Why Branded Illustrations on Your Company Blog Are a Waste of Money
From the managers' point of view, everything is great: the blog looks cohesive, stylish, there is no need to deal with exclusive rights to other people's images. Plus, everyone can immediately see whose post is in the feed: as they say, who is for the blacks, who is for the greens.
Unfortunately, what is “beautiful, neat, recognizable” for the manager is perceived by the reader as a red flag: “Run, fools!” The reasons are:
Baggage of negative experience. Let's start with the obvious. For a long time, the culture of corporate content was in its infancy, and as a result, the audience developed a persistent prejudice: posts from companies are insincere, maximally streamlined, advertising and SEO-optimized. Now things are better, but “the aftertaste remains” – as a result, everything that actively hints at corporate affiliation causes a reaction of rejection, especially among old-timers of the sites.
KDPV (picture to attract attention) no PV. When a company releases several materials a month, designers have a tough time. Each post needs a cover, and sometimes two or three illustrations in the body of the text. They should be done in a certain style, in a strict color scheme (don't forget about the mascot/logo). At the same time, the designer does not always immediately understand what the complex technical material is about, and there is no time to figure it out – there are more important tasks. In order to deliver the result on time and at the same time comply with a bunch of conventions, you have to draw something as abstract as possible. A server rack, a mascot and numbers. Someone is running somewhere. Letters, numbers, a logo. The main thing is that it “fits everything” and you can see what was done at company N.
Everyone ran, and I ran too.. I suppose that initially the idea of drawing something special seemed like a new way to stand out and at the same time shine with corporate identity. Now almost every major brand does this – the result is not individualization, but another common place. Your own pictures no longer help to distinguish yourself or stand out in the feed – rather, on the contrary, there is a feeling of “ah, these are the same as everyone else”. In such conditions, one cannot count on increased interest from readers.
Of course, there are exceptions – there are companies with their own recognizable style, where they can draw with soul, to the point, and sometimes even with humor. But in this case, designers have a free hand: they are not forced to prepare illustrations in conveyor mode according to the instructions from the brand book.
It seems to me that in at least half of such cases the illustrations are drawn not by a full-time designer and certainly not by an employee of a third-party agency, but by the author-multi-instrumentalist himself or one of his talented colleagues who work in this field not professionally, but for the idea. Accordingly, the requirements “to emboss a logo here, a mascot there, everything in vector, only such and such colors” are not presented to him. If you are just starting to blog, and you do not have such nuggets in your team, the best strategy is focus on the textIf I haven't convinced you, here are a couple more arguments.
What else is wrong with corporate images
What you fight for, you get. Some authors of popular guides and courses on content, on the contrary, advise to draw your own at any cost (make collages, hire cool magazine illustrators, force authors to illustrate the text themselves at gunpoint). Their main argument: “anything of your own is better than a dull photo stock.”
It is hard to disagree that basic stock photos with smiling office workers and 3D people are already beyond the bounds of good and evil in 2024 (although in the world of post-irony this may already be “so bad that it’s even good”). Another thing is that even personal illustrations, in conditions when a designer is squeezed by burning deadlines and corporate guidelines, turn into the same “generic stock photos”: vector lineart, cats-people-text.
People can read, people come to read. As a result, a specially drawn corporate image (due to all the restrictions) does not complement or explain the text – it is simply there, it is a filler, a way to fill the space. But unlike a picture from a photo stock, this filler is loaded with the subtext “This is Me-Me-Me-Company-Such-and-Such!” When it comes to something other than TV advertising or a banner, this subtext seems unnecessary, especially if we are talking about an analytical article for professionals.
They came to the blog to understand a certain topic, read the experience of specialists, learn about what's new in the industry. They most likely don't need any additional hints about which company wrote the material – their cognitive abilities are enough to figure it out on their own. Readers want to see a truly useful or entertaining text, and not an additional reminder of “who's the good guy here?”
It's long and expensive.. Including agencies. From the position of “breaking up a solid wall of text with an image to make it easier for the eye to scan the material,” a corporate picture will work (even taking into account everything we discussed above). Just like another one, wisely chosen to solve this problem. Therefore (in the context of using resources), illustrating corporate content is a very questionable move.
To summarize:
If you pump up your covers (and other blog images) with brand identity to the max, your posts will seem oversaturated with advertising and won't be read.
If the image is pumped up with brand identity, it does not reflect the essence of the text and does not help to distinguish it from others. The covers of such texts begin to look the same. Instead of individualization, we get unification of content – both at the blog level and at the level of different companies that use this technique.
In a company blog, text is more important than images. Readers can figure out who wrote the material without any prompting.
In general, using corporate images is like shooting sparrows with a cannon: labor-intensive, expensive, and leads to the opposite effect. Exception: the company really wants to illustrate the material with unique images and does not aim to advertise once again. Then it is simply labor-intensive and expensive.
What else to read: extremes in company blogs, a guide to preparing materials.
