How do I give my company a face?
Do your customers, employees, or business partners always know who you are, what you offer, and most importantly: what sets you apart from others? Individual and unique images help to showcase your profile, differentiate from competitors, and consequently succeed in an increasingly competitive market. The following article highlights the key benefits of strong visual worlds and how you can leverage them for your company.
Similar to people, companies also have a personality composed of several characteristics that distinguish them from others in the long term. It is only through these distinctive, unique features that a company is perceived by others as trustworthy and reliable.
Therefore, people in image series are particularly suitable for making this corporate personality tangible for others. Company founders often shape the company with their personality, making it unmistakable. Examples include Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, or Jochen Schweizer.
When planning your own visual world, the following questions can help:
- What corporate personality should the images convey?
- What goal should the images achieve?
- Who is the target audience for the images?
- What images do competitors in the industry use?
- Do the images convey a unique and attractive value proposition?
THE COMPETITION FOR PRODUCTS IS REPLACED BY THE COMPETITION OF COMMUNICATION: THE ONE WHO COMMUNICATES BEST WINS."
Prof. Dr. Dieter Georg Adlmaier-Herbst
The Power of Images
It is becoming increasingly difficult to make your message visible in the vast flood of information and to reach the recipients. Image communication is better than verbal communication at ensuring the visibility and memorability of "corporate messages". We humans quickly lose interest if we find only text and no images on the internet or in a magazine. It also requires significantly more effort and energy for the brain. Images, on the other hand, convey emotions much more effectively and sustainably than texts.
_Compared to textual content, the advantages of images are obvious:
_Advantages of images over text
- They are perceived, processed, and stored up to 60,000 times faster.
- Good images have the potential to break through the information overload and generate attention.
- Globalization requires global, multilingual communication: Images do not need to be translated compared to texts.
- Target groups can recognize and identify with the life world depicted in the images.
Goals of Visual Worlds
From this, it can be deduced: Individual and unique images have the power to significantly influence successful communication. They highlight what makes a company unique and why one should choose this particular business. Differentiation is only possible if you dare to show profile. Missing this opportunity means losing the chance to assert oneself in an increasingly competitive market.
Whether as a corporation, medium-sized business, or self-employed individual – everyone notices that the situation in the markets is increasingly changing due to digitalization. This is characterized mainly by increasing competition and faster innovation and product cycles. The consequence: Many products and services are becoming more and more similar. On the other hand, consumers feel overwhelmed by the constant advertising messages and respond with declining interest.
"THE NEW LANGUAGE OF CONTENT MARKETING IS IMAGE."
Petra Sammer
In many industries – e.g., consulting, coaching, lawyers, doctors, and more – trust is needed to be perceived as competent. Here, trustworthy and professional employee portraits play to their full strength. At the same time, they convey to both their employees and target groups through high-quality images the value they represent.
Similar to people, companies have a personality composed of several characteristics that distinguish them from others in the long term. It is only through these distinctive, unique features that a company is perceived by others as trustworthy and reliable. And nothing is more unique than the people who work in the company. Capturing them in images, therefore, seems only logical.
Positioning through Own Images
In the past, corporate photography was too limited to images of smiling men or women in business attire shaking hands. Often, these images were sourced from stock platforms, commercial image databases that primarily offer representative photographic material for diverse use. The problem so far was that many companies' use of images was limited to the same image archives. This creates a randomness that makes it difficult to stand out from the crowd. Additionally, it can happen that competitors use the same images, or in the worst case, industries with which one does not want to be associated – for example, tobacco or weapons.
One just has to ask the question: What makes you stop at a shop window in a shopping area? Either you are specifically looking for something, or you are positively surprised by the arrangement and creativity of the offered products.
Put simply, the shop windows of the past are now websites and social media presence. As the number of these digital shop windows has exponentially increased in recent years and consumers feel overwhelmed by the sheer number, it becomes all the more important to carefully consider how to invite them to stop and linger. At this point of sale, it is important to meet the customer with personality and authenticity and to pique their curiosity. Through expressive images, you can position yourself much more clearly in the competition. This is the great strength of well-organized business photography.
You must not ignore the zeitgeist
And since the attention span of consumers is already becoming increasingly shorter, reportedly only a few seconds, only images manage to convey the intended message in an extremely short time span.
The zeitgeist also increasingly calls for images: Teenagers and young adults communicate almost exclusively through images – see Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube. Many do not take the time to reflect experiences in text. Many consumers are developing new habits that companies must adapt to if they do not want to lose contact in the future.
Conclusion
Of course, the effort with stock photos is significantly less. But the publicly accessible photos are "free" for a reason. And even with stock photos for which you pay hard cash (e.g., Adobe Stock), there is no guarantee that an undesirable competitor will not use the same motifs on their website. We therefore recommend to our clients: Better to invest money once and focus on authenticity rather than randomness.
Are you looking for unique and authentic images that showcase your company and industry in the best light? Contact us now, and we will be happy to advise you personally and tailored to your needs and wishes.
The images were created together with our client SIEBENBACH Unternehmenskultur.
They have made it their mission to enable more ease, creativity, and productivity for people in companies.
Siebenbach | Unternehmenskultur
Siebenbach | Unternehmenskultur
Markus Huf
https://www.siebenbach.de
Tel.: +49 (0) 9954 70 06 609
