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💡Make them curious with just 1⁄2 the picture

💡Make them curious with just 1⁄2 the picture

July 25, 2025

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💡Make them curious with just ½ the picture

Hulk Hogan died. Dude wasn’t the best wrestling performer. He just knew how to get fans fired up. Pretty good lesson for using what you’ve got. RIP.

Alright. Today’s Main Thing is short and sweet. I’m showing you 5 examples of how to use visuals to draw people into your digital ads, IRL signage, newsletter images, social media posts, etc. Let’s get into it.

Appetizer: See the feed below. HubSpot’s posting/stuffing “best CRM” articles in every business type ever invented. 11 articles in 9 days. Up next, “Best CRM for Emu Farms.”

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The Main Thing

Give Them ½ the Picture with Curiosity-building Visuals

I’ve done a few posts this year covering smart ways to use visuals in ads.

Clever billboards are the usual examples, but attention-snatching visuals can be used anywhere. Online or offline.

The idea with today’s examples is to show only part of the idea in the image.

On one hand, it can create curiosity.

On the other, it draws people in to fill in the blanks using their own minds.

Either way, it’s a win for whatever you’re promoting.

So, to highlight the idea, I made the following roughcut visuals. Nothing fancy.

The examples are just meant as a guide for how you or your designer can make your visuals more effective at getting attention and getting in shoppers’ heads.

Let’s see what we got…

The billboard mockup above uses the natural environment to mimic clouds hiding the percentage off sale. Could be as high as 90% off. Who knows.

Everybody loves a good smoke show. Save the unboxing for when the shopper comes into the store to find out what the new widget really is.

Quickie design but you get the picture. A before and after. With the after revealed beneath the whitening service.

This visual is for a game that gives customers a chance at a coupon. They get 10% off for every right answer. Lots of opportunities for brands to use visual quizzes. The one above was made by Claude, BTW, and it works.