Five years ago or even less the concept of photo sharing on social networks revolved primarily around grainy family photographs – sometimes embarrassing ones – holiday snaps that few other people wanted to see and cute, furry pets. They were a place reserved for the individual and, for many, were a sanctuary from brands and their heavy-handed advertising messages.
How times have changed. Brands have finally begun to realise how to leverage social networks in a manner that isn’t intrusive but which instead is genuinely engaging. They have also found that when that engagement is natural, users are happy to share brand or product information. As a consequence, the benefits can be more significant than they could ever have imagined. Photo-marketing is not the future of marketing; it’s the here and now.
A big part of the reason for this has been the explosion in the use of mobile devices. Recent research from Adobe showed that 71% of tablet and smartphone owners access social media from their mobile devices. This fundamentally changes the dynamic in terms of how we, as individuals, receive and post information to social networks as well as how brands deliver their marketing messages. Brands that have yet to tap into the power of mobile marketing and social media are already behind the curve.
And, of course, great use of mobile devices means a greater use of images. Facebook and Twitter have steadily recognised users’ desire to communicate through images as much as text as the way to communicate, whilst sites like Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram are growing in popularity exactly because they are image-oriented.
As consumers, we can’t get enough of it. Smartphone sales exceeded feature phone sales for the first time last year. Gartner reported worldwide mobile phone sales totalling 435 million units with smartphone sales up 46.5% from the previous year. Deloitte reported that between 12 and 13 million tablets were sold in the UK in 2013. The demand for image content is only going to grow and so, to compete in that social space, brands will have to adopt increasingly interesting and creative approaches to content and image marketing in 2014. The rewards for brands the put themselves in the picture could be enormous.
