The Future of Storytelling is Two Pictures
Once upon a time, I had a “before” picture and an “after” picture of something I had made. I was proud of this little accomplishment, and I shared the pictures with the world. You could easily see what I had done by looking at those two photos side by side. The end.
Before and after images tell a story, and everyone loves a good story. Shiny, stylized, solitary images are all over Instagram and Pinterest, but they don’t tell us very much. We need to link, comment, hunt or search to learn more. We humans have a need to know how someone or something began before we can really appreciate an achievement or gauge progress. One picture may be worth a thousand words, but two can tell a story.
What kind of a story? Well, it could be a little win, like the chocolate chip cookies I made above, or a significant achievement, like remodeling a house. Whatever the occasion, most of us are in constant proximity to cameras on our phones, and therefore, the ability to share what happened.
This is why I believe that two pictures — not one glam shot — will be the future of digital storytelling and photo sharing.
It is also why I founded SnapTwice, an offering dedicated to quickly sharing before and after pairs. Renovations, remodels, makeovers, transformations, growth—almost any change from “then” to “now” can be communicated with two pictures and just a few words.
A little wander through popular culture and media reveals why we love these contrasting images so much, why we should be excited about a quicker, smoother storytelling experience online and on our phones, and why most of us will slap our heads and say, “That makes sense! What took so long?”
What’s on TV?
NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” features stories of dramatic weight loss and physical transformation, and the show has appealed to millions of viewers over sixteen (16) seasons and counting. That “wow” moment at the end of an episode when the protagonist comes out on stage for the final weigh-in, all dolled up in fancy duds is a very impactful “after” moment, contrasted with a photo of where that person began as a plumper version of him- or herself. By the end of the episode, we as viewers have travelled the weight loss journey, albeit in rapid TV-time, and can see the side-by-side images of the same person, which bookends the experience — or the story — for us.
Programs about home renovations on the cable channel HGTV (Home and Garden Television), like “Fixer Upper,” “Rehab Addict,” and “Flip or Flop,” are available in roughly 100 million homes, and the channel’s ratings continue to grow month over month. Why? Let’s look at one of those shows as an example. The husband and wife team behind “Fixer Upper” are Joanna and Chip Gaines of Waco, Texas, and their combination of hard work, stunning aesthetic, laugh-out-loud humor, and focus on family make the show addictive and incredibly popular. I would anticipate that Joanna’s ranch-chic, open floor plan design worldview will significantly influence a whole movement in home layouts, decoration, and Do-It-Yourself projects across the country, given her loyal viewers and large following on social media (almost 2 million on Instagram alone).
A hallmark of the show’s appeal invokes a key technique employed by “The Biggest Loser” — the dramatic big reveal contrasted with a reminder image of where we began. In the final minutes of every episode of “Fixer Upper,” Joanna and Chip stand in front of a couple’s newly-remodeled home holding opposite sides of a giant split photo of the original home, mounted on caster wheels that they slide out of the way at the right moment. The homeowners stand there laughing as they look upon the huge “before” poster, while Joanna asks them the rhetorical question, “Are y’all ready to see your fixer upper?” The couple inevitably shouts, “Yes!” and the Gaines slide the “before” photo away, revealing the beautiful “after” reality to slack-jawed and often teary reactions of the lucky homeowners. Simply put — Joanna and Chip Gaines are likable, talented AND they deliver killer visual results. Are we surprised that their show’s ratings are through the roof?
The Food Network, which features how-to’s about meal preparation from chefs and cooks all over the world, has seen a ratings decline in recent years, but it still pulls in millions of viewers. Like HGTV, the Food Network is in roughly 100 million U.S. homes. With well-known celebrity chefs, like Mario Batali, Tyler Florence, Alton Brown, Rachael Ray, and Ina Garten, the network was built with a strong backbone. When viewers begin an episode of Barefoot Contessa, they are transported into her lovely and spacious East Hampton kitchen, warmly welcomed by a smiling Ina, her raw ingredients and a meal plan. There is almost always a story-within-the-story of why Ina is putting together a particular meal. Frequently she is cooking for someone else and for some special event — a birthday, graduation, book release, or date night with her husband Jeffrey. It’s a clever way to jazz up an otherwise straightforward plot. When we see Ina’s finished dishes, often displayed on expertly-designed tables by her talented florist friends, we not only eat with our eyes, but we also applaud her talents and are inspired to try something new in our own kitchens. Ina is like a trusted aunt who assures us we can do it too, that we can start with high quality, but simple, groceries and create something of which we can be proud. All of these episodes tell a visual story of food.
Remember Magazines?
While there has been a multi-year decline in print readership, we cannot ignore consumer magazines as a steady source of restoration, renovation and makeover stories with the all-important photos as evidence of what was before, what came after, and all of the elbow grease in between. Circulation and readership numbers reveal that, every month, tens of millions of people are reading magazines, many of which prominently feature before and after transformations.
Tallying up just a few of the top titles in health and fitness (Shape, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, and Men’s Fitness) yields a circulation of 6.5 million. In my late teens and early twenties, my favorite part of Shape magazine was the monthly installment by a writer who was sharing her weight loss journal, and seeing her tone up and slim down month over month, as she shared her learnings, setbacks and successes. The honesty, humor and progress hooked me. I must not have been alone, because the writers changed over the years that I had my subscription, but the weight loss diary column stayed. Today on Shape.com, the same concept exists, but the writers post weekly, and of course the web affords unlimited real estate for photos, recipes, workout tips, training gear recommendations, etc. The before and after photos are still the first thing I notice. But more on websites and blogs in a minute, let’s finish our tour through print-landia.
Similar circulation numbers to fitness magazines (~7 million) can be found if we total up a few food-focused and cooking publications (Food & Wine, Bon Appetite, Real Simple, Saveur and Martha Stewart Living). Reading about a chef or food editor taking a raw turkey from brining to basting to serving is a very satisfying visual experience. Beyond the beautiful photos of the finished dishes, the other thing readers appreciate is seeing the ingredients — all laid out in their raw form — because that image provides an honest frame of reference, a heads up of what to expect when we get into our own kitchens, and come face-to-face with the task of making Thanksgiving stuffing, for example, all by ourselves.
The lifestyle and home category boasts circulation numbers well over twenty (20) million, with leading titles like Architectural Digest, Better Homes & Gardens, This Old House, Southern Living, and Good Housekeeping. In my opinion, the best articles about room, whole house or garden remodels and new construction include the before picture, so we readers can get a sense for the amount of work that went into a project and the talent that the architects, builders, interior designers and home owners contributed. Bonus points if we can get some details about the team involved and the products they used.
We all love to see that large, glossy, styled, profile picture, but we appreciate it even more when we can see where the project started.
How’s the Surf?
OK, so there are plenty of TV shows and magazines scratching our itch for before & after pairs, but where do we go for these stories of transformation online? For starters, many of the same television and publishing properties we looked at above have popular presences online. FoodNetwork.com reports 25 million visitors per month, and its sister property HGTV.com sees 6 million visitors per month. Viewers often use the website as a follow-up to a project or recipe they saw on TV, but they also use these sites as primary sources for research or inspiration. Perhaps unsurprisingly, print publications’ web and mobile reach are gaining on, if not already eclipsing, their traditional print circulations. For example BHG.com (Better Homes and Gardens) receives 9 million monthly uniques against a magazine circulation of 7.6 million. MarthaStewartLiving.com reports 8 million monthly uniques and a print circulation of 2.1 million, and Shape.com claims close to 9 million uniques and a print circulation of 1.6 million.
Before and after stories on these sites are usually prominently displayed but often hampered by old, slow technology like web-centric widgets and slideshows that don’t translate well onto a mobile device, if they are made available at all to mobile users. The web tools are also laden with ads — takeovers, video interstitials, banners, skyscrapers, expandables, you name it. Users may understand a website’s need to monetize itself, but that doesn’t make the user experience enjoyable.
Additionally, there are many successful web-first properties in these major categories that align well with the before & after format (fitness and health, beauty, home renovations, cooking, crafting, etc). Websites like the following are photo-centric and feature stories of transformation: BodyBuilding.com (30 million monthly uniques), Houzz (25 million monthly uniques), The Kitchn (10 million), Apartment Therapy (5.8 million), Remodelista (5.8 million). Despite their popularity, actually browsing before and after pairs still poses a challenge for users of these sites for a variety of reasons — the sites use the same limited, desktop web-based widget technology as the media sites do, “before” photos may not be included as part of articles or posts, or the before photos are buried way down in the article, making it tough to see what changed and apply the learnings to a reader’s own fitness program / home renovation / cooking / car restoration / crafting / beauty regimen.
The problem is that, historically, sites have treated the before & after concept as a tool or a feature rather than the heart of the story itself.
Popular blogs, like Jen Hadfield’s Tatertots & Jello, do a very good job of visually communicating the complete path of a project. Typically a post features a series of photos interspersed with comments and then wraps up with shopping lists, prices, sources and links. If a post is popular, there will be a full comments section. However, the tools and services available to bloggers are limited, and therefore most blog posts do not deliver a quick, high-impact side by side display of two pictures up front to grab a reader. Instead, bloggers almost always vertically stack photos, forcing users to scroll quite a bit before deciding whether to commit to reading and studying the post. Forcing a scroll may be understandable for metrics like time on site and ad views but it is not a great UX nor helpful to someone searching for a before and after pair that can inform or inspire their specific need. It’s also behind the times for mobile users who are accustomed to quick swipes to hone in on what interests them. Another challenge is how fragmented and similar many blogs are and how difficult it is to stumble upon a renovation, restoration, recipe or health regimen that may speak to you vs. one that is a fit for me. Until now, there has not been one place to browse before and after pairs.
Shall We Socialize?
Looking closely at digital photos and photo sharing inevitably brings us back to Instagram and Pinterest and the thesis I submitted (way) up top: that a before and after pair is the natural evolution from the single image and a trend we are just starting to see.
Here is a dated statistic that is still useful as a reference point — back in May 2014, we as consumers were collectively sharing almost 2 billion photos per day across WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Flickr. On Instagram alone, users are sharing 80 million photos every day. One Instagram phenom is Kayla Itsines, a young Australian fitness trainer, who invented a program called “Bikini Body Guides.” She posts before and after photos of her followers and clients, which are by far the most common photos she shares. Kayla has 4.6 million followers — an astounding 1% of Instagram’s user base — and those followers in turn post before and after photos of themselves on their own accounts tagging them with #bbg (for bikini body guide). They delight if Kayla chooses their photos to repost on her feed. It’s a virtuous circle.
As a casual user, though, it is challenging to engage with and follow the fitness stories of these BBG fans on Instagram — or engage with anyone on Instagram at a deeper level for that matter. The comments section is both noisy and terse with hashtags, emojis, and shorthand communication. Further, links are not enabled in the comments section, only on profile pages, which limits continuity and deeper engagement. Instagram accounts frequently have opaque handles, which throws up a barrier to trust and information sharing. Compounding the issue, many users only have Instagram accounts, not blogs or websites, which limits the conversation. Instagram is wildly successful in terms of absolute users and active engagement even with these limitations. However, I believe that millions of users would welcome more immersive conversations with each other around fitness, cooking, home improvement, fashion, beauty, car restoration, hobbies, etc, if there was a fun, clean, transparent place for them.
On Pinterest, popular blogger and pinner Kalyn Denny posts recipes from her cooking blog, Kalyn’s Kitchen. Her personal weight loss success and many years of sharing healthy recipes have made her a trusted source for hundreds of thousands home cooks. Also on Pinterest, Joy Cho has an astounding 13 million followers, with almost 650 thousand on her beauty board alone. Both Kalyn and Joy feature some before and after photos and step-by-step photo how-to’s in their posts in the vertical Pinterest form factor. But before and afters or step-by-steps are very much in the minority relative to the millions of beautiful, stylized “after” photo pins. To meaningfully engage with the author of the pin, most users follow the pin over to its page of origin (blog, media site) and ask follow up questions there, if that feature is supported (e.g., about an ingredient or a technique or where to buy). Again, Pinterest is amazingly successful, but its focus is much more about re-pinning vs. original content creation, and like Instagram, it is not optimized to encourage user-to-user communication.
Do you DIY?
Have you tried to tell a before and after story using pictures one-to-one or one-to-a-few? If so, how did you do it? Did you send two pictures via SMS? Or did you email those pictures along with a few comments? Maybe you tried using Facebook to convey the same story? With any of these approaches, did it hit the mark or fall short? One of the main reasons I started SnapTwice was because these options didn’t meet my needs. I wanted to communicate the impactful visuals of a before and after moment in time, like our son turning 5 or a pretty side dish I made for a New Year’s Eve party. Those are stories best told with two pictures side by side. Further, I wanted to memorialize the experience, because I didn’t want it to be as ephemeral as a text or Facebook post. I also wanted to target the right audience, perhaps just a few friends and family vs. blasting my whole FB feed or, alternatively, reach out to people with similar interests whom I didn’t yet know. I am not a blogger, and I don’t want to set up a blog, so that wasn’t an option for me. I craved all of these benefits, but I didn’t want it to take very long. It needed to be a quick, fun experience. So of course, I started a company, the shortest route possible… :-)
But seriously, I launched this service to help individuals have fun while they capture and share daily accomplishments as well as long-term achievements.
I wanted it to be a quick and enjoyable experience akin to sending an email to a friend, posting a photo to Facebook or penning a review of a great experience on TripAdvisor or Yelp, but without the learning curve and maintenance of blogging.
SnapTwice is also for businesses, especially small-medium sized businesses and professional bloggers, whose posts and portfolios naturally fit the before & after format. Bloggers focused on food, restoration, crafting, home decorating, beauty, and organization would be perfect. Professionals in home design, architecture, construction, hair stylists, makeup artists, plastic surgeons, car restoration experts, fashion and jewelry designers, inventors, restaurants and chefs are also welcome. We hope businesses will agree that the snippets of content you can share for free on SnapTwice will drive new readers and prospective customers to your site where they can dive into a post in greater depth, get the specifics on a recipe or DIY project, see more of your work and portfolio, and engage with you directly.
I hope you enjoy what we are building and that you will share some of your little wins and big feats.
Cheers,
Katherine and the SnapTwice Team
