First Impressions Are The Only Ones That Matter

You nev­er get a sec­ond chance to make a first impres­sion. Mar­keters have known this for years. And it goes for good and bad ones (first impres­sions, that is). So, if this is the case, and we’re all on the same page on this basic mar­ket­ing prin­ci­ple, why do we see so many poor images both in dig­i­tal and print­ed mar­ket­ing media?

Human beings are visu­al and emo­tion­al crea­tures. Cen­turies of civ­i­liza­tion have dumb­ed-down our smell, taste and tac­tile sens­es. In many cas­es our audi­to­ry sense has also been dimin­ished by exces­sive noise lev­els. Only our vision has man­aged to sur­vive… sort of.

While we have become increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed in our dai­ly rou­tines, our deci­sion-mak­ing process has remained rather prim­i­tive (anthro­pol­o­gists call it the lizard brain). We tend to make emo­tion­al deci­sions and jus­ti­fy them on a ratio­nal lev­el. Sales peo­ple have also known this for years. That’s why the pup­py dog close is still so popular.

One of the best ways to incite emo­tion­al deci­sions is through the use of images. The phrase “a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words” was pop­u­lar­ized in the Unit­ed States by Fred­er­ick R. Barnard back in 1921. Lat­er on the East­man Kodak Com­pa­ny also used it to pro­mote their pho­tog­ra­phy prod­ucts. How­ev­er, his­to­ry attrib­ut­es the phrase to Chi­nese philoso­pher Con­fu­cius in the 5th Cen­tu­ry before Christ. And believe me, he wasn’t confused.

The right image can make us hap­py, sad, angry, jeal­ous, dis­gust­ed, hun­gry and even sex­u­al­ly aroused. The wrong one can gar­ner unex­pect­ed results.

As a com­mu­ni­ca­tor, liv­ing on the island of Puer­to Rico, I love to observe and dis­sect this phe­nom­e­na. The local adver­tis­ing world is rid­den with bad radio, tv, print­ed and Inter­net mes­sages made by peo­ple who have nev­er sat once in a com­mu­ni­ca­tions class. This is not to say that Puer­to Rico doesn’t pro­duce qual­i­ty media. How­ev­er, many times this sort of mes­sage is put togeth­er by ama­teurs who don’t have a clue of what they’re doing and sold to cus­tomers who don’t know any bet­ter. It’s the blind lead­ing the blind. And this is not to say that the same thing doesn’t hap­pen else­where. I sup­pose that it does. It’s just that I live here and can’t give an informed opin­ion of what hap­pens elsewhere.

Steve Jobs pre­sent­ing the orig­i­nal Mac­intsoh com­put­er in 1984.

There are rea­sons that have brought us to where we are today. For one, the explo­sion in dig­i­tal media led on by the desk­top pub­lish­ing rev­o­lu­tion in 1984, and pro­pelled a thou­sand­fold by the Inter­net in 1990, has caused a mod­ern day gold rush. Overnight experts have popped up like mush­rooms in every pos­si­ble mar­ket niche, beg­ging the ques­tion: “how can you be an expert on some­thing that changes dai­ly”? But I digress, back to “first impres­sions”.

In addi­tion to an over­flow­ing abun­dance of “pub­lish­ing experts” we now have “experts” in every con­ceiv­able aspect of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions func­tion. Some actu­al­ly know what they’re doing while oth­ers don’t have a clue. Sift­ing the wheat from the chaff can be pure torture.

How did we get here?

Answer­ing this ques­tion would take an entire book, let alone a blog arti­cle like this one. We could men­tion tech­nolo­gies like MP3, JPEG, dig­i­tal cam­eras, dig­i­tal audio, PDF, HTML, PHP, MySQL and JQuery, all bran­dished by peo­ple who oth­er­wise wouldn’t have come any­where close to the com­mu­ni­ca­tions profession.

These tech­nolo­gies enable the world that we live in today, albeit at a cost. MP3 and JPEG are lossy tech­nolo­gies mean­ing that the final prod­uct is always worse than the orig­i­nal. Dig­i­tal cam­eras and recorders use these tech­nolo­gies to turn every­day peo­ple into overnight recordists and pho­tog­ra­phers. Accord­ing to Busi­ness Insid­er we are now post­ing a stag­ger­ing 1.8 bil­lion pho­tos a day to social media. Good luck get­ting noticed with that amount of clutter.

Video is even worse. Accord­ing to Sta­tista in 2019 500 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Audio is a lit­tle bet­ter, but with the explo­sion of pod­cast­ing it will be just as bad in a cou­ple of years.

You could argue that most of this mate­r­i­al is futile, that it’s most­ly videos of cats and peo­ple try­ing crazy stunts on cam­era. Maybe Steve Jobs had it right when he called it “van­i­ty press”. But the fact remains that human­i­ty is suf­fer­ing a sen­so­ry over­load that numbs what­ev­er sens­es we might have left. And when we drown our poten­tial cus­tomers in a sea of ill con­ceived mes­sages we stamp out any pos­si­bil­i­ty of ever reach­ing them again. Why? Because you nev­er get a sec­ond chance to make a first impression.

Then there’s ignorance… the people that don’t know what they don’t know

Sev­er­al months ago I spoke to a group of pro­fes­sion­als in the tourism indus­try about ways to pro­mote their busi­ness­es in a high­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket. I could tell by the look on their faces that they weren’t believ­ing a word I said.

Car­ni­val Cruise Lines YouTube Chan­nel. Click to see it larger.

I remem­ber men­tion­ing that their tar­get cus­tomers were not attract­ed by the ameni­ties of their indi­vid­ual prop­er­ties but rather by the attrac­tions in their sur­round­ings. I also men­tioned the way they should con­struct their mar­ket­ing mes­sages in order to empha­size fun instead of fea­tures. I used the Dis­ney and Car­ni­val Cruis­es web­sites as exam­ples of how it should be done. Hell, the Car­ni­val Cruis­es web­site is so obvi­ous that it even has the word FUN writ­ten over each pho­to on the home page. Duhh!!!

Dis­ney doesn’t tell you how large their parks are, or the length of their rides. They show mom, dad and the kids hav­ing fun. And after they show you dozens of peo­ple enjoy­ing them­selves you arrive at your own conclusion.

Car­ni­val Cruis­es doesn’t tell you how the ship is built or that it has pools, restau­rants, dis­cos, the­aters, game rooms, gyms, stores or any oth­er ameni­ty. You expect that, and they show you hun­dreds of peo­ple enjoy­ing those facil­i­ties. They SHOW YOU!!!

The mes­sage isn’t me, me, me, me, me… It’s you, you, you, you, you. You hav­ing FUN!!!

I’ve always been amazed at how meet­ing facil­i­ties, restau­rants, bars, lounges and hotels of all sizes in Puer­to Rico use pic­tures of emp­ty spaces to pro­mote their prop­er­ties. So much for first impres­sions!  I sup­pose the ratio­nale is to save on mod­el­ing fees or pho­tog­ra­ph­er rights. Or maybe they just don’t under­stand copy­right law. Or even worse, maybe they’re just cheap or lazy. Well guess what? It’s a fools errand, because emp­ty spaces auto­mat­i­cal­ly raise red flags in customer’s minds. After all, they must be emp­ty for a rea­son, right?

Many years ago, when I was a young man and was start­ing to trav­el, I recall a sug­ges­tion made by Rick Steves in one of his hun­dreds of trav­el videos. Steves sug­gest­ed that you should always favor busy restau­rants over emp­ty ones, which goes com­plete­ly against con­ven­tion­al wis­dom. So why did he sug­gest such a thing? Because busy restau­rants are busy ‘cause they’re good. The oppo­site is fre­quent­ly true as well.

How does this pic­ture make you feel? Do you find the place invit­ing? Why is it emp­ty if it’s so good? First impres­sions are every­thing. Click on image to see it larger.

When we post pic­tures of emp­ty spaces, be it meet­ing facil­i­ties, restau­rants, bars, lounges, hotels, rental cars, tours or any­thing else that has to do with peo­ple, we are send­ing a mes­sage straight to the customer’s sub­con­scious mind that screams “THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG HERE”. This caus­es con­fu­sion and fric­tion in his/her mind; two things that are poi­so­nous pills in the marketer’s mind. Why? Because a con­fused mind doesn’t make deci­sions. Once again… “first impres­sions”.

Last week I saw an ad pro­mot­ing local tourism in Puer­to Rico and it was the same old sto­ry: emp­ty pools, restau­rants, bars, beach­es, rooms, con­fer­ence rooms… What hap­pened? Where all the peo­ple abduct­ed by aliens? It’s obvi­ous that the mes­sage hasn’t got­ten through.

So let me be as blunt as pos­si­ble. Tourists don’t care about you. They care about them­selves. Instead of wast­ing mon­ey show­ing emp­ty facil­i­ties, why not show local ameni­ties and end your com­mu­ni­ca­tion piece talk­ing about your place? Tourists aren’t dif­fer­ent than you or I. They look for infor­ma­tion first and then they book their trip. With­out the for­mer they could care less about the later.

This pho­to does­n’t need a cap­tion. Peo­ple are hav­ing fun so the place must be good. First impres­sions are every­thing. Click on image to see it larger.

And for­get about ads. Nobody reads them any­way. Espe­cial­ly when they’re done wrong. Think YouTube, pod­cast­ing, blog­ging… And notice how I’ve pur­pose­ly left out tra­di­tion­al social media. It’s because the algo­rithms that con­trol these sites have got­ten so restric­tive that no one is going to see your stuff anyway.

I pub­lish videos about Puer­to Rico all the time. I make them 95% infor­ma­tion and 5% pro­mo­tion. And you know what? Peo­ple watch the videos, vis­it the Island and then they write me say­ing how much they enjoyed their time on the Island. Not once have they told me about their hotel, or the car that they rent­ed, or the air­line that they flew. Of course, they didn’t sleep under the stars, or get around on foot, or swim their way to the Island. But that wasn’t what got burned into their mem­o­ry chip. That’s not what they’ll remem­ber 20 years from now.

A Little Restaurant In Madrid

Let me tell you a sto­ry about first impres­sions, or rather about “neu­ro-asso­ci­a­tions” as Tony Rob­bins would call them. Back in 1984 I vis­it­ed Spain for a 30 day peri­od. My wife and I went there on our own, like we always trav­el. We rent­ed a car and just hit the road. I spent my first 5 days in Madrid, on a sec­ond-floor room near Plaza Del Sol. Back then Plaza del Sol served as a giant bus stop. Not the main bus ter­mi­nal for the city, but one where there were usu­al­ly 15–20 bus­es at all times.

In the morn­ing the diesel fumes would seep through our win­dow (even though it was closed) and impreg­nate the room with an intense diesel odor. Well, believe it or not, to this day the smell of diesel fumes takes me straight back to Madrid. With oth­er peo­ple it can be the smell of bread, or can­dy, or a cer­tain food. It hap­pens to all of us.

What’s fun­ny is that it doesn’t only hap­pen with smells, it can hap­pen with any sen­so­ry stim­u­lus. That’s why we remem­ber where we went, and what we did, on trips that we took decades ago and we don’t remem­ber where we stayed or where we ate. We remem­bre the fun stuff because it’s tied to our sen­so­ry feel­ings. Here’s anoth­er exam­ple. I was at Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park three years ago dur­ing the month of June. To this date I can tell you how the for­est sound­ed, how it smelled, what the tem­per­a­ture was like and how it made me feel. How­ev­er, I can vague­ly tell you what my hotel room was like!

And by the way, that’s because it was good. If my hotel expe­ri­ence had been bad I would remem­ber every detail. Why? Because it would be tied to emo­tion. Anger, that is! That’s why peo­ple who have a good expe­ri­ence tell an aver­age of four peo­ple and those that have a neg­a­tive one tell an aver­age of ten. They also remem­ber bad expe­ri­ences for a far longer time.

Case in point, on that same trip in 1984 my wife and I spent 11 days in Italy and two days in France.  The two days were spent going to and from Italy along the south­ern coast of France.  The french peo­ple were rude, arro­gant and all-around unfriend­ly.  So much so that we’ve nev­er gone back.  They can be the most spec­tac­u­lar coun­try in the world and my wife and I will nev­er set foot there.  Nor will we rec­om­mend it to any­one.  First impres­sions my friend… first impressions.

Reality Check

Right now the world is on hold. Covid-19 has seen to that. The sec­ond wave is com­ing like a freight train and entire coun­tries are shut­ting down. Peo­ple aren’t tak­ing vaca­tions. They’re tak­ing “stay­ca­tions”. Some are even tak­ing “noca­tions”. We must accept the fact that most tourists aren’t stu­pid, so they’re not going to come regard­less of how much we spend on ads. That’s why the ads you see are aimed at locals. But we all know that local tourism is hard­ly as lucra­tive as the inter­na­tion­al variety.

Anoth­er fact is that the cri­sis will even­tu­al­ly be over. A vac­cine will final­ly be approved, who­ev­er is going to die will die, and the rest of human­i­ty will acquire herd immu­ni­ty and move on. Sad? Yes. Crude? Maybe. And here’s anoth­er fact for you to chew on: “it’s not going to hap­pen next month”!  It’ll prob­a­bly take a year or so

So what can we do? Well, let me start by what we shouldn’t be doing. Yes­ter­day I saw an arti­cle in the paper about an exhib­it put togeth­er by our local Tourism Com­pa­ny.  The objec­tive was to tell  the pub­lic about all the “good things” that they’ve done through­out the years. Maybe they have, but who cares? Like the say­ing goes: “aguas pasadas no mueven moli­nos”.  In the rare case that you might not under­stand Span­ish, that means more or less that it’s all “water under the bridge”.  What I care about is what they’re going to do tomor­row… next week… next year.

And, of course, exhibits aren’t free. The Tourism Com­pa­ny has to con­tract all sorts of pro­fes­sion­als to design them, put them togeth­er and man them. Just to tell us how “great they’ve been”.

That mon­ey would be bet­ter spent help­ing local oper­a­tors get through the cri­sis. Help could be in the form of local stim­u­lus pack­ages, small loans, tax incen­tives… who knows. All those “cre­ative minds” should be able to come up with something.

They could also use all that bot­tled-up cre­ativ­i­ty to start pub­lish­ing YouTube videos, writ­ing blog arti­cles, going on pod­casts, pub­lish­ing on LinkedIn, post­ing Tick Tok clips, I don’t know… telling the world about Puer­to Rico. Not about emp­ty spaces, but about the fun stuff; about what it’s like to spend a week or two “in par­adise”.

Regard­less of how bleak the pic­ture might seem at the moment, tourism isn’t dead. It’s just dor­mant, like the trees in win­ter. All those tourists are sit­ting at home, shel­ter­ing in place, just wait­ing for the cri­sis to be over. And what do you think they’ll do with all that idle time? They’ll watch videos, read arti­cles, lis­ten to pod­casts and suck up as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble.  That way, when the flood­gates final­ly open, they’ll hit the ground run­ning. There’s even a word for this new breed of poten­tial vis­i­tors. They’re being called: “arm­chair tourists”.

So Here Are The Facts

Tourists aren’t com­ing. Get over it. They’re hun­kered down at home, soak­ing up infor­ma­tion. They’ll go back out when they feel secure. When they final­ly come out they’ll go to the places that they dis­cov­ered while they were hun­kered down. We can influ­ence that deci­sion NOW by pro­vid­ing use­ful infor­ma­tion about Puer­to Rico. And please notice that the oper­a­tional words here are: “use­ful infor­ma­tion”. Not advertising.

Today’s web surfers can detect an ad from miles away. They also detect “mar­ket­ing speak” and just plain old bull­shit. And they resent it. That doesn’t mean that you can’t put your hotel logo at the bot­tom right cor­ner of your videos (by the way, we call that a bug in the video biz) or men­tion your busi­ness briefly at the end of the pro­gram. But the main mes­sage can’t be about you or your busi­ness, because quite frankly “peo­ple don’t care”.

How­ev­er, if you serve good infor­ma­tion, and pep­per it with the oca­sion­al com­men­tary about your place of busi­ness, they not only will accept it but they’ll also remem­ber it. And guess who’s place they’ll look for when they final­ly come to the Island?

A while ago I men­tioned “neu­ro-asso­ci­a­tions”. Well, I still remem­ber the name of the place where I used to have din­ner in Madrid 36 years ago. They nev­er hand­ed me a pro­mo­tion. I nev­er read one of their ads. In fact, they had just opened, so they did­n’t even have a cred­it card machine. They just treat­ed us right. So when I think of great food in Madrid their name just pops into my mind. Maybe they don’t even exist any­more. Who knows? But you can bet your bot­tom dol­lar that when it comes to food, if I’m ever back in town, they’re going to be my first option.

That’s the kind of con­nec­tion that you want to estab­lish with future vis­i­tors, and you can start today!

©2020,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Podcaster,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590