Our company recently had the privilege of presenting at the PRSA Travel and Tourism conference in Lexington, Kentucky, on the impact and importance of Visual Storytelling. Leading Destinations, Resorts, and Travel related companies use video and images to promote their brands - very well in fact - so we were glad to have an eager audience. The fact that it’s summer and we all have our favorite travel destinations makes a discussion on visual storytelling that much more appealing.
Visual Storytelling is a hot topic in PR and Marketing circles right now with the prolific use of video and images, available at a moments notice from our tablets and smartphones. To say that using video and images is important would be an understatement - it’s a must! We’d like to share some of the impressive tactics we’ve seen that maximize visual storytelling for campaigns and overall PR strategies. Here are just a few…
Organizing Multimedia by Your Key Topics - Monterey Bay Aquarium
Monterey Bay Aquarium does a fabulous job of attracting your attention to their main topics of interest, as well as directing you to the latest images and video important to their efforts. This is an ongoing display, updated constantly when new topics or multimedia are posted. Journalists, followers, even consumers interested in the aquarium, can come to this page and get a taste of what their visit will entail, and journalists can feature multimedia in their stories highlighting the topics and issues important to the aquarium.
Video as Your Multimedia Leader - Visit Kansas City
If you love using video, then VisitKC is a great example of presenting video of your brand by topics important to our organization. Easy to find,
view and register to download, VisitKC’s videos tell their story with visual detail that lays out exactly what a journalist or visitor to Kansas City needs to see. Whether you have a destination or a product, this is a great way to outline what you want your customers and audience to watch. Imagine your favorite products or company events highlighted in videos that tell your story, presented in the video medium everyone loves.
Social Media as Your Visual Storytelling Medium
We all know you can’t forget Social Media as a key tool in Visual Storytelling. Whether you like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, whatever your social channel of choice is, you’ve got to make Social Media a part of your Visual Storytelling tactics. Two powerful examples of this are the live Twitter campaign by UCLA of a brain surgery and fashion giant Forever 21’s Social Media Hub. UCLA used a live Twitter campaign to follow the progress of a brain surgery where the patient played guitar during the operation - over a million hits and counting. Forever 21 decided to combine all their social channels in one place and create a Social Media Hub. Their audience could go to one place to see the latest postings on products, news, and announcements important to their brand. The point being, don’t leave Social Media out of your Visual Storytelling tactics and risk not connecting to a potentially large audience.
And don’t forget, Statistics & Metrics need to be included to measure your results - how many views did you receive, how many unique visitors came to your page? At the end of the day, storytelling is a philosophy and your metrics provide the scoreboard of your outcome...It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or what products you want to showcase, without the right tactics like you see above, you won’t have the increased engagements you’re looking for from media and your targeted audiences. Visual Storytelling can help you as a picture is truly worth 1000 words, or from another perspective, worth 1000 new followers.
