I’ve been thinking about infographics and corporate communications recently, having noticed how more and more companies are including them in their corporate websites – typically in the Media section, or in the About Us section. So I was delighted when Scott Huntingdon suggested that he write a post about infographics. Over to you, Scott…
Infographics are popping up all over the place, in everything from small business blogs to how-to slides, corporate emails to online magazine articles. There is a reason for their popularity, and if you haven’t tapped into their unique tactical power, perhaps you should start thinking about how your marketing strategy and/or communication channels could benefit from creative infographics.
Branding and Beyond
You may or may not have already used infographics in some of your marketing efforts. Infographics like this typically spread branding awareness, communicate the benefits of a particular product or service, or attempt to connect to the customer in one way or another. Below, we can see this exemplified in this 2015 Ford Mustang infographic.
This is a perfect use of an infographic: visual representations of one or more communicated concepts, commercial goods or information accompanied by small bits of text to help describe or support what is visually communicated. Here we see what’s new about the 2015 Mustang: The car is pictured itself, while the small bits of images and text tell us in a creative way exactly what’s different about this model (such as how many clowns it could hold).
However, corporations that have used infographics in much more creative ways get much more attention. When Kulula Airlines underwent a brand new fleet design, guess what it included?
The entire aircraft exterior is painted as a giant infographic, not only a highly creative one, but very effective as a means of branding and redesign.
Corporate Communications
Communicating with your audience or target market is not the only way to use infographics effectively. Infographics can certainly help to improve in-house corporate relationships using humorous, engaging or creative infographics, which can easily be shared not just within corporate walls but with your target audience. It’s no secret by now that many times what goes viral on social media contains glimpses of what’s behind the scenes at a particular enterprise.
Additionally, infographics can be used to help deliver a briefing, manage projects and teams, assign tasks, deliver corporate newsletter content, or any other type of in-house communication. Using these methods can actually help clarify and quicken productivity goals, because all of us, not just your target audience, are highly visual creatures, your staff and management teams included.
For example, it’s not unlikely that a flow-chart infographic to present the marketing budget assessment may be a more effective means to communicate how it fits in with overall corporate goals. Humorous infographics can lighten the mood of a serious meeting, just be careful not to use them for something very serious like a merger or buy-out.
We tend to understand information better and more quickly when it is handed to us visually. Most of us forget things we’ve read even recently, but we remember clearly things that we have seen.
Help for Creating Infographics
Obviously not all of us are visual design artists, but there are some great tutorials and tips for creating infographics to be both informative and well-designed. These visual tools for communication are going to be seen around the web more and more, and for good reason: They deliver information in several seconds, make that information more memorable, are highly shareable and add diversity to communication efforts. All of these things are good reasons to use infographics for in-house communication purposes as well as external ones.
Thanks, Scott!
Scott Huntington is a social media marketer from Pennsylvania. Check out his blog, blogspike.com
Lucy is Editor at Corporate Eye
