Science-Harness A Viewer's Survival Instinct to Highlight Your Brand Message

Your Audience is inundated with 10,000 ads a day! How can you make your message stand out?

Harness Your Viewer's Survival Instinct to Highlight Your Brand Message.

Technique #1 Using Sightlines.

It's primal; a part of our internal hard wiring. And you can use this simple technique to move your viewer's eyes to the most important part of your website, image or video.

You have experienced this many times in real life and it works incredibly well with browsing habits too: your eyes follow other people's sight lines. We ALL look where others look. Why? It's a matter of survival! We often think of a primal reaction as some sort of latent caveman thinking, i.e. fight or flight. The reaction to sight lines is one we use daily and ranges from benefit to survival.

Benefit: At dinner, with your caveman-like friend and no time for idle chit-chat while you are noshing--Dude, pass me the ketchup. Your eyes leave dude to look at the ketchup, dude looks at you, sees where your eyes are focussed, grabs you the ketchup. This effect is so compelling you likely don't have to say ketchup at all. You could probably say dude and look at the red bottle.

Benefit: Football--the wide receiver and cornerback are sprinting down the field. The receiver's goal is to intersect and arrive at the same time and place as the football to make the catch. If the cornerback turns around to look for the football, he will lose track of the receiver. The corner, instead, reads the receiver's body language. When his head and eyes look up to catch the ball, the corner knows where that ball is, when to turn and where to put his arms up to try for an interception. All of this at sprint speed and based on eye and head movement of the man he is covering--amazing.

Survival: You are at a busy intersection with lots of pedestrians. Someone near you darts their head and eyes to the left at traffic. You, unhesitating, turn your head to follow their sight line ready to react to a potential threat.
For survival, food or even romance, we benefit from looking where others are looking all the time.

Our eyes instinctually follow the sight lines of people in photographs and film too. When a person in a photo or a film looks outside the frame, our eye, as if drawn by a ruler, follows their sight line to see where they are looking. You can use this to guide your audience's eye to a product, a sale price, a tagline... It's like a giant flashing arrow directing your viewer's eye.

For tacky bargain ads, go with a flashing arrow; it is hard to beat when you are looking for tacky.

To stay on brand with your look, use an image that has a person looking out of frame with their gaze focussed on a focal point.

This technique is also equally effective on a web page. Need someone to read a line of text? You can have a single image of someone looking outside a frame and put a text box to the side to move your viewer's eye to the text.Better yet, leave negative space in your image for text (copy), and have a cohesive visual on computer and mobile device no matter what the layout.

You see the sightline technique in film and commercial editing ALL the time. The effect is much stronger in motion. Got a vital product shot? You see this sequence a lot:

The scene starts with your uber attractive lead actor looking across the frame with sincere admiration. As a viewer, we want to know what they are looking at, is it a benefit? A matter of survival? Romance? Cut to your dazzlingly lit product image. BOOM! Your audience instinct to follow the sight lines of the actor--fulfilled. And they bring along with it the feeling of the actor's motivation--powerful stuff!

Sightlines are an essential technique for guiding your audience's eyes to where you want them to look with ALL the power of a flashing neon arrow-- while staying completely on brand.

I am always fascinated by the arts, how and why we appreciate them and what makes us tick. As a digital media artist, companies hire me to showcase their products in the best light and on brand in film and photo.
I also love to teach; this affords me the opportunity to share the arsenal of techniques I have learned from exceptional media creators and developed throughout my career.