Creating Stunning Visuals That Also Deliver Results Is A Science. Today, We Decode It.

Good advertising is not always about selling a product but creating a long-lasting impact and that is precisely what visual adverts do. An attention-grabbing image has been proven to increase engagement and performance. 

The world is now more visual than ever before.

The old adage ‘Picture speaks a thousand words’ is certainly true in this digital era. Check out the key findings below to comprehend the power of Visuals.

However, visual creative advertising can fail if the various elements like the subject, color, lighting, focus, the text are not optimized. There is a reason why visuals are more compelling than text. It taps into the ‘consumer psychology’ and influences their buying behavior. This psychological effect can be created through colors, repetition, or call-to-action.

1. Color: There is a science behind how emotions react to various colors. When you create your visuals, you just don’t put colors but use them to create an emotional response. When your brain sees an image, it subconsciously decides whether the content is important or not. This is the impact of colors on the mood and where colors and creative advertising merge together.

The psychological effect of colors is used in branding and designing ads.

• Branding: Brands have always called on colors while creating their own identities. According to the infographic by Kissmetrics.com reveals color influences 85% of a customer purchasing decision. Some brands opt for bright and bold colors while some go for subtle colors pointing the emotions the product brings out. Brands like Google or Microsoft have multicolor accentuating that their product embraces any emotion anytime.

• Ads: While designing an ad knowing your target audience is essential to build the correct color scheme. For example, men and women have different color preferences. If your product is feminine and targeted for girls/ women then pink is the color to highlight.

2. Call-to-action is heard and attended 

Naturally, CTA is an important element in your visual creative advertising. For example, a company found a 245% increase in leads after optimizing the landing pages. Make sure to keep your ad copy crisp with minimum textual content. Let your visuals do all the talking.

Ensure visuals take the center stage, followed by text to guide the users to take the next step and focus on optimizing it. You should end up with something like this:

As you can see, the ad features the product image and call-to-action is in front and center to get attention immediately.

3. Repetition:

The trick of repetition works to build memories and equally, is an essential element of visual creative advertising. Repeated elements create easy brand recall but build variations to avoid fatigue.

4. Ownership of the Visual creatives:

Whenever someone looks at your ad and say, “Oh! I think to have seen this before”. This moment you lose the ownership of the ad. It is common to use images from the internet for ads but doesn’t help and loses its unique appeal.

Here, ownership comes into the picture and additionally helps to make brand memorable. For instance, when you look at BuzzSumo ad, there is the same character in all their visuals. Easily, you recognize the brand seeing the character. Three things in one creative: Repetition, Recognition, and Ownership. 

Choosing the right images is the key in Creative Advertising

While preparing for an advertising campaign, the right choice of images is vital. People are visual by nature. With shorter attention spans, images express ample of information with a quick glance and subsequently highly effective.

The target audience is drawn to images that are attention-seeking and compelling. The popularity of Instagram says it all. The image-sharing platform has 1 billion monthly active users and it is a fact that businesses are using it to run their ad campaigns. Do not undermine the power of images!

But, how effective is it to have a great image?  To answer this, here are the Instagram statistics and insights of businesses using IG for their creative digital advertising.

• ⅓ of the most viewed stories are from businesses – Instagram started with IG business Profiles to help businesses to grow and advertise. An estimated 71% of US business uses IG.
• Photos with faces get 38% more likes:  Adding faces to your image increases the scope of positive response, so include people in your campaigns.
• Instagram generates 4x more interactions compared to Facebook: IG engagement rate is on the rise and has increased by 29% between October 2017 and May 2018. With increased engagement, advertisers are spending more on Instagram.
• 83% of users discover new products and services on Instagram:  This implies that apart from being a discovery engine for brands, it has a strong impact on people’s shopping journey.    
• 65% of the most prominent posts feature product: The target audience wants to see the product and know what it has to offer.     
• Photos posts drive more engagement than video: The engagement rate of the image is more than videos,1.03 %. Videos attract more comments and images draw likes.

Examples of Visual in Creative Advertising Campaigns

• Powerful Images

Lemon and Line: The accessory maker has chosen the right image with the right color palette and the whole ad is compelling. Red, Blue and yellow are the right mix of primary colors, creating a high contrast but maintaining a strong balance. The highlighting point is the product is seen on the model’s wrist still it is a part of the whole image and not the focus.

• Visual Metaphor

It can be created by looking for the element to mimic the actual situation. Simple but out of the box concept to attract eyeballs and deliver a strong message.

In this ad, the message is loud and clear whereas the human helmet becomes the visual metaphor. The elements like color, font, lightning can be tweaked.

• Video Advertising

Volvo Trucks: Videos supports explaining big messages in a few frames. Technically, you simplify the idea compared to an image or GIF. in this ad, Jean-Claude Van Damme performs a split. With this ad, Volvo trucks try to demonstrate the sturdiness and stability of the truck’s steering. Youtube responded that when an ad is successful, people search it online on Google and not when it pops out before any video.

This is what every ad should aim for creative space to visit again.

In Closing

Good design can help you to widen your reach and grow. Effective visual adverts are a combination of many elements like color, images, text, lightning or platforms. 

Focus and optimize the visual creatives for a positive impact. When advertising visually, ensure to use your own images as far as possible. Use attention-grabbing images to boost engagement.