi budgeted over $1 billion on its image. Not to be outdone, Coca-Cola budgeted $1.4 billion for its image in the same year.²¹

Empathizing in the intended way to symbols and images is reliant on a shared cultural identity—that is, on an understanding of who your audience is. Different cultures, and even different demographics, will process symbols differently. Whereas images such as star-spangled flags and eagles can appeal to an American sense of patriotism, the same effect may be achieved by a maple leaf, a lion, or a kangaroo in other countries. And what appears strong and decisive to one audience could seem aggressive to another.

Brian Solis, an author of What’s the Future of Business, says: “The most effective visual storytelling affects one’s being … changing perspective and ultimately behavior upon impact.”

Creating the right image to convey your message relies on understanding whom you are communicating with and how they will react to it. Communication is a two-way process, and marketers have to be as sure of their audience as they are of the images they are crafting to reach them. The right graphics can persuade, relate, and influence decisions on an emotional and subconscious level. Images are powerful tools, and we are becoming an ever-more visual culture.

This data is precisely why visual storytelling allows companies a strong opportunity to take these existing behaviors and cultivate content focused on harnessing consumer engagement versus broadcasting messages. Visuals draw immediate attention to a post about a topic and can generate shares, traffic, lead generation, thought leadership, and expertise. Visual storytelling can also help companies achieve earned media at scale. By striving to be shareworthy with all visual content, companies like Coca-Cola are reaching the valued friends-of-friends audience. This allows Coca-Cola to better leverage word-of-mouth endorsements, which are incredibly valuable. According to Bazaar Voice, 51% of Americans trust user-generated content over other information on a company website.²²

For B2C companies, this sentiment is especially prevalent in the fashion industry where there’s a trend of trusting the opinions of bloggers and customer reviews. Why? People like seeing how the garments are styled and fit by people they can relate to.

In spring 2013, Coach launched a campaign asking its customers to admire the view from above—of their shoes! Using the #coachfromabove hashtag, fans were asked to share “selfie” photos of their Coach shoes on Instagram or Twitter for a chance to be featured in a gallery on the company’s website. A “selfie” is a photo you take of yourself. Over an eight-week timeframe, Coach’s user-generated campaign secured an average of 80 images per week and stretched the content across its website, a Facebook album, Pinterest board, live events, and blogger and influencer outreach. The end result was a continuous stream of highly editorial images similar to what you might see on a fashion blog or in a magazine.

Not to be outdone by their B2C counterparts, a reported 91% of B2B companies are now using content marketing tactics to reach their target audiences.²³ With the top social media platforms ranking from LinkedIn, to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, B2B companies are also embracing visual content to enhance their content marketing strategies. From assisting with lead generation and customer retention, to augmenting expertise and industry leadership, the value of visually relevant content is rising in importance.

HubSpot is a fantastic example of a B2B company that leverages visual content and storytelling across a number of social media channels. While many of the company’s social media channels are impressive, HubSpot’s Pinterest presence showcases how B2B companies can let their personality and creativity shine in a way that encourages engagement with influencers and prospective clients. With boards dedicated to company culture, helpful e-books, webinars, and infographics, the visual content shared is a mix of informative, humorous and inspiring. If you’ve ever thought that B2B companies should only be serious, think again. Hysterical boards like “Meme-tastic Marketing” and “Awful Stock Photography” show other businesses that it’s okay to have a little fun. As a result of their efforts, HubSpot has more than 17,000 followers on Pinterest, and it can leverage the channel to create inbound links and to drive traffic, search engine optimization (SEO), and engagement.

These are just some of the examples of brands’ using visual storytelling to engage with their customers. Now let’s look at the types, tips, and tactics of visual marketing.

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