Get the Picture or Get Lost – Why PR Needs Visual Thinking

Between PR Newswire and BusinessWire, around 2,000 press releases go out over the wires each day.

Wow, 2,000 press releases! How many of those actually contain news? Noise from traditional PR tools across fragmented media channels are fueling bad pitches and stunts that have little or nothing to do with helping the client’s business.

As a result PR people are struggling to help clients stand out – in any way possible. But more isn’t the solution to any problem. Better is the answer. How do we improve?

We must embrace the visual.

Visuals decrease our word count and increase our effectiveness. And in a Web 2.0 society it's become cheaper and easier to make our efforts über visual. The evolution of news and search is making this visual leap essential.

The rest of this post is actually available as a free .pdf file that you can grab here if you're interested. This is also cross-posted to The Bad Pitch Blog.

Comments

[Sheryl Davey]

A picture is worth a thousand words. For public relations practitioners where every word is so vital, visuals can have a huge impact. Especially in this “time-starved” world where attention spans are nearly non-existent being more visual will definitely pay off.

Glen T. Cameron’s and Denis Wilcox’s book Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics states “sight accounts for 83 per cent of what we learn” and “the time required to present a concept can be reduced by up to 40 per cent with visuals” (435-436). With statistics like this it is hard to understand why news releases are sent out without pictures!

This idea of visual thinking is not new. It has been around for decades! Check out this 1966 Muppet clip where Kermit is learning about visual thinking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU57i9rxoYU

Works Cited:

Cameron, Glen T. and Denis Wilcox. Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics. 9th Edition. United States: Pearson, 2009.

[Ric McCoy]

Brands are more important than a leaky business plan, for if the public cannot distinguish you from your competitor or remember who you are, then the likelihood of success is almost certain to fail.