I immediately think of storytelling as the written word probably because words have always been a major part of my work as a marketing creative. I love talented wordsmith marketing copy, perfect DIY copy and great history. Although I’m not fond of fiction, I recognize and sometimes enjoy great writers of that genre. But what about audio and video?
The choice is often determined by the nature of the story and its distribution as much as the predilection of the story teller. Then there is the development cost factor. Video will always win when it comes to entertainment and demonstration value, but it’s costly. Audio alone worked in the days of radio, but it requires imagination and processing time. Don’t take this personally, but web visitors are lazy. They want to immediately see why they should read further.
When we are all competing for a few seconds of that precious commodity — a viewers attention — adding the power of a visual is a must. This suggestion is reinforced by Ekaterina Walter, author of The Power of Visual Storytelling, who says the brain processes visuals 600,000 times faster than the written word. However, like all forms of communication, the caveat for successful story telling is in the execution.
Infographics – the bad and the good
At its best, an infographic will tell a complicated story quickly, with an economy of words and production cost. But all too often the infographics I see are horrible with poor design and way too many words. So when we come upon a compelling infographic, we want to share it.
The Good
We applaud the company Business Backer that has found how to explain to their clients the difference between eight business models. They used a cow to help describe them. Yes, that’s what I said, a cow. The person (or team) who came up with this concept is a truly creative and just plain smart. The concept took courage, and it works. So we hope you will be inspired.
You will see the Business Backer reasoning is simple. Here is their infographic which is Creative Commons licensed. You can also download the full infographic. Visit the Business Backer site to read their full descriptions which include well known companies representing each business model.
It goes to show that the simplicity of one humble cow can demonstrate the operations of many businesses today. Will infographics be the best choice for telling your story? Most often infographics suffer from poor execution, but this post shares one of the best. This article is an example of curating content which is described in my article about Content Ethics. Credit for the creation of this content is noted at the beginning of this article.
When you’re ready to tell your story give me a call at 954-257-7066 and let me put our resources to work for you.
Sources
The On-demand Economy — hbr.org
Different types of business models. — Investopedia.com
Ziferblat — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziferblat
Crowdsourcing— crowdsourcing.com
Loss Leader Pricing — https://www.inc.com/karl-and-bill/selling-your-product-at-a-loss-can-be-good-for-business.html
If you want to explore other infographic solutions the website creativebloq.com claims to have found the 100 best infographics. Use your own judgement.
