Don’t Fake ‘Real’ – Black Vanilla Presents Getty Images Visual Trends in Financial Services Marketing

Increasing levels of international regulations have made it harder for financial services firms to stand out in terms of the types of products they offer. In a competitive, global marketplace, it is more important than ever for firms to show their corporate personality and communicate this through their content, social media and PR activity.

At Black Vanilla, we give our clients a platform to share their messages and stories, and where would a good story be without pictures?

We know that finding the right image can be time consuming and confusing, that’s why we were thrilled to invite Getty Images to Guernsey.

Our exclusive event shared Getty’s report into the latest visual communications trends in financial services marketing. We welcomed Jacqueline Bourke, Senior Manager of Creative Insights & Planning at Getty Images and iStock, and Nicole Gibson, Business Development Manager to La Fregate Hotel.

Jacqueline travels the world identifying and communicating key emerging visual and social trends that better connect customers to brands. Her research is grounded in Getty Images’ incredible archive of millions of images; the firm is constantly commissioning new photography to anticipate and meet the latest trends.

It was no surprise that our lunchtime event saw a great turnout of industry professionals who were keen to learn more about the visual and creative insights gathered from some of the world’s biggest financial services brands.

To generate these findings, Getty interviewed senior marketers at some of the world’s biggest financial services brands, looked at mainstream brands’ financial strategy and analysed their top-selling images and search data.

The presentation took us through five emerging search patterns across the finance sector and how these have developed over the year.

Individual togetherness – top-selling content to the financial services sector in 2018 showed a trend towards individual contentment, optimism and confidence.

Realness and representation – every brief received by Getty presently references diversity and inclusion as key to its visual strategy. There has been a 197% increase in searches for ‘disability’ and the emergence of searches for intellectual, developmental and physical disabilities.

Relatable, everyday objects – 95% of respondents said that when looking for non-people images, they were looking for relatable, everyday objects.

Technology and humanity – 62% of brands are looking to depict technology benefitting or working alongside humans.

Jacqueline closed the presentation by sharing her three top insights for a winning visual strategy:

1. Don’t fake ‘real’; trust, truth and authenticity are critical
2. Make images relatable; objects that help drive emotional connection and commitment is a trend that will continue to grow
3. Get back to nature; in 2018, Getty’s top search term was ‘nature’. Brands need to embrace themes that relate to sustainability

If you would like to talk to Black Vanilla about content and PR campaigns for financial services, please contact nichole@black-vanilla.gg

If you would like to talk to Getty Images about your visual strategy, please contact nicole.gibson@gettyimages.com