Once upon a time there was a world without colour.

This world, which we will call Blanc Noir only had black and white.
The population saw everything in black and white and hence everything they had was either black or white (pretty obvious, really what sort of story is this anyway??).

One day a visitor from another world called Couleur (I’ve a bit of a soft spot for French) came along and wore clothes that were red and yellow. 

The visitor couldn’t understand why the inhabitants of Blanc Noir didn’t wear anything but black and white when all about them was colour.

The trees the sky, grass, only man made objects were in black and white.

The inhabitants on the other hand saw his clothes as black (red) and White (yellow).

One day something strange happened this stranger had a camera that took pictures in colour. 

As he took more pictures and showed everyone what he took in the rear screen of the camera, they noticed that there was something strange going on, everything in the camera was in colour!

As they looked around they realised that in fact that all natural world was in colour, it was only themselves and the buildings and vehicles that were in black and white.

Imagine seeing this for the first time how did you think they reacted?

How would you react?

Of course they immediately took steps to colourise everything.

 

Which was great for all the business’s on Couleur as they had plenty of colour products. 

But not so good for the business’s on Blanc Noir as everything they had was black and white.

This year 2016 has been the start of something special. It’s been a year when some clever small businesses like the businesses on Couleur have realised that their strongest ally in their marketing is images and video.

Our world is changing and the growth of technology to help create visual content is now easier than ever and will continue to get even easier for the foreseeable future.

Of course those that don’t take steps to take advantage of this will be like those businesses on Blanc Noir.

The world of visual content is about to take over from world of words.

Why is this?

Well for one thing our lives are so busy that we only give marketing material a nano-second to get our attention and images are our first impression of the message.

If we like it, we will hang around and read the written content and even look to buy the product or service.

Or, if we don’t like it then we move on.

That’s why Facebook has been ramping up its image and video posting platform, why Instagram and Snapchat are so popular and why Twitter has also beefed up its image posting platform. 

They all realise that if content is king then it’s visuals are all powerful.

You know, it’s no wonder that this has happened.
Our TV screens have become bigger. I bought one a few months ago which is 60”! 60” is huge! The TV we had before was 42” and probably the one before that was 30”.

Movie screen sizes have increased almost to the point that we have to exercise our peripheral vision to see the whole screen.

Our mobile phones have got bigger, so much so that they’ve almost taken over from tablets.

We have screens on cameras, watches, fridges, printers, security equipment, automobiles, cooking appliances and much more.

Giant LED screens in public places assault our visual senses.

So visual content is everywhere and that’s what we as consumers look for.

Now, don’t get me wrong here! Written content is still important.
As the saying goes a picture may paint a thousand words but you may need another thousand words to tell the whole story.

Today visual content is a no-brainer for any business looking to market their product or service.

Not just visual content but good visual content.

So what about your experience with visual content?

What’s the number one obstacle stopping you from creating images or video for your marketing?

I’d really like to know. So please leave your answers in the comments below. 

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