The power of design in business growth

Today, we live in a visual economy – a world where communicating visually has become critical for driving engagement, growth, and success within organizations. Our 2024 Visual Economy Report⁠(opens in a new tab or window) highlighted how visuals are now the currency of communication for cutting through noise and leaving a lasting impression.

We sat down with Damian Slattery, Senior Vice President for Marketing at Fast Company, Shreya Kushari, Chief Client Officer at OMD, and Wayne Kurtzman, Research Vice President for Social, Communities & Collaboration at IDC, to discuss the power of design proficiency in business growth and innovation, and explore what this looks like in practice. Here are the top takeaways.

1. The impact of visual storytelling shouldn't be underestimated

Although visuals aren’t new, how the world engages with content is. With an average attention span of six seconds, consumers of the modern world are increasingly looking for fun, interesting, and entertaining content.

Visual communication is powerful for both capturing attention and conveying meaning, from captivating presentations to engaging videos and compelling data visualizations. However, visual communication isn’t limited to communicating with external customers. ICE research shows almost 80% of business leaders find the internal use of visual collaboration helps people work better together, feel more connected, and be more productive. Content itself is evolving – and the impact of adopting a visual-first approach shouldn’t be underestimated.

2. Visuals aren’t reserved only for creative roles

Visual communication and design have historically been associated with striking billboard advertisements and social media platforms, but advertising is just the tip of the iceberg. People are increasingly creating visually rich content outside of work, so it’s not surprising leaders are starting to give people the tools to grow their design skills inside work, too. In fact, our 2024 Visual Economy Report⁠(opens in a new tab or window) revealed that 92% of global business leaders now expect employees in non-design roles to possess design skills and knowledge.

Communicating visually is no longer just for creative teams. 44% of business leaders use visual communication platforms on a daily basis, and this number will continue to grow. Collaborating with others has been done via text for decades – but now visuals are talking louder and clearer, particularly when well executed.

3. Design-literate teams lead to increased productivity

Visuals are at the forefront of brand experience – and when you get this right, business flourishes. The visual and attention economies are closely linked, with audience focus being split more than ever. It's becoming essential for professionals in all fields to be skilled in digital and design literacy.

Marketing and sales professionals are often early adopters of visual communication tools. They understand the powerful impact of visual design, so encouraging them as mentors to develop others within your business is a great way to grow your organization’s design skills.

For the international media agency OMD, different global teams collaborate daily on many internal tasks – and visuals make the process more innovative and productive. A media planner's job involves creating modern media strategies. However, to effectively present these strategies in client meetings, strategy presentations, and brief responses, visual design skills will help achieve client buy-in.

4. AI should be leveraged, not feared

Businesses will always need human creativity when it comes to storytelling, but AI can be a powerful tool that enables teams to innovate and grow. There are a number of ways to leverage AI to turn quality into quantity. You could voice-enable articles or text to make your content more accessible or use AI to easily translate materials across different languages to communicate with global teams or scale content internationally. Or, easily transform text-heavy scripts into summaries for ideas-sharing or into videos, presentations, and infographics to communicate the information succinctly.

Regardless of profession, there’s an opportunity to leverage technology to make repetitive tasks easier, increase workplace efficiency, and create content at scale. There are easy actions all types of businesses can implement, from iterating ideas or brainstorming new concepts through to bulk asset creation and performance reporting and measurement. AI technology has been trained to process large sets of data and give suggestions, so it’s a powerful way to measure analytics and better understand performance. AI can truly be embraced in a way to upskill everyone.

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