Chris Gay
ABC, is a co-founder of Bridge Consulting, a network of engagement and communication professionals who provide full-service solutions to organizations of all sizes, industries and geographic locations. Chris has worked in corporate America for 25 years in both HR and communication. Her work has earned three IABC Gold Quills, a PRSA Silver Anvil and recognition as one of the top 20 HR case studies in the world according to the International Benchmarking Association.
The proverb “a picture is worth a thousand words” implies that complex stories can be described with just a single image, or that an image may be more influential than a substantial amount of text.
The modern use of the phrase is believed to stem from an article by Fred R. Barnard in the advertising trade journal Printers’ Ink, promoting the use of images in advertisements that appeared on the sides of streetcars. The December 8, 1921 issue carried an article entitled, “One Look Is Worth a Thousand Words”.
Regardless of the quote’s origin, it’s one we’ve heard many times and intuitively we know it to be correct. Yet all too often, once we enter the doors of our organizations, we immediately shift into a gear where it’s just words, words and more words.
Readers Digest recently conducted a study which found that the average corporate email user sends and receives 133 messages per day. If we combine this with all of the paper memos, voicemails and instant messages we receive, we’re truly overwhelmed with words at work.
The problem of information overload
We hear from employees on a consistent basis that they feel as if they’re getting information through a fire hose. There’s just no way that most people can absorb such tremendous amounts of content on a daily basis. In employee workshops with companies across the US, we’ve been asking people if they read all of the information that they receive. In the dozens of workshops we’ve conducted, only one person has raised their hand to say, “yes”.
This is where we, as communicators, have a real opportunity. How can we present information in a way that really grabs people’s attention and drives home our most critical messages? The questions remain: Is the content relevant for the audience? Is it the right amount of information? Is it presented in the right format?
Let pictures do the talking
There’s a great deal of research that tells us that increasing the amount of visual communication used in corporate communication should be part of the solution. Consider the following:
- Statistics show that over 50 percent of jobs require visual problem solving, meaning a visual culture clearly affects our work (Nancy Dunlap, Director of Educational Services, Safari Technologies).
- People are more likely to remember your content in the form of stories and examples, and they are also more likely to remember your content if your visuals are unique, powerful and of the highest quality (Garr Reynolds, Associate Professor of Management, Kansai Gaidai University).
- Less than 30 percent of the population strongly uses visual/spatial thinking, another 45 percent uses both visual/spatial thinking and thinking in the form of words, and only 25 percent thinks exclusively in words (Dr. Linda Kreger Silverman, Director, Institute for the Study of Advanced Development).
If only one quarter of the population thinks exclusively in words, what does that say about our preference for communicating organizational information in words alone?
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