ABSTRACT

Simple visual differentiation can make a big difference, particularly given the emphasis which people give to images. The Visual Social Media Lab in Sheffield in the UK was founded in 2014 when they recorded that worldwide five hundred million images a day were being shared. Politics is a rich field for visual differentiation. In modern politics that is considered a landslide; the only American president to have won by such a margin since the Great Depression was Lyndon Johnson, who beat Barry Goldwater with 61 per cent of the vote in 1964. The government started using pictures of rotting teeth, cancerous lungs and damaged brains and hearts to make the consequences of smoking visually apparent. A rigorous analysis of all other factors indicated that it could only have been the advertising which gave the brand its exceptionally high reputation, thereby indicating that advertising can build strong brand values without shouting.