By The power of visual storytelling in the fintech sector that helps brands tell compelling story, which in turn elicit emotional connection with the target audience and drive loyalty is key to leapfrogging the African fintech sector into new frontiers.
Leading communication’s experts during panel discussion at the Newmark Group webinar with the theme: “Visual Storytelling In Finance: Simplifying Complex Fintech Offerings For African Consumers”, harped how much impact will play in the continents’ fintech market urging chief executive officers and marketing heads to take note of critical visual storytelling is to driving loyalty, advocacy, and long-term growth.
Taking the lead in the discussion, the Chief Executive Officer of the Newmark Group, Mr. Gilbert Manirakeza, a brand leadership PR strategic communications expert revealed that visual storytelling can be used to simplify decision-making by making complex ideas easy to understand adding that “f you use infographics, you can turn data into actionable insights.”
According to him, that’s why some brands heavily invest in it adding that for brands, “this means storytelling isn’t just about selling. It’s about educating, engaging and empowering your audience. It is also about tapping into Africa’s rich storytelling traditions that brands can use to create marketing (12:12) that actually feels authentic.”
However, he noted that it is important to build trust through authenticity and using storytelling to humanise the brand by sharing behind the scenes stories adding that “when you’re talking about multimedia content, (15:27) we’ve seen many brands using customer testimonials.”
While calling for investment in high quality visuals, Manirakeza, said visuals are one of the ways to drive simplicity or to simplify complex ideas and concepts, stressing that “FinTech is inherently complex because you first of all have financial services, which in themselves can be quite complex, at least from a practitioner’s or an industry point of view.”
He added: “ For brands, this means storytelling isn’t just about selling. It’s about educating, engaging and empowering your audience. It is also about tapping into Africa’s rich storytelling traditions that brands can use to create marketing that actually feels authentic.”
Also speaking, Eunice Asantewa-Angkoma, a corporate communication strategist with over 10 years of experience in the communications industry stated that in the fintech industry, visual storytelling is key when introducing customers to something that is new, adding imagery, the characters were used MTN Mobile Money’s first campaign in Ghana.
She said, “there were stories, instances where the money never got to the recipients. And so MTN noticed that if they needed to effect that kind of change in us initially, they needed to connect it with something that was common to every one of us. We knew local remittance so well, and we knew it’s from the back of our, and we knew that it was going to be coming from someone who was working in an urban area.”
She added: “that campaign still made and has still been the best campaign that she have run campaigns, but that particular campaign. And so that was how, I mean, the mobile money company or mobile money was introduced to Ghana.”
