How Fashion Brands Attract People With Visual Stories.

Human beings are visual animals. To get the picture means: we understand. But in order for someone to get the picture, we have to give him or her the picture. And let it be a good one. An original one.

There is one key decider if someone will get your picture: make it an original one. Because pictures that look like all the others, cliches, will not work. 

A Visual Experience

We never buy clothing just because we like the look of them. We buy them because of the way they make us feel - as a human being. It is the experience that makes us connect to that clothing.

A fashion campaign creates a story, and experience, and attracts the people who are after this experience.

To give someone a clear picture of a fashion line is giving him or her a great experience. A story. A definitive world. Clothing isn't just about not feeling cold or naked. It's part of our identity.

Stories are Recipes for Experiences

A good fashion campaign goes beyond showing what the clothing looks like. It shows how if feels when you wear it. It charges it with emotion by telling a visual story and engaging the imagination of the audience.

I'm astonished how many brands photograph their clothing in an unemotional white background studio setting. This looks like a lab, this is a lab, with all the sterility and lack of emotion a lack a lab has to offer.

If movies would be like many fashion images, the theaters would run Andy Warhol's sleep, where you watch someone sleep for 5 hours 21 minutes, or "Empire State Building", which is a single, 8-hour take of the high riser. And nothing happens, nothing nothing nothing at all.

To tell a story, create an enticing environment: this is what creates emotions. A fashion image should be so enticing you wanted to hang it on your wall - because it spurs your imagination. You want to be there right in the middle of the picture.