It’s because a picture can paint a thousand words, or so they say, that I’m dashing off this post.
I’ve spent perhaps too many years reading, writing and reviewing corporate literature and truthfully, it doesn’t take long to figure out the companies are very poor at making impact.
Today I spent about 40 minutes at the Courtauld Gallery besieged by impact – so clearly the issue isn’t that it’s hard to make an impact.
Rather, businesses completely disregard everything that people naturally understand about communications, and generally stick to a few very rigid, staid formats.
So for example people love to watch reality TV – and yet very few businesses are good at using fly-on-the-wall video to bring their activity to life.
This is particularly true of business strategy. Talk to any employee engagement professional and they will tell you that employees need to get what the business is trying to achieve and their role within it. Without this, it’s hard for anyone to know if they’re doing the right thing.
And yet most businesses are really poor at communicating their strategy in an interesting, engaging way.
Well, I came across one business, Delta 7, which excels at taking very dry, protracted business plans and transforming them into beautiful, simple pictures.
The point being that it’s much easier to get people engaged with company goals and business objectives when they are visual rather than a dry list of meaningless words and numbers.
Pictures also have the benefit that they can easily be hung on walls and displayed in places where people meet and pass, which means there is a regular reminder of what everyone is trying to achieve by turning up to work.
Deborah Lewis: PR and engagement expert
Deborah’s 20 year career has been focused on helping businesses with complex messages, often operating in challenging and commoditised sectors. From tissues to chocolate, from software engineering to change management consulting, Deborah’s skill lies in assisting management in identifying the right voice for the business and defining strong and compelling stories which will resonate across audiences.
An entrepreneur, Deborah set up a PR consultancy in 2007 which became one of the largest corporate and business to business independents in the UK, with a reputation for high quality and customer care, and achieving results where other agencies had failed.
