Day by day, customers are exposed to a vast amount of information, leading to an increasingly selective approach to what they choose to pay attention to. In this context, brand and product information from businesses can easily be overlooked if the Key Visuals in marketing campaigns are not striking and captivating enough.

This article will help you understand more about Key Visuals and how they impact customers and their buying behavior.

What Is Key Visual? 

Key Visual (KV) is a primary image created from creative graphic elements, used consistently throughout the communication and marketing processes of campaigns. Key Visuals convey the main message and guide the communication strategy throughout the entire product promotion process for the brand.

How Does a Key Visual Affect Buying Behavior?

As an indispensable part of product marketing strategies, a Key Visual has the ability to make a strong impression and quickly connect with customers, influencing their purchasing behavior. So, how does a Key Visual achieve this?

Creating Brand Recognition

A good Key Visual will make your brand stand out in the customer's memory. Graphic images or words that are striking enough will impact the viewer's vision and make them remember the product and brand. This, in turn, helps businesses increase their competitiveness and recognition compared to other market rivals. Customers tend to purchase from businesses with higher brand recognition.

With a standout Key Visual, the Nestle Milo milk brand has made a strong impression on parents, reminding them immediately of the brand when hearing the tagline “Champions are made with Milo” or seeing images of children playing sports. Meanwhile, Ovaltine has made a mark on customers with images of childhood joy and the tagline “You don’t need to be a champion, just enjoy it.”

Evoking Emotions

A Key Visual can evoke strong emotions in the minds of customers. An image can make them feel excited, fond, or even moved. These emotions can influence their buying behavior.

This explains why product marketing campaigns on special days often feature Key Visuals with images of women (for occasions like October 20th or March 8th) and images of family, couples, or children during holidays like Tet, Mid-Autumn Festival, or Valentine's Day. The emotional appeal of such Key Visuals can prompt customers to develop a desire to purchase gifts for their loved ones.

Many businesses use Key Visuals to evoke customer emotions, leading to purchasing behavior, especially during holidays and festive seasons.

Creating Connections

Key Visuals have the ability to connect with customers by conveying the brand's core values. They represent not just the product or service but the brand itself. Through Key Visuals, companies can tell their own story, showcasing their core values through specific fonts, color schemes, or characteristic images of the brand.

Shopee's Key Visuals often stand out with their signature orange color and embedded brand logo. In contrast, Lazada features a deep blue color scheme, making it easy for customers to distinguish between the two platforms at a glance. 

What Are the "Secrets" to Creating an Engaging Key Visual?

Developing a Key Visual for a product marketing strategy is essential for businesses and brands. However, creating a Key Visual that captures customer attention is a different story. It requires more than just meeting basic requirements for color, layout, and font.

Consistency with the Brand

A Key Visual can be highly impactful, but if it doesn't incorporate brand identifiers like the logo, color scheme, or font, the customer's ability to recall the brand may be diminished. On the other hand, a Key Visual that retains the brand's distinctive elements helps customers remember both the product and the brand simultaneously.

In their marketing campaign for the Lavender product line, Air Wick used a Key Visual featuring the brand's signature blue color. This consistency helps customers quickly recall the brand through the Key Visual.

Emotional Factor

Elements that evoke emotions often help us remember things more easily. A Key Visual is considered successful when it can convey an emotional message to customers. These emotions can include surprise, joy, happiness, sadness, sentimentality, or nostalgia. Such emotions can stimulate empathy, prompting customers to interact, participate, comment, and share your Key Visual advertisement. This makes the Key Visual go viral, allowing the product and brand to reach target customer groups more effectively.

Based on the target audience and their insights, M&M Communications supported the Air Wick brand in producing a Key Visual featuring family imagery to emphasize the health benefits of the product for all ages. This strategy impacts the emotions of buyers—fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, or daughters-in-law—who always want to ensure the health of their entire family.

Appropriate Color Combination

In design, each color stands out and attracts attention in its own way. However, combining colors to create a beautiful design or image is another story. Especially for Key Visuals, appropriate color combinations play a crucial role. Sometimes, a Key Visual with the right color combination can create a stronger impression than a design overloaded with information, which can easily distract viewers.

The colors chosen for Air Wick's product marketing Key Visual bring harmony to the design, making customers feel like they are stepping into a spacious and fragrant living environment.

Choosing the "Golden Time"

How do you determine the right timing for a Key Visual in a marketing campaign? It's essential to stay updated with social media trends and market dynamics. A truly successful Key Visual aligns with what consumers are interested in at a specific moment. Conversely, the outcome will not be favorable if the Key Visual doesn't match customer preferences and insights, no matter how impressive and well-crafted the message is.

If your business aims to create a captivating Key Visual for its marketing campaign, don't hesitate to contact us. M&M Communications, with a team experienced in Marketing, Branding, and Production, is always ready to assist you.

Conclusion

Key Visuals are a crucial part of any business's marketing strategy. They not only enhance brand recognition but also have a significant impact on customer purchasing behavior. By creating unique Key Visuals that accurately reflect brand values, your business can build strong connections and retain customers for the long term.