It’s a daily battle in the agency world when it comes to photography and what’s the best image to represent the project at hand.  Designers often use stock photos in their comps to get across the concept of the piece but even if the client likes that specific image it does not always make the most sense financially to purchase the rights to use it.  There are many stock houses out there these days and they all offer a variety of pricing structures from subscription based services to royalty free and rights managed options.  Along with pricing concerns, quality and variety of images also comes into play.

Photos that are rights-managed cost more and tend to offer better quality and variety of images with even the option of exclusivity within a given industry. However, there are no guarantees of that exclusivity and many companies find their image elsewhere which can lead to embarrassment and an overall cheapening of your project and brand.

We often try to persuade our clients to set up custom photo shoots to capture the image(s) they need.  Custom photo shoots used to be considered too costly for some budgets but with digital technology it often costs less with the added benefit of getting the exact image you are looking for.  You won’t see the image being used by another company when you drive down the freeway and you want have to worry about purchasing additional photo rights from the stock house if you negotiate a full buyout with your photographer. Tip to the wise: make sure you have that conversation with your photographer up front. Often you will get a better deal if you package the usage up front rather than add it on later.

While stock photo usage will always have its place for convenience and ease of use, the growing need to build a company’s photo library for the long-term makes owning the image outright and shooting photos specifically to a company’s needs the smarter strategic move.

In evaluating the conceptual platforms for a current campaign, I was reminded of a major challenge in developing a new brand – usually on the mind of almost every new client. Creating memorable, striking images that have the power of becoming an icon for a product or idea is usually Job One for any creative, and why we get the big bucks. On the surface this seems straightforward.

Simple… the more obvious the image, the more memorable it will be.

Wrong.

What makes a brand image effective is the collective nature of consumer perception – as perception and understanding of the brand message becomes continuously reinforced, the message becomes a personal truth that can later be triggered simply by the brand image. The creative challenge is first selecting an image that is easy and compelling to visualize, and then aligning it to a brand message that is important to the target.

This is the hardest to implement at the beginning, when the product “brand “ is unknown. The company or product brand needs to develop “ownership” of its attribute as its differentiation against the competition. The challenge is that in the current overloaded media environment, all the most obvious attributes of value – faster, cheaper, more effective, ad infinitum, have been utilized to the point of overkill. From shields and umbrellas for protection to a bulls-eye for precision to a DNA strand for biotech – images that have become banal, tired and ineffective, certainly not smartly differentiating the product.

Consequently new imagery must be created that is not as directly obviously connected to the attribute desired. The connection now has to be built more subtly, but no less effectively. Unfortunately, this requires heavy lifting – more creativity, longer campaigns, more repetition, more expense. But when it works, it works.

For example, look at Nike. This famous ad campaign does not even show the shoes. It talks about unleashing the power of initiative, showing a photo of any athletic effort with the “swoosh” logo and the phrase “Do it”. This is great branding, but it must be remembered it is the result of several decades of the same message and image association being repeated millions if not billions of times.

The most powerful visual branding is not simply a function of the image itself, but also always the context of that image. This context is developed by the verbal support of that imagery, the positioning and messaging. The heavy lifting comes from continuously reinforcing that message and image/word association long enough to imbed it into the audience consciousness. This is where repetition comes in. Break-out brand imagery now requires subtlety, the courage to go with the obscure, and the guts to pay the necessary cost.

The best marketing, like everything else, is never easy.

From the humble sales call to the mass hysteria of a major product launch, if you expect the cash register to ring, people must believe. Believe “what” you may ask? Believe that your product or services will make you successful, popular, safe-from-harm, rich, fulfilled….the list goes on and on. The problem for marketers is how to instill such confidence. In the past, the job was significantly easier. Salesmanship was viewed as theater. The circus would come to town, and the whole town would show up. Not a lot of choices to entertain yourself back at the turn-of-the-century. Radio and television provided new soapboxes for companies to preach their gospel. But the media choices were limited, marketing was still in its infancy, and the public would willingly eat it up. My how times have changed. It was just a few years ago that Time Magazine’s Person Of The Year was “the consumer” (the cover was a mirror surface). Today, the consumer has control. And they don’t have time to stop and listen to your sales pitch. Matter of fact, they control the messaging, not you. Today’s brand has to represent the consumer’s beliefs, not yours. And that requires a whole new set of principles for marketers to get their heads wrapped around.