Visual essays: bring content to life with multi-media storytelling
Want to take your audience back to your company’s roots or showcase the home life of your real-life customer base? Strong image references and slick copy can help your brand generate engaging content that will communicate people-focused narratives in a visual-first way.
Sometimes, copy or visuals on their own won’t do your narratives justice. So what do you get if you merge these two formats? A winning combination!
‘Visual essays’ can help brands communicate people-centric narratives in a visual-first way using contemporary shots, archive images, sketches and hand-drawn illustrations. The format – which can be standalone imagery or visual assets combined with copy – is well suited to stories that are emotionally impactful and have strong visual potential.
Take Patagonia. The retailer uses a visual essay to take audiences back to its roots with a piece on clothing designs, delving into the history of the gear the company has produced – from body suits to protect against poor weather to space-saving sleeping bags. A mix of hand-drawn sketches, solo images and picture slideshows showcase the journey these products have been on from start to finish – something that would have been difficult to communicate without effective visual references.
But the format doesn’t just lend itself to archive content. A visual essay from IKEA showcases the real-life home habits of its customer base. The raw, contemporary images – which see people sitting on unmade beds, chilling on canal boats and working behind pottery wheels – aim to capture the nuances of ‘life at home’, drawing attention to each individual story. The image series is accompanied by short paragraphs that add essential context about the photo subject – from their home décor inspiration to their favourite room.
So if you’ve got a human-interest story you’re keen to share, don’t automatically resort to your typical content formats. People naturally connect with other people – so capturing visual-first content that showcases the facial expressions, actions and emotions of its subjects could be key to connecting your target audiences with your brand narratives in a more meaningful way.
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Need help creating compelling content for your brand? Contact Gabrielle Bridle from our client services team at gabriellebridle@speakmedia.co.uk or on LinkedIn.