Years ago we put a lot of emphasis on teaching ‘foreign’ and ‘romance’ languages in our public schools. French, Spanish, German even Russian. These were considered to be the languages of both culture, science and commerce. Times have certainly changed. Video is now the universal language. For entertainment as well as business.

The world has become considerably more open to other cultures and languages. We now recognize that more people in world speak Chinese, Hindi and Arabic than these classic European languages as shown in the following chart.

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The barriers of international commerce have melted away.

English has become the de facto universal language of business. But it’s not the only language of importance. Obviously it’s necessary to conduct commerce in many languages. However, it is important to note there are other means of communication that are quickly becoming dominant especially amongst millennials and younger generations.

VISUAL VS WRITTEN LANGUAGE

The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is fast becoming a business reality.

Two new visual languages are supplanting the need for verbal or even writing skills. – Emojis and Video.
What both of these have in common is the ability to express complex human emotions and interactions in a simple and straightforward manner. When it comes to Emojis – they are our modern day form of hieroglyphics. Entire conversations are conducted without uttering or writing a single word. No need for English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic. And most importantly in terms of language adoption – Emojis are universal.

The most potent language for business today is video

With the ubiquity of smart phones and the shortening of attention spans, younger generations have learned to ‘speak’ with images in a manner that is both engaging and concise.

The growth of Snapchat, Instagram, and the explosion of TikTok have provided the canvas upon which entire video and visual conversations are taking place. It’s obvious that video and imagery is the preferred method of social communication amongst the population under the age of 30.

And businesses better wake up quickly. It’s how we want to be communicated to. Not emails, Not static and boring print ads. Give us moving images – videos. And they better be entertaining.

On an episode of my Video Marketing 2.0 podcast that aired in late 2015, Sourabh Kothari, head of Rich Media Marketing at Cisco Systems described video as “the best media for building relationships” and when it comes to business marketing “Video is a language that influences behaviors’.

This is an essential lesson for businesses of all types and sizes to grasp. Video is everywhere. It’s universal and it’s not going away anytime soon.

So, it’s never too late to learn a new language. Why not start with Video?