Taking a Forest View at Visual Storytelling

Taking a Forest View at Visual Storytelling

Taking a Forest View at Visual Storytelling 1024 621 Shlomi Ron

The other day I had this mental exercise that made me think hard about the implications for visual storytellers looking at our changing landscape.

No one knows for sure, but here’s my take.

First, let’s look at the numbers

Even before dreaming of going live, 60-70 percent of content produced by B2B companies goes unused due to irrelevancy (SiriusDecisions).

The average person today sees 4,000-10,000 ads a day compared to 500-1,600 back in the ‘70s (Forbes).

Of which 53 percent of ads go unseen (IAS Media Quality).

Organic social reach on all platforms has decreased. Facebook, the most used is now down to 0.07 percent (Forbes). That means, 99.93 percent of the time no one sees your post!

Add to that 90.63 percent of pages get no organic search traffic from Google (Ahrefs).

What this tells you is that the majority of published content is pretty much on the same level of never existed, losing the battle to fierce gatekeepers – paid and organic algorithms.

The elephant in the room

All of these stats paint a very clear picture; the elephant in the room is of course the challenge of overcoming the growing communication noise.

A staggering information overload (global data to reach 180 zettabytes by 2025), coupled with quite an elusive attention span (2.5 minutes in 2004 down to 47 seconds in 2023).

So, right off the bat, we have a problem of getting your stories seen even before you can dream of making a first impression.

Add to that the 20+ year-old social media sector is reaching a fatigue point, deepfakes, disinformation, and cybersecurity threats – are all on the rise.

The wildcard

And to give the story another twist.

Now AI is about to reshuffle things even more.

At this point, I liken AI to this wild unregulated Bronco we’re still learning how to tame for the right use cases…

To continue reading my full story, click here.

 

Shlomi Ron

Shlomi Ron is the founder and CEO of the Visual Storytelling Institute, a Miami-based think tank with a mission to bring the gospel of visual storytelling from the world of art to more human-centric and purpose-driven marketing. A digital marketing veteran with over 20 years of experience working both on the agency and brand sides for Fortune 100/500 brands such as Nokia, IBM, and American Express. He started VSI to combine his marketing expertise with his passion for visual stories stemming from his interests in classic Italian cinema and managing the estate of video art pioneer, Buky Schwartz. At VSI, he helps brands rise above the communication noise through visual storytelling consulting, training, and thought leadership. Select clients include Estée Lauder, Microsoft, and Cable & Wireless – to name a few. He currently teaches Brand Storytelling at the University of Miami’s Business School. Thought leader and speaker at key marketing conferences. He is also the host of the Visual Storytelling Today podcast, which ranks in the top 10 best business storytelling podcasts on the Web. His book: Total Acuity: Tales with Marketing Morals to Help You Create Richer Visual Brand Stories. Outside work, he is a nascent bread baker, The Moth fan, and longtime fedora wearer likely to jive with his classic Italian cinema interest.

All stories by: Shlomi Ron

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