The new visual language of brands: How consumers create brand meaning in the social media age

Traditional brand channels are no longer the primary sources of brand meaning and, with the proliferation of social media, consumers now have greater exposure to images of brands produced by other consumers.

Introduction: A visual future

Camera phone + Social Media + Internet + Visual bias = visual language

In 2015 across Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat over three billion photos were shared every day. That's over one trillion photos a year. If every picture says a thousand words that would be over a quadrillion words. That's a lot of data. You get the picture.

Although the majority of images people share tend to be images of themselves, and their friends and family, many of the images people share on social media are also of brands. In a study conducted...

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