We are all aware that the attention span of the average 21st century human being using 21st century media has observably diminished. By choice and culture we have learned to navigate abundant, often chaotic content, including mere flashes of imagery that our visually-oriented brains handle quickly.
We have been honing our media-consumption skills for decades now, and we’re good at it. A compelling statistic from Springer research says that people who follow driving instructions with text and images do 323% better than those who receive only text as guidance.* Clearly non-verbal imagery streamlines certain types of thinking.
So how to take advantage of this hard wiring now that visual image options are numerous and easy to share? Where to begin? Four times as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product than to read about it, according to Animoto* – you probably don’t want to ignore that opportunity.
The goal of marketing is to quickly capture the attention – and heart – of your potential customer, so clearly you must carefully consider both those elements that attract and those that are off-putting. You would do well to research everything from the effect of colors in various cultures, to the most popular social media outlets in your target countries**, to whether your audience prefers dubbing to subtitles, and what kind of imagery is most likely to resonate with them.
Partnering with transcreation and media experts can elevate your creative ideas into forms you may not have even thought of before. Live video has grown more popular than traditional video, for instance – is there a place for this in your messaging? Almost 30% more people viewed a 360-degree video than the same content in a conventional format, research by Magnifyre* revealed, and there might be an aspect of your business that is suited to this medium. Have you explored adding visual content such as graphs, memes, and photos to your text every 75-100 words or so? This is the ratio of articles that receive the highest social media shares, according to BuzzSumo’s* analysis of over 1 million articles.
Decades ago translation of your marketing materials required little more than native knowledge of the target language. But today the depth of communication and range of marketing possibilities is expanded by knowledge like this observation from Hubspot, referring to a Norman Nielsen Group study: “Eye-tracking studies show internet readers pay close attention to information-carrying images. In fact, when the images are relevant, readers spend more time looking at the images than they do reading text on the page.”
As a global leader in the language service industry, Skrivanek has kept up with every aspect of international communication, at every level. For your projects, both new and those you wish to re-invent, we will assemble the experts who can optimize the visual content of your marketing materials for every culture you wish to reach.
J. V. McShulskis
* As referenced by Hubspot, “42 Stats You Should Know About Visual Content Marketing in 2017”
** See Moravia, Nov 13, 2017, “Four Tips for Choosing and Optimizing Visuals in Your Global Content,” by Lee Densmer for more information
