There was one news story from last week that struck me as a shining example of the speed and power of a single visual.

Too bad the visual set off the wrong vibe.

The story was about the backlash to the Super Bowl ad for Ring, the doorbell camera brand owned by Amazon.

It was supposed to be a slam dunk: pull on America’s heart strings by talking about lost dogs and highlight the new Ring feature that helps you find your runaway pet.

(Ring’s new feature activates a ‘Search Party’ of Ring cams around the neighborhood and uses AI to ID and track your pet.)

As the ad says, they’re reuniting “a dog a day” with their families, and the 30-second ad tells that story quite well.

All would be well, except at 00:14, for literally one-and-a-half seconds right in the middle of the ad, this image flashed up:

This obviously is a great visual depiction of the coverage that Ring cams have all over your neighborhood.

But unfortunately, this view, even in the most heartwarming of contexts and use cases, set off the same worry trigger in millions of people’s minds: surveillance.

It triggered a reminder that ‘some tech mega-corp has access to everything going on in our humble neighborhood, and we’re *giving* them access to it, from out front porch, no less’.

And thus, the mood toward the ad turned from empathy and excitement, to paranoia and hesitation.

From one visual!

Spliced in for less than two seconds!

This should show you just how instantly our brains’ receptors process visual cues and trigger a reflex emotional response.

In Ring’s case, this flub torpedoed their own message and multimillion dollar ad buy (though arguably, we’re still talking about it).

But in our world as consultants, we’d be remiss to not leverage the most efficient vehicle for knowledge transfer and trust building: visual IP.

Do you have a go-to visual that articulates your POV or approach to a client problem?

A slide, a framework, a cartoon even?

One that you’re excited to pull up on sales calls, present in a room, throw in a proposal deck?

Your prospects are going to be making visual judgements of you subconsciously regardless.

They’re human, they can’t help it.

Might as well give them something visual to chew on that you approve of.

Just run it by a few people first :)

💡

-Wes

P.S. If you’d like to create visual IP assets to elevate your marketing and sales activities, that’s what I do, one-on-one, exclusively for independent consultants.

Learn more about "Intellectual Headshots" and book a free exploratory call here.