The Visual Web is a story accelarator
When the process becomes the story, it's a comfortable ride when things happen like in the Buick case. This classic automotive brand showed it was really early in turning the Visual Web expectations to their advantage, by asking for inspiration via social media.
The starting point was asking nine influencers and life-style bloggers, to call out for readers to make a Pinterest board addressed to Buick.
The social network appraoch became a smart way of crowdsourcing the inspiration for the Buick design teams. Now that’s co-creation! The pinners were asked to create interior as well as exterior inspired theme boards that were supposed to give direction to designing the car interior for the Encore model. Boards based on their passions, ambitions and interests, and open to any kind of imagery.
The ‘Pinterest to Dashboard-contest’ was a way to connect with a younger audience and show a more playful side of the brand, trying to achieve a degree of brand repositioning. It drew in over 17 million unique visitors and opened up analytics for Buick to learn about the lifestyle preferences of its fans and customers.
As it becomes increasingly clear that the visual Web is the next front in the battle for attention, brands need to be aware of the power of the image, and the magnetic attraction of imagery on engagement concepts.
The top Buick theme board came from a Pennsylvania-based bed and breakfast owner Michael Wurm Jr., whose boards, which featured sea foam-colored tones and beach scenes, were picked as the inspiration for new color palates, textures and design features for the existing car.
Wurm was presented with three different concepts, one from each of the three-person design team. He ultimately chose the design highlighted below as his favorite. From a design perspective, the team said they fell in love with Wurm's theme of going outdoors and used it as a jumping point.
"We pulled key elements from his boards that we thought were interesting," said Ven Lei, Buick color and trim designer. "The three of us came up with our own interpretations of the boards, and expanded on it based on mood, a theme and an environment. We used created color waves and textures such as woods, and ultimately wanted to show how something fun like this could be applied to what is already on the road today.”
Visual-based content is growing quickly, and the mindset is has shifted from a text-based social media to the Visual Web a few years now. Large brands like CNN and BBC World gave strong signals some three years ago when designing their websites completely image-driven, foreseeing the paradigm shift. In these days it seems like decades already.
And the perk of this story: see the film and find out that your image of a car designer is completely false!