A Stock Conversation

Last week, I was in a meeting with a medium sized ad agency art buyer, showing her samples of my black and white work. She got enthusiastic about the work and started rattling off projects where this work would be appropriate.

As I watched, her face fell a bit when she tagged the conversation with, "But, we are having a hard time getting them away from royalty free stock images. Despite the fact that the images they choose keep showing up in [their competition's] collateral and ads."

I had another conversation over the phone with a head of a small design agency. She said that they used royalty free stock all the time. Yes, the images would show up in other companies' marketing materials. But, none of her clients were national, so it didn't really matter.

During a coffee conversation with an art director, he lamented that he was spending hours retouching and repurposing stock images to fit marketing concepts. By the time he was finished, he was billing as much in retouching fees as a custom shoot would have cost. And, the image still looked enough like the original that 5000 brochures were recycled when it showed up as the back wall of the competition's booth at a trade show.

I am not one to jump up and down and try to convince you that stock is bad and evil. It isn't. And, in some places, it is very appropriate. Even the royalty free stuff. Sometimes.

However, if you are working hard, spending lots of money and energy, trying to differentiate yourself - your company - from everyone else within your market, what is going to happen when the big national financial firm across the street is using the same image for their brochures that you have for yours?

Original marketing photography, like every other element of a company, is an investment. There is no get rich quick scheme. There is no short cut. There is no silver bullet.

And, in marketing, the payoff is directly related to your investment.

Great, original work will get you recognized. Great, copycat work... will get the other folks recognized...

The original image above was created to promote a production of "Anything Cole".