Laura Kakolewski
There is no question that infographics have tumbled into the world of marketing.
Infographics serve as visual narratives that arrange patterns, relationships, or trends in a creative and visually appealing way. The ideal infographic organizes large amounts of data with art and design finesse, and in the end, a story materializes.
And thanks to social media, infographics have become a popular form of shareable content for brands, serving as an engagement tool for online audiences.
When it comes to the evolution of the infographic, in the past two years, infographics have grown bigger, brighter, and richer in content. For example, compare both the size and amount of data illustrated on this 2011 infographic to that found on the average size of a 2012 infographic.
In my work as an arts marketer, I have experienced this growth first-hand. In designing our e-book, 13 Social Media Infographics Every Marketer Needs to See Volume 2, our primary challenge was fitting the volume of content so that it would match the customary dimensions of the publications our e-book library.
The rise of infographics has also been seen through the development of user-friendly websites such as visual.ly, which has raised $2 million dollars to allow you to create, customize, and share your own infographics easily and for free.
However, a recent Huffington Post article discusses the notion that as content creators, it is a constant uphill battle to create fresh and engaging content that will grab the attention of our online audience. The author argues that “the time has come to take the world of infographics to the next level: video.”
According to the article, content that is in the form of the infographic, a trend that has undeniably been on the rise, will soon be replaced by explainer videos, or “short, actionable and instructive videos that businesses use to quickly explain what it is they do, and how they can solve their customer’s biggest problems.”
In our ever changing world of technology, are explainer videos a more engaging, more shareable, and more powerful way of demonstrating what infographics already do?
This left me wondering: is the Infographic Dead – Already?
Watch this short video to see an example of how an explainer video takes on the type of content that we have seen in infographics:
So I ask you as arts marketers—do you find explainer videos more engaging in content than the infographic? Or can we exist in a world where infographics and explainer videos both thrive as equally shareable and visually interesting content?
So first let me make it clear that I make both infographics and explainer videos. I started life as a journalist, then moved to broadcast and on to marketing. Put those skills together and you have someone that can use words, video or still image to tell a story. I have worked for a B2B tech agency – so I often had to make the complex simple. I would use explainers if i needed to show how something worked as part of the fact filled video… ‘This is how you connect two units to together to create four times the speed’. Video works great when the recipient must see what they will need to do. The video, being linea dictated the speed of information consumption. The viewer must sit through it in real time, so the video must add enough value to keep them watching. On the other hand the infographic comes in to its own as it allows the reader to move through the content at a pace they dictate (usually very fast gleaning nuggets on the way). They can zoom in on information they deem fit and ignore the rest. So it is not one or the other but rather the right one for the task.
Hi Laura –
I still believe the Chinese are right — “One picture is worth 1000 words!” Info-graphics allow me to access, share and archive information and help me “see” the facts in a way that helps me understand them.
Maybe it’s just me with a grasshopper focus today, but the video was too long, the music made me crazy and I couldn’t pull out just the facts I wanted from the ongoing narrative. Our experience is that videos of longer than 90 seconds seem eternal — have you watched any 60 second TV commercials lately? The famous Superbowl “Imported from Detroit” car commercial seemed like a docudrama! I believe info-graphics will continue to be important and useful and video will have to become incredibly focused and irresistible to compete.
David,
Thank you for your response! It is interesting to read the viewpoint of a marketer who has direct experience in the creation of both infographics and explainer videos. The point that you bring up is a good one – that infographics allow the viewer to absorb the data, facts, and figures at their own tempo. This is valuable for our audiences as we think about how we disseminate content.
I must say I do agree with you – I don’t think that it is one or the other. Both infographics and explainer videos serve different purposes, but both forms can be engaging content when created effectively. Personally, as someone who has created two e-publications that deal solely with infographics, I would hate to see them “tumble out” of the world of marketing.
Mary,
I couldn’t have put it better myself – as an art history buff /arts marketer, a picture is absolutely worth a thousand words. Infographics have, for me, served as CLEAR and FUNCTIONAL tools (not to mention often very entertaining) in my work. When I watched the explainer video – I felt similar to the way you did. In fact, I must admit, do I remember (accurately), every statistic from the video since the first day I wrote my blog? No. In fact, I just watched it again to remind myself. This leaves me wondering – how engaging can this explainer video really be?
And you bring up a fabulous discussion – the notion of the attention span of our online audience when it comes to online video. We indeed live in a digital age in which our video marketing efforts must take into account LENGTH just as must as CONTENT (since we all have facebook, twitter, and pinterest open simultaneously while checking our e-mail on our mobile device and searching for the newest video on Youtube). I agree with you – the infographic will have a future in marketing.