Think back for a moment to the best presentation you ever witnessed. Imagine you are back in that room. What did the presenter display in their slides?
Probably not screen after screen of text and bullet points. The best presenters know that a few well chosen images are more powerful than words. People recall images. Through them they also recall the vital information that presenters want you to remember.
Research has shown that when people hear information, they are likely to remember only 10% of it three days later. Pair a relevant image with that information and people retain 65% of it three days later. (LifeLearn, 2015).
You can remember a complex sequence of actions or priorities by constructing a collection of associated images or visual cues. That’s the influence of images on being memorable.
Convinced yet? Well it gets better. People don’t just recall information when it’s linked to images and visual stimuli – they also respond to it.
From the earliest days when advertisers started tracking the impact of press advertising, they found that adverts with images performed significantly better than those with just words. Adverts showing products being used performed better than those with just a simple picture of the product.
The conclusions from this? Images get you noticed and engage an audience more than words. It’s particularly powerful to invite somebody to ‘step inside’ the image and imagine themselves wearing or using a product.
Images Drive Engagement
Study after study shows that social media posts with images get more engagement. Blog posts with multiple images are read more fully and shared more often.
So, here’s the thing. How much is your marketing strategy visually driven? Have you thought about your message and the emotions you are appealing to and matched these to images and visual concepts?
Today, we have even more opportunities to use imagery to engage the senses and fire the neurons in our brains. Online video content is everywhere. And we are beginning to understand the full potential of VR to create immersive experiences that access the most fundamental and primitive areas of our brain.
Nobody is saying that words don’t matter. Words may still be how you communicate your message. But you want people to remember it. More importantly, you want people to take action. For this you need a visual strategy and ideally an immersive experience.