Most marketers agree that visual assets such as photography, illustrations, infographics, and videos, are integral to customer engagement and will increase in usage in the coming year.
And while 65% of senior marketing executives believe visual assets are core to how their brand stories are communicated, only 27% have the ability to aggregate, organize, and manage these assets across marketing and non-marketing teams, according to a new study.
The study, From Content to Creativity: The Role of visual Media in Impactful Brand Storytelling, was released by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council.
Here are some key takeaways from the study:
Video will most dramatically increase in importance in the near future, according to 79% of senior marketers
Infographics (60%), photographs (50%), and illustrations (41%) will also increase in usage.
Conducted in partnership with Libris, the study reveals that internal silos, disconnected content development strategies, and a vast list of other marketing priorities have prevented visual assets from being fully leveraged across the organization.
“Marketers have been remiss in approaching the visual asset dialogue as part of the strategic customer experience and engagement dialogue,” said Liz Miller, Senior Vice President of Marketing for the CMO Council. “Perhaps because visual assets have long been the domain of creative or agency resources, the conversation around maximizing value across the organization has fallen off of the priority list. But as customers continue to react in meaningful ways to visual media, marketing cannot afford to stand idly by and not include visuals in the content ROI agenda.”
Consumer research shows that 40% of customers will respond better to visual information than plain text (Zabisco). But, according to the 177 marketing executives surveyed by the CMO Council in the second quarter of 2015, current investments in centralization of these assets do not reflect this level of priority.
“Companies will continue making massive investments in the production and procurement of visual media assets because of the obvious and powerful impact on audience engagement and customer experience,” explained Andrew Fingerman, CEO of PhotoShelter. “Yet as the study shows, hiding these assets away in team silos is destroying the greater organization's potential return on content investments. As more content is captured and created, companies will need to rebalance their focus with a greater emphasis on strategies behind digital asset management, including centralization, storage and accessibility.”