Communicate Trust without Words

Abstract: The purpose of the study is to explore, how Latvian brands can use pictures in their social media communication in order to create more trustful image about itself. To fulfil the purpose, a particular Latvian brand is taken as an example for this study and their visual communication is analysed from two perspectives. Then the data, obtained from both parties, are compared to find out the most successful and effective ways brands can communicate a trustful image to their customers. Social media are changing from ''textual content based'' to ''visual content based'', which means that visual content could become the main way of conveying the messages. It is already seen that social media are changing the way they look – space for the text is getting smaller, while space for the picture is growing, in such a way moving forward the picture and leaving the text behind. Different researchers have already studied the importance of visual communication in attitude constructing towards brands, however, previous researchers have not paid attention to social media communication. Instead, they have studied advertisements, however ascribe these data to social media communication would not be correct, as there are various significant differences between these two ways of communicating. This study aims to give general insight in the way visual communication can be used in social media to construct a particular impression about a brand. As an example for this study a less known Latvian brand ''Latvijas Piens'' was taken, as their social media communication strategy includes an aim to communicate a trustful image to its social media followers. Qualitative research methods were chosen for this study. First, an individual interview with the brand's representative was carried out, then transcribed and used as a basis for the second research method – visual content analysis. Finally, two focus group interviews were conducted, which data was used to complement the visual content analysis and for comparison with data from the individual interview in order to make conclusions about the effectiveness of certain categories of pictures. The findings show that the most effective pictures in creating trustful brand's image are simple, cliché and arising strong emotionally positive associations, which are mostly based on memories and personal experience. People usually have different memories and previous experience, thus there exist differences in perception of the brand's messages, as customers in their evaluations are guided by different viewpoints. However, the research also shows that culture has a strong impact on the ways people perceive and interpret visual messages.