Sustainability reporting and sustainability communication are now essential activities for many organisations. Any business that is part of a supply chain can, at some point, be expected to make sustainability reports available to clients so that they can assure their own clients of the ethical, social and environmental credentials of their suppliers.
Businesses that serve consumers have been compelled to publish their sustainability reporting for several years as consumers seek assurances about what they are purchasing.
Many of these reports are densely crammed with text, making it difficult to find the information required. This means that those who are curious will instead turn to search engines and social media for answers, which can’t always be relied on. It’s a risky strategy for any business, so why not use a universal medium to enhance your sustainability reporting and make it easier to read by using visual stories instead of pages of text?
Are you a frustrated sustainability manager?
Here’s a typical scenario:
- You are a sustainability manager or a CSR manager
- Your role is to help the business transition to a truly sustainable organisation
- You have great ideas for how to deliver sustainability but with a limited budget and resources progress is slow
- You are a frustrated sustainability manager struggling to change decades of behaviour and mindset.
If these seem familiar, what you need is a photographer who understands the issues and can help you create a series of compelling photo stories that will get your message across in seconds. A CSR photographer to support a CSR manager with their communication objectives.
Photography is a universal language, unconstrained by nationality, and when the right images are used, they transcend the obstacles of the spoken or written word and can be interpreted in seconds.
Reasons to use photography in sustainability reporting
Here are four reasons to use photography and photo stories in your sustainability reporting and sustainability communication:
#1 We don’t read anymore
Studies have shown that we don’t read text as much as we did in the past. When we do read, we scan text in a zigzag pattern picking out keywords to understand the message.
Numerous studies have revealed that around 24%-28% of people actually read social media posts before sharing or liking.
Similar studies have shown that only 50% of people who searched for and opened a particular web page will scroll to the bottom of the text – but only 16% read every word.
In the UK and the US, an adult will read for about 15 minutes a day outside of work. So, if you are relying on using text to explain progress and initiatives in your sustainability reporting, then you could be disappointed!
The research is compelling, text alone is not likely generate the engagement and levels of understanding that you desire; but photography and photo stories can and will.
#2 We scroll past videos
As someone who started their career in video production over 20 years ago, I am still an advocate for the moving image. However, the reality is that watching anything more than a minute long requires an event – such as going to the cinema.
When interacting online, videos tend to be started and watched for around 30 seconds, and then the viewer continues to scroll. Social media has made short-form videos (less than 60 seconds) popular, but YouTube and Vimeo are still places for longer videos with higher production values although you still must drive people to them.
The time it takes to ‘read’ a photo is milliseconds, which means you can present a sequence of photos as a photo story to convey an idea that can be interpreted within a second or two.
#3 We rarely watch presentations
Presentations rely heavily on the presenter. They must be a great communicator and it helps if the audience already knows something about them which makes them want to watch. Think about Ted Talks and how they position each talk as discovering a new or different way of thinking.
Today, many presentations are webinars or recorded and available on-demand, but again we can look at the research for watching videos online and see that this is not always an effective way to get a message across.
I recently worked with an organisation who previously relied on the CEO to record short videos that were hosted on an intranet and linked to from emails sent to employees. Yet when I asked about the viewing numbers nobody knew. When they found out they realised that less than 35% of employees opened the link and of those less than 50% watched the whole video. We then started to use photography and create photo stories which had much greater levels of engagement and could be used in multiple formats.
#4 Photography is versatile
Photography is the most versatile of the visual arts. It can be re-purposed and re-used across different platforms and applications to ensure that the return on investment is achieved.
A series of photographs created for one purpose can be successfully reused for others such as social media, intranet, website, slide presentation, printed posters and digital message boards.
Also, unlike video, it is easy to store, catalogue, and build a library of images that you can use for as long as they are relevant – and even when they cease to be relevant they then form part of the visual history of the organisation.
Photo stories for communication
As children, we were attracted to comic books, visual stories with minimal text that didn’t require us to read to understand the narrative. The text supported the images, whereas too often these days we use an image to break up the text; not even because the image supports the words.
Photo stories or photo essays were once the way that news was spread. Life Magazine and Vue in the US, Paris Match in France and the Picture Post in the UK, were all image-led weekly magazines full of national and international stories.
The same technique was successfully used by publications such as the Sunday Times for many years until advertising revenue became more important than the story. There are still a few magazines and sections of online publications such as the Observer that are dedicated to the photo story (photo essay) because of its power to influence, but we operate under the misconception that we can engage and influence with a few paragraphs of text and a stock image.
Leverage the power of photography for more effective communication and storytelling
In a 2023 survey, 79% of respondents said that creating an emotional response was the most important objective of storytelling.
Stanford Business School states that stories are 22 times more memorable than just presenting the facts.
Time and time again, research confirms that the fastest and most effective way to create a photo story that triggers an emotional response is to use images – more specifically, photography.
Enhance your corporate sustainability reporting with photography
If you have made it this far then I hope that you are curious to understand more about how photography can support with sustainability reporting and communication projects.
One thing I’m keen for you to know is that I’m not just a photographer. I have studied extensively and have qualifications in sustainability. I’m the trustee of a charity delivering against five UN Sustainable Development Goals in Uganda,I have worked closely with conservation NGOs, and I have been part of the team that shaped and communicated sustainability policy for the John Lewis Partnership for over 10 years, and today I work with clients large and small to create visual stories that inspire, motivate and change behaviour as we progress to a more sustainable way of working and living.
If the idea of collaborating with a photographer has been daunting because you are concerned they won’t understand the subject, then be assured, we can talk the same language and create great stories together.
Download my free guide to effective Sustainability Communication
If what I have covered here has interested you, click here to download my short PDF to read more about Sustainability Communication.
Why not also take it further by getting in touch for a chat? I’m very happy to explain the process to you and discuss how CSR photography will enhance your corporate sustainability reporting.
I believe that together, we can make your corporate sustainability reporting and sustainability communication much more effective, more engaging, embed new behaviours and mindset into culture, and help you deliver your sustainability objectives sooner.
Click here to read about the importance of sustainability and CSR communication
Click here to see how affordable photography can be to use for sustainability and CSR communication
