There is a great deal of debate about our brains developed to have this capacity, with many believing it was a biological imperative. If we didn't adapt quickly to what was in our field of vision, it makes it harder to survive. That applies equally to opportunity and threat.
In a modern context, this principle of instant recognises the content and concept behind an image drives social media and most forms of communication. If we look at it in the media context, every story now leads with a picture and many and is punctuated with additional images; however, increasingly, photo editors are looking for images to tell the whole story.
The irony of the drive for more visual narratives in the media is that journalists have less access to the resources they need to create those images than ever before. 'Yes', they carry a camera on their phones, but rarely are these images a standard journalist can use for publication. In response to this lack of resources to create images, a journalist is increasingly dependent on images from other sources, such as branded online newsrooms.
Online newsrooms have failed to keep pace as the media landscape has evolved. Adding a few images to an out-of-date press release or article on an old-fashioned online newsroom or news page no longer works. Journalists want a combination of fresh and evergreen story ideas and easy access to entire libraries of pre-approved, multi-format images and videos to illustrate their own stories. These images must comply with publish rules and include accurate descriptions and attribution details.
If you ask PR professionals how effective their current newsrooms are at connecting with new media sources and promoting their messages through the media, many will say 'not very'. As is often misattributed to Einstein, "Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results." If you want your newsroom to change, you need to change your newsroom.
A next-generation newsroom like Lookatmedia™ bucks that trend. Rather than accepting the paradigm of diminishing returns of your older-style newsroom, Lookatmedia™ creates opportunities to improve the capabilities, capacity, and ROI of your PR strategy. By providing a highly discoverable newsroom with a soft touch, and secure access to libraries of pre-approved images and videos, you transform the roles of a newsroom in your PR strategy.
It starts with online searches. Browsers like Google boost ranking on content with images. Add to this the inbuilt Search Engine Optimisation features of Lookatmedia™, and you enhance the opportunities for your stories to be discovered by a journalist through organic searches.
Once a journalist clicks to see one of your stories, they discover a world of illustrated content they can quickly navigate visually or with intuitive and theme-based searches. As they click on a story, they can quickly follow the visual narrative you've created. They can then click on any image in any article to access and download that or any other pre-approved image; however, they first must register. That process allows you complete control over who uses your images and the term in which they are available.
Once in your Lookatmedia™ image library, that '13 millisecond principle' comes into effect. Now they can use visual or many other forms of searches to discover the images and videos that capture their attention. They then choose what they need and download it. From your end, you can see who has chosen which images and how they intend to use them.
