Forget what every other company does because none of these established brands owe their success to social media. So, if you want to stand out, then you must stand up — and apart — from the tens of millions of users of Instagram, all of whom do little more than post pictures and assign hashtags to various words or phrases.
You must, instead, treat this medium (and Medium, too) as a venue for the only kind of advertising that works — branding as storytelling, where you use text to bring your pictures to life; to give them life by giving them context; to exploit the details relative to that image of scaling Everest or surfing the Hawaiian Pipeline, thereby giving the reader a sense of standing before that precipice of rock and ice as the oxygen level deteriorates and you race to plant your flag atop the summit, or as the salt and mist of the Pacific stings your eyes while you ride a wave of monstrous force and drowning intensity; to give the viewer an appreciation of the history and tradition responsible for that photograph of intimacy, perseverance, courage, sacrifice, pain, love or common decency.
You must move the viewer, and, the cliché notwithstanding, a picture does not tell a thousand words; because only the words themselves — crafted with care, and polished with precision — motivate us to act; to wear that watch, drive that car, take that trip or make that leap of faith.
Pictures can rouse us to pursue freedom, or enrage us to demand justice. They can make our eyes well with tears, and have us make the sick well by works of charity and goodwill.
Words are the pictures of the soul.
