The hook and anchor of your marketing messages - by Chuck Sink

You can put tremendous effort into writing your message, but you need the key supporting element to give it enough life to make people stop and interact – to engage or be called to act. Your brand needs this desperately and so does mine; bright, high quality, high-resolution visuals – photographs and videos. Through the eyes is where most marketing magic happens, and it doesn’t help when you cut corners on photography and video production.

Caught you looking! Now you know this is true about pictures. When you “see what you’re looking for” what do you do? The right image tells a story in proper context within the viewer’s mind. When you are perusing anything, it’s the most striking and high-quality images that arrest your attention; make you stop, look and pique your interest in reading or listening to the full message. One of the fundamental reasons that iconic brands are successful is they take their image seriously and they execute visuals with consistency. You’ll notice how leading companies that you can immediately recognize, whether local, national, B2B or consumer, all invest in creating great looking images and they produce them professionally across all media. This publication offers some nice examples.

The Social Classroom: Social metrics always prove that pictures and videos draw! About 5 years ago on Facebook, I shared a beautiful bed image with a giveaway promotion for a furniture store client. It went viral! The Facebook page went from just over 200 likes to over 20,000 likes within 2 weeks. To this day, they enjoy a very large Facebook following originating from the impact of one high-quality photo! Do you want your website or print designer to wow you? Provide excellent photography and graphics or else let them help direct a professional photo shoot. The best way to distinguish your brand in website and marketing design is to start with high-quality visuals. And remember that video adds another dimension and it’s just as important to keep video production value up to your audiences’ expectations.

We’ll close with a sincere wish to everyone in this audience: I hope your day started pretty as a picture and ends in a photo finish!

Chuck Sink is principal at Chuck Sink Link, Contoocook, N.H.