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Images play a vital role in allowing us to interpret messages quickly, and in aiding memory. Since the role of internal communication is to help employees understand and believe in their organization’s strategy, using high-impact visuals to explain messages plays a big part in achieving those objectives. As author Alfred A. Montapert once said: “To accomplish great things we must first dream, then visualise, then plan…believe…act!”
To produce fresh and inspiring communications, you need a tight summary, or brief, outlining the business objectives for a project as well as an understanding of the organization’s strategy. You have to spend time with people to really get a feel for the organization’s culture and the mind-set of its employees. Once you understand the brief, you then have the freedom to explore more creative concepts. Jacqui Kibby, senior creative editor at theblueballroom, explains, “When it comes to brainstorming for visuals, always allow yourself to go wild in the early stages and don’t stop the ideas flowing; they can be reined in later, but will spark an inspired idea for the finished product.” Ultimately, you can still be imaginative and push the boundaries visually in your internal communications while sticking to the brief.
The challenge comes in inspiring communicators to push the boundaries. In the internal communication environment, creative materials are usually passed around to lots of people for comment. And opinions are very subjective; a 50-year-old head of the treasury department, for example, may not be ideally suited to judge the creative concepts for an internal communication targeting 25-year-old recent graduates. The approval process can be long, which means more people are involved and you have a lot of opinions to consider.
To avoid creating bland communications, it’s important to suggest some thought-provoking innovative ideas. In our organization, our account managers have to sell ideas to their clients; we aim to both keep the client happy and give them the confidence to be visually daring in their communications. This relationship is important in terms of the quality of the final product; if everyone plays it safe, you get dull communications.
The inside story
There is a disparity between the design approaches taken to reach external audiences and internal audiences. According to Lyn Illsley, creative services manager at theblueballroom, “Companies are less bold in their internal materials than external and the challenge is to get them to take risks and engage in new and contemporary styles and technologies.” Internally, unless you are a very large company with the ability to target campaigns at specific audiences, you have to appeal to everyone—different ages, sexes, departments or locations—all at once. So the result tends to be a more generic offering that attempts to appeal to everyone.
Intelligent and imaginative use of photo libraries is vital in the absence of a budget for photo shoots. Finding the right image that epitomizes your message—whether photographic or illustrated—is a real talent. With an internal magazine, the cover image is sometimes supplied by the client. These images may have been taken by an employee with no photography experience, so often they will be of poor quality. Though it’s important to be sensitive about the pride people take in supplying their own photos, a poor cover image ultimately has a massive effect on the look of a publication.
All too often, the quick-fix photo option of people shaking hands while smiling at the camera (known in the business as grip-and-grins), crowded conference line-ups and other overly posed, badly lit snaps are not only uninspiring but do little to draw your reader into the content (unless they are the one in the photo). On the other hand, too much reliance by your publication on over-used marketing or product shots from the corporate library can result in your audience feeling cheated.
For images with interest and impact, you must look for creative clues in the content of the story and how it is told, then brainstorm image ideas around the words that are used. By looking at why an award was presented, the content covered in a conference, or simply taking the time to chat with the people involved in an event you can elicit words which themselves conjure up a whole set of images in your mind. If you think people-centric imagery, movement and emotion, you can’t often go wrong.
As words can inspire pictures, so too can pictures inspire words. Both need to work in complete harmony.
Global and local considerations
When using visuals for a global audience, they must be kept simple and avoid the use of gestures, idioms or jokes that might offend a certain culture. For this reason, the use of cartoons and animation is often a smart route. For the “Think Green-Go Green” climate protection program for DHL, our company used a campaign figurehead—a symbolic and androgynous “action hero” that was simple, memorable, non-controversial and sympathetic to the organization’s corporate identity. The hero appeared in e-mail headers, animated flash files, briefing packs, postcards, and on the company intranet.
If you are communicating to one specific audience, you can be more specific with the visuals you choose to include. The Siemens Energy Service business, based in Newcastle, U.K. needed a health and safety campaign to reduce workplace injuries for office and site-based employees who work with large industrial machinery. The campaign aimed to reduce accidents and included a range of hard-hitting posters designed to raise awareness of the dangers and repercussions of industrial accidents.
The visuals needed to grab the viewer every time they saw them, so that the posters didn’t lose impact over time. The Siemens posters played on the emotion of fear. Illsley says, “After examining the demographic that would be viewing these posters, hardworking men, we knew we could create the perfect blend of graphically chilling images injected with just the right amount of humor, that couldn’t be ignored.”
The changing workforce
As workforce demographics change, a number of trends are affecting the modern communicator, with implications for the communication methods used. The rise of remote workers, virtual teams and the use of freelancers mean that communicators now have to deliver messages that unite and engage employees who don’t have day-to-day interaction in an office environment.
This change in workplace organization could be seen as a threat to how effectively a company communicates with workers. But, as employees become increasingly tech-savvy and as the digital arena explodes, it offers new and exciting opportunities to communicate using the latest interactive channels, whether it’s an e-zine, a microblog, podcast, intranet download or SMS messaging. These tools are all about people and user-generated contributions that allow for collaborative projects and increase dialogue.
Thinking visually is constantly required for online communication. Image size can slow download speed and lead your reader to become bored and go elsewhere. The amount of space available also tends to be more limited when publishing online. Images often appear smaller than those found in printed publications so they can be viewed on a handheld device like an iPhone or BlackBerry. Although there are different requirement for publishing images online, visuals can aid accessibility and your audience’s emotional engagement with your online content.
If people work remotely but not online, these options are not possible. For these environments, communicators and designers can create master artwork for the intranet, which is editable and printed in local offices in a local language. For one of our clients whose employees were predominantly salesmen on the road, we produced manuals and tools to use in their cars. It might be seen as traditional but it’s about what works best for that audience.
A visual image—whatever the medium—is all about getting noticed and having impact.
Sheila Parry is managing director of theblueballroom, a specialist internal communication agency. |
To communicate with a global audience from diverse cultural backgrounds, the Think Green campaign for DHL employed animation and cartoon-like characters.
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The Safety First campaign for Siemens Energy Service employed striking visuals to engage and inform its audience.
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