Visual Communication
Highlighting The Imperfect: The Visual Trend For Your Post-Covid-19 Visual Marketing
By Matthias Schaefer - 3 min read
Our Head of Marketing, Matthias Schaefer, tells us why there's a visual shift on the horizon and how it could be critical for brands marketing through a time of crisis.
We spoke to our Head of Marketing Matthias Schaefer about why the emergence of brand authenticity could be the visual trend that will help your brand bounce back stronger than before.
Download our full Visual Marketing Guide for free and find out how you can maximize your stock portfolio now and in the future.
How to Visualise Your Brand During Crisis
Being relevant and responsive to the current situation remains key for every brand. With the outbreak of Covid-19 and social distancing having become the new normal, we see the influx of images of different people working from home. We’ve virtually looked into the houses of our colleagues, bosses, and even politicians via Zoom, Google Hangout, Skype or any other online conferencing tool, and this is changing the way that people see authenticity.
The good news is that this crisis also represents a window for brands to gain trust. This should also be reflected in your branding efforts. Use your visual marketing to present an honest, but refreshing perspective that will invite users to engage with your brand and avoid the negative stereotypes that can occur in marketing during times of crisis.
Highlighting the Imperfect
We see a clear shift from static, artificially posed, and well toned visual language towards a much more realistic, sometimes edgy but always authentic style. Users have become much more tolerant to the imperfect during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Brands, even from traditional industries like finance, have started pushing their visual tone towards a more diverse and lifestyle focused image style. Highlighting the imperfect, often messy or humorous, elements has become a key trend in visual marketing during the Covid-19 pandemic globally. We’ve seen a tremendous amount of photos showing people working, eating, schooling at home, rather than a model posing with a perfectly polished look.
Replace That Premium, Highly-Curated Look
The marketeers’ challenge is to replace picture-perfect, highly stylized images with ones that your audience could imagine taking themselves - without access to full-scale photoshoots. How do you find a replacement that is flexible and makes your brand campaign stand-out? Most alternatives do not seem to offer the same level of authenticity, complexity, and uniqueness when it comes to a brand’s visual language.
Buying stock imagery for most marketing or art directors means to compromise on a brand’s strong creative practises. Stock images are seen as off-the-rack content - not unique enough, but too cliché-like. Plus, creatives often fail to find those that do not look too “stocky” from their existing vendors.
The Visual Shift: Why Buying Stock Photos Make Sense
Our team of visual experts have produced a Visual Marketing Guide to deep dive into using stock imagery. Stock images basically allow a brand marketer to meet a level of responsiveness that can’t be met with any other visual source.
It’s key is to source premium quality, highly creative visuals that could be mistaken for custom productions. We recently looked at key principles for maximizing your stock photos including:
In short, the visual shift in imagery is opening up opportunities for your brand to not only rethink your production, but also utilize your stock portfolio like never before. Highlighting the imperfect allows you present more realistic and authentic visualization of your brand and connect with your audience at a time when trust is critical.
To get more information, download our new Visual Marketing Guide now and start building a unique portfolio of stock images for your next brand campaign.
Access the free 22-page Visual Marketing Guide and start making the right image choices for your brand now, and prepare it for the future.