Who was the photographer? WA based Tony McDonough. You can view his work here - it's worth looking through his images as all of them tell a story beyond the brief. It's what makes them so powerful, and so important.
I sat in class this week listening to a photographer speak to students about the importance of the visual. The key concept he kept coming back to was "you have to build an emotional connection with your viewer". This applies as much to transmedia storytelling as it does to photography. A key purpose of a transmedia storytelling approach is to build a long term relationship with your audience, encouraging participation and eventually (hopefully) 'fandom'. Simon Staffans talks about long-term storytelling and the organic, "unintentional way, that give rise to new stories that are utterly believable and engaging." One of the easiest ways to tell a long-term story and evoke that powerful connection is with the right visuals. Visuals create stories in our minds without words, and if they connect at the right moment, are more easily remembered than words. The world in which we live was visual long before words were spoken and language was born. The platforms available to share our stories today have made this even more poignant with statistics showing people prefer visual based information. It's not enough for us as public relations practitioners to be storytellers, but we must also be visual storytellers, able to bring our stories to life in the simplest of ways.
Who was the photographer? WA based Tony McDonough. You can view his work here - it's worth looking through his images as all of them tell a story beyond the brief. It's what makes them so powerful, and so important.
Shannon Bochenek
5/10/2016 12:24:46 am
I totally agree!
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Bridget
5/12/2016 09:29:46 pm
Thanks for your comment Shannon, the visual is becoming so important...words are not enough today.
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Kaelen
5/12/2016 11:34:18 pm
This blog post reminds me of the Burberry campaign and transmedia strategy we analysed in the first week of semester. Like your blog post their campaign demonstrated the way in which relationships are built with consumers and stakeholder is based emotional connections through visuals.
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Mitchell Clarkson
5/14/2016 01:15:49 am
The bit that stood out to me most was this "long-term storytelling and the organic, unintentional way, that give rise to new stories that are utterly believable and engaging."
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Bridget.
5/14/2016 06:45:29 pm
That's very true - as PR practitioners we need to be able to encourage the 'organic'...it's possible in the right environment
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Giorgia Iannello
5/14/2016 07:31:19 pm
I can not agree enough! From my own experiences I can say with confidence that if there was no emotional connection between myself and the transmedia story then I would lose interest within seconds.
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Elizabeth Fenwick
5/16/2016 03:21:19 am
Just like that Burberry campaign, its so exciting and interesting to see what the future holds for public relations in terms of enhancements in technology. What will our technology be like in 10 years time. What will we be able to do to enhance storytelling and stimulate emotional connections with audiences. Like we see in Jurassic World, will visuals be holograms of people talking, or will visuals become tangible, engaging the five senses. Just have to wait to find out I suppose.
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Caroline Muramba
11/6/2016 12:38:05 am
this has opened my thoughts. Building an emotional connection is indeed vital in PR.
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AuthorBridget Tombleson is a Curtin University lecturer. I've created this space for my PR students as an example for their learning. Archives
May 2016
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