Pictures are all that matter

The written word is irrelevant. The picture is all that matters. Is this a bit of an overstatement? Yes, but I contend it’s not nearly as much so as you might think.
To sell someone on an idea and have them take action, two pictures are critical:
1) the literal picture taken with a camera
2) the mental picture that captures the benefit of your product, service or idea

In the world of event marketing, I believe pictures are essential. You have literally a second to grab the ad viewer’s attention and perhaps three more to make the sale. Dense ad copy won’t cut it. Your ad will be ignored by all but your diehard fans if you have no picture. If you do have a picture, it should be compelling and tell the key story all by itself to make the sale.

Jumping over to social networking sites, consider this statistic from Harvard Business School researcher Mikolaj Jan Piskorski in Understanding Users of Social Networks: “Seventy percent of all actions [on social networking sites] are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people’s profiles.” For websites in general, research has shown that people make their initial assessment in less than half a second. All subsequent judgments on relevance, credibility and usability are based off of that initial assessment. In either case, I believe the essential point is the same: people want a mental snapshot that conveys both emotion and substances in three seconds or less.

So what exactly do I mean by a mental picture? It’s that image people create—usually subconsciously—that captures the main characters, the mood, and the main action or outcome of any event in their lives. You might think of it as the movie poster. Try asking your sales team, project member or customer sometime if they were to create a movie poster describing product/project “x” who would be on it and what it would look like. If they can’t create a vivid scene, you haven’t made the sale. If you can’t do the same at the outset, I contend you shouldn’t move ahead with your marketing.

The bottom line is this: we’re now in an age where “purchases”—whether literal or figurative—are visually driven. Creating pictures is an underutilized opportunity that I believe is absolutely critical to success.