Luminate Corporate Blog

Storytelling with Pictures

"In a world where we only have 140 characters to tell our stories, a picture is worth 1,000 tweets." (Anneke Jong, theDailyMuse)

In her recent blog post, "The Internet is Killing Storytelling, but Photos are Bringing it Back", Anneke touches on key trends of how our communications online are getting shorter and shorter, which is killing our ability to tell a story. She brings up some fantastic points, which gives further proof that we are a visual culture. In this new world we are turning more and more to photos as they speak louder, and faster, than words. 

What story do you think this photo is telling you? 

(Photo taken by Rob Ginda)

Simply Irresistible

Nike made waves at the London Olympics by outfitting nearly all of the athletes with eye-catching neon footwear. While not an official sponsor, the bright shoes captured as much brand attention as formal sponsors. Adage reports that Nike carefully chose the eye-catching neon yellow color to contrast all the backdrops shown during Olympic events, including the red track, black & blue boxing ring, and blue and white fencing stage.

This bright neon trend is not new to Luminate's publishers. Earlier this year, we published a blog showing neon and bright fashions garnered the most interest of all the products featured in Publishers' fashion and entertainment images. Through Luminate's Product in the Picture App, users can mouse over an image to reveal information about the fashion products featured in the image. We discovered that images of people wearing bright colors, like yellow, orange, and red, had 60% higher click-through-rates than people wearing darker colors. On top of that, eye-catching neon tones generated an even greater 75% boost in engagement.

Nike professes the neon shade is "the most-visible color to the human eye." I wonder if they also knew consumers find it simply irresistible.

Forget About Romney! Forget About Obama! Vote for ChasNote & Luminate!

 

I recommended to the folks at SxSW that next year’s conference should have a session on "image strategy for publishers," and that I’m just the guy to lead the discussion. If that sounds like an interesting topic, please click on the button above to vote for my session.

"Friends are more likely to hit the Like Button if status updates include a photo; Tweets with pictures have a longer shelf life than those with text or links alone. Even news publishers report that the majority of page views happen in photo galleries. It’s no wonder that images take up more of the web’s pixels than they did 5 years ago — or 5 months ago."

If selected, I promise to offer up at least 5 good ideas on how you can boost the effectiveness of the images on your site. Maybe I’ll even hand out cupcakes.

Reposted from ChasNote

"19 Reasons You Should Include Visual Content in Your Marketing"

Catchy title, huh? It definitely caught our attention from HubSpot earlier this week. Within the article, there are a handful of specific proof points that pertain to images. A few of our favorites include:  

• "90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text."
• "40% of people will respond better to visual information than plain text."
• "Publishers who use infographics grow in traffic an average of 12% more than those who don't."

(Source: HubSpot Blog)

Check out the article for more detailed information, including stats on other visual content. 

Also, here is an example of Luminate's Visual Marketing. A photo of our platform in action in Times Square, NYC. 

A Picture Proves Success

On Sunday, August 5th, a few Luminati were able to watch the Mars rover Curiosity landing live from the NASA facility in Mountain View, CA. Everyone enjoyed the event, especially since the Curiosity landing was a point in history they would never forget. 

"Gathering at NASA Ames to watch Curiosity land on Mars was an amazing experience," said Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Luminate. "The crowd's emotions peaked twice: first, when JPL announced tersely 'Touchdown confirmed' and then again, when we received the first image from the surface. A grainy, 64x64, black and white image electrified the crowd with evidence Curiosity had successfully landed. Photos of rockets taking off, astronauts in zero G, and "Blue Marble" Earth, have long symbolized our success in space. That night a mere thumbnail assumed similarly outsized significance."

Here is the first photo from Curiosity that had the crowds celebrating: 

                       
1st image from Curiosity - NASA                      Crowd seeing 1st image from Curiosity on screen

A few minutes after Mission Control verbally confirmed Curiosity had landed safely, the rover sent it's first image to confirm it had landed on the surface. When NASA shared this photo with the Mountain View facility, the crowd cheered louder than when they received the verbal confirmation Curiosity had landed. Jim Everingham described it as "It was almost like the picture gave the crowd permission to start celebrating. It was our evidence the computers were accurate." This is another proof point that shows we are a visual culture and how pictures are important to us. Even photos as grainy and small as what was shared from Curiosity. The coolest part is this photo is coming from our neighboring planet, which is on average 140 million miles from Earth (225 million km). 

Here are a few other links to stories with more photos and information on the Mars landing, including Curiosity's first color photo. 

Reuters: Mars rover Curiosity sends home first color photo 

NatGeo: Mars Rover's "Crazy" Landing, Step by Step (in Pictures) 

Washington Post: NASA's Curiosity rover successfully touches down on Mars 

What is the Most-Viewed Image on the Web?

With over 3 trillion images online and millions more uploaded daily, I have always been curious what image has been seen the most. My question was answered this morning, when a team member found a blog post from PetaPixel on "The Most-Viewed Photo of All Time". The answer was shocking. It is a picture called Bliss that was taken by Charles O'Rear. The photo has apparently been viewed by "over 1 billion people" since 2002. The big question is why this image? 

According to Mashable, Charles O'Rear happened to take the photo while he was on another assignment. He then sold the photo to Microsoft for an undisclosed amount. In 2002, Microsoft made the image the default desktop view for Window XP. 

Given the image was the default desktop wallpaper for the largest operating system in the world, it makes sense this is the top viewed image since the picture automatically appears once your PC set-up is complete. What I find funny is the image is of Sonoma, CA. I never would've guessed it was an image from Sonoma because it was too green. For those who have never been to Sonoma, it is very rare to see the hill that green. Usually it's a green/brown color or just brown. I think the Dutch had it right when they named this photo Ireland in Microsofts Operating system. If you check out the Wikipedia page for Bliss there are photos take of the same location from 2006 & 2011. The scenery looks a lot different. 

I wonder what photo could overtake this one in popularity in the midst of an image revolution?