We consume photos and videos via social networks, online media and formats. Short text, lots of images and the occasional moving image. Little time, quick moments for our full attention. What is surprising is that this power of visuals is still far too neglected in internal communication. Yet here, too, we only have selective opportunities to win over our colleagues to our messages.
Yes, of course: it’s not news to us all that we take in around 80 percent of information through our eyes. But did you know that a good quarter of the brain is involved in processing this input? This makes vision the boss of the human sensory system.
With the knowledge of these processes, no internal communication should be without the power of images, graphics, videos and animations. And even though digital tools today offer many opportunities to create visual products yourself, we can only advise you to ask someone who is familiar with them. Communication designers know the interplay of form, color and typography and generate effects from this composition.
If you are still at the very beginning of this topic and visuals play a subordinate role in your IC, then you should start with small steps:
- Define a goal that you want to achieve with regard to the design of your internal communication. The presentation of your internal topics also reflects the esteem in which you hold your addressees. The aim should therefore be that the internal appearance can keep up with the external appearance in terms of value.
- Consult with someone in the field. If you don’t have an expert in your company, look for someone who can advise you externally. A graphic designer will combine an outside view of your products, corporate design and your defined goals to come up with ideas that will enable the IC to communicate more attractively.
- Start to establish yourself as an internal brand. This can be done with a small visual as part of the corporate design or with a visual frame that packages your information in a recognizable and appealing way.
Making more than beautiful
As soon as creation has a fixed place in your IC, it is important to develop it further. Because with the ever-increasing amount of information, the challenge is already more complex: we have to give our colleagues orientation and visual anchors to filter out the important things from the daily information overload. This is why successful internal communicators think in terms of campaigns in order to reach their target groups with their topics.
Three ingredients are needed for the collaboration with the communication designer to become a creative symbiosis and for the results to be convincing:
- Briefing: Formulate clearly and precisely to your colleagues what exactly the goal of the communication measure is and what you need to achieve it. A common understanding of the result of the collaboration is at the end of this briefing. You should definitely take this time so that you don’t waste the even more valuable (and usually scarcer) implementation time on results that end up beside the point.
- Time: Time pressure limits creativity. Communicate with each other at the idea stage. A visual person often interprets things differently and it is therefore worth getting them on board in good time – also for valuable input instead of just focusing on the output. This way, creative colleagues can often assess much better which medium best suits the message.
- Authenticity: The packaging of a topic must be authentic. Just like people’s outfits, it only works if it matches the content. An authentic presentation creates credibility and that is what matters to us in internal communication. Only those who are credible can be convincing. This also means that you don’t have to follow every trend in the world of IC. Not every fashion suits my company, my message or my campaign.
We also involved our creative colleagues in this article in order to hear their opinions and find out what they want from our collaboration. The fact is that they do much more than just package our messages beautifully. Their creative support makes the difference between “sending” and really “reaching”.
Copyright lead image: the creative exchange / unsplash