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not just a white box on a wall...

A few years back I was working with Baxi, the boiler people shooting stills for some new product launches and an ad campaign to raise their profile among plumbers.
The job was being managed by Phil Hackney, our Director of Photography and he came up with this novel approach, which a trusting client bought into with great results.
 
It’s a shot of a boiler, and it was the first time anyone ever thought of shooting a boiler in an unconventional way – not just a white box on a wall. We all know what a boiler looks like, especially the plumbers we were advertising this to – so why not show them a different take on it for a change? It made a great advert, looked brilliant on the front of their sales brochures, and most importantly, it stood out miles from the competition and gave a very positive impression about Baxi’s standing as a business.
 
This shot was used time and time again to demonstrate to many different clients how our photography professionals were skilled at applying these creative techniques to otherwise uninspiring products – which the world is full of, to make them stand out from the crowd. It was a brilliant story to tell, it started some great conversations and won us even more business.
 
Got a similar story? We’d love to see your creative shots of everyday products

For more work from Phil Hackney, go to www.philhackney.co.uk

Impersonal stock shot...

Many photographers face competition from clients who want to use stock images rather than commission bespoke shots. It’s easy to see why this option can be seen as a cheaper and quicker alternative to a commission. The downside is that this is a very impersonal approach to take.

I want to step away from this issue briefly, to think about marketing.

Many photography commissions are to provide images for a clients marketing campaign. Much of today’s marketing campaigns are directed into social media channels; facebook, twitter, google+ and so on. In all of these channels, best practice places a huge emphasis on expressing personality – the human side and face of organizations, because this how these marketing succeeds and drive business – they engage with potential buyers.

Another key to marketing success is for businesses to differentiate their offer; marketers need to demonstrate innovation and uniqueness.

But how can we use this analogy to make a stronger case for commissioned images?

These days it is easy to evaluate the effectiveness and sales generated by marketing channels. And there is a tendency for clients to dismiss things they don’t understand or can’t measure. Many clients will not be able to directly measure the impact of an image, so will decide that a stock image, or a poor quality image will be good enough. Reducing the cost of photography then becomes an easy way to save money.

As photographers, we have to accept it is difficult to measure the effect of images, but we can make a case to apply the broader marketing principles (personality & uniqueness to engage customers) to justify our costs.

Remember that social media and other marketing inevitably lead potential buyers to a website. If the customer sees stock photography here, there is a risk that that genuine personality that has been created in other channels will evaporate.

We have to remember that marketers make decisions based on their customers. Customers are very astute and stock photography is obvious thanks to its lack of personality and sterility. Sites that use it heavily feel fake. As customers become increasingly demanding with the growth in the choices they have when making a purchase. They need to know and trust brands before they transact with them, and fakeness isn’t going to build trust.

Marketers who settle for stock images are missing a huge opportunity to commission something unique, personal and exclusive. Something that will resonate with their customers, tells them a story about their business, and ultimately creates an environment in which they are happy to part with their hard earned cash.

The New Year is always a time for both reflection and planning ahead. As business owners, we are highly sensitive to negative news about the economy and consumer confidence. We regularly work with people who are commissioning photography for retail businesses, so we wanted to ask photographers what was on their mind going into 2012. We’ve had a great response with some big issues highlighted. Here is a selection of the comments and the issues that were shared:

‘Photographers are our own greatest challenge when it comes to giving or wholesaling images on CD. What is the value of the Copyright if you give your clients the image? Most of us have perfected Digital Imaging, but have not looked at how we do business in the digital age.’

Many photographers have experience where the value of their photography is just not recognized by other commercial organizations; with examples of approaches being made by businesses that want permission to use images, but don’t want to pay for them.

‘The challenge of not being replaced by the amateur.’

Everyone has a camera, and with Photoshop being so straightforward, people are taking a more casual approach to photography and the understanding and appreciation of the skills of professionals is being lost. Professionals are having to work hard to offer products which underline their skills, such as offering post production services that are not provided by the big retail labs and stores. Free or cheap photography is always going to be attractive to the buyer, but some people are coming back to the professionals trying to get them to fix things when the amateurs have got them wrong – like weddings.

But, ‘that moment in time is lost forever…clients don’t realize they are paying for expertise and experience not a CD.’

Another issue is that customers often don’t know how to tell a good image from a bad image, so they can’t tell when they are getting good value for their money.

‘Keep the momentum, keep creative. Try not to fall for ridiculous prices or number of pictures a day.’

Appreciation and popularity of photography in the art world has grown in the past few years and there is hope that this will have an impact on the appreciation of photography in the commercial sense too.

‘Getting new clients depends on getting in front of people through real, face-to-face networking.’

We’re keen to keep the debate going. Understanding the issues is critical, but we want to balance this with ways that we can address these problems and educate the buyers of commercial and professional photographic services. If you have anything that you want to add, we’d be delighted to hear from you.

Wishing all of our clients and friends a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012!

We’re back to work with a spring in our step and have lots of great things happening this year. We’ve no intention of letting the doom and gloom of the newspaper headlines affect us and have got some great projects lined up and more exciting products in the pipeline.

To make it super easy for our clients, we have added some new products to our offer and have added our prices in too. Check out the menu on the left hand side of the home page to see our key products. We know that everyone needs to know how much things are going to cost as quickly as possible, so here you are!

 There’s little relief from the economic doom and gloom.  I don’t believe we should allow ourselves to be talked into a recession, but right now is a great opportunity to scrutinize your business, in particular your marketing activity to make sure it is working harder than ever, and is getting the best possible return for your business.

 …the tough get going – 5 things to tackle right now

 1. Review all of your recent marketing activity – do you know exactly what each channel it is generating for your business?

 2. Have a fresh look at the key messages you are putting out to your customers – will they be as relevant in the next few months and can they be strengthened?

 3. Check that you understand exactly how all your marketing money is spent? Do your suppliers give you detailed cost breakdowns?

 4. Think about when the last time was that you checked out another supplier’s costs to compare with your existing suppliers?

 5. Look at how can you make your existing marketing channels work harder – e.g. Could you add video on your website or be more proactive in pushing your offers to your customers?

 This is not an exhaustive list by any means. Recession or not, if you want your customers to find you they need to know that you are still out there and give them good reasons to spend their precious money with you.

You can make your catalogue work much harder for you.  And you can get started straight away!

Chances are you spend a lot of money on producing your catalogue for your business, but could you generate even more sales? When you spend so much time working on something, it’s hard to look at it objectively but, getting some valuable advice on how you can improve your catalogue can be done quickly, easily and very cost effectively.

These are some areas that you can look at:-

• How does your catalogue look compared to your competitors?
• What does it say about your brand?
• What do your customers think about it?
• How do they use it?
• Which bits do they like and which bits don’t they rate?
• How well is it matched to your target audience?
• How easy is it to buy from?
• Are the pages in the best order to maximize sales?
• How strong are the value/cost messages?
• Do your customers have the right information in the right place to make the decision to buy as easy and quick as possible

If you would like to know how you can get more from your catalogue then we’d love to talk to you. We can give you feedback in a couple of days, which means you can start making positive changes right away.

The number of retailers using video as a sales tool is expected to grow dramatically in 2012.  There are a number of factors which are making video so desirable, and importantly for advertisers, it is consumers who are driving it, through their take up of video as a preferred way to communicate with their friends through social media.

 Video is growing for two key reasons: 1) because it drives sales, and  2) it’s the new buzz word

 Like previous hot channels, Facebook and Twitter, it can take a while for advertisers and marketers to really understand how to make it pay. So, do more than just jump on the bandwaggon! Make sure you really harness the potential of this key tool by getting the planning right:

 1. Which areas of my business will benefit from video the most?

2. What will the cost be and how much will it drive my sales?

3. How cost effectively can I produce video, and how long will it take before it is on my site?

4. How can I measure what video contributes to my business?

 There are a range of ways you can incorporate video:

• Product videos – video’s of products as a direct sell
• Brand messages (conversion support), ie videos which demonstrate the quality of your products, which give customers reassurance to buy
• After sales support, eg installation guides
• Customer testimonials – get your customers to post their own videos

 The amount you spend on each video, should be linked into its role in the sales process to makes sure you are always getting a return on your investment, and you should set up key metrics so that you can measure the effect of videos.

 Build in regular performance analysis; different approaches will work in different ways. Only by measuring each approach or type of content will you be able to refine your strategy over time, and make sure that video becomes a highly effective sales tool for your business.

With Google Catalogues launching in the UK next March, consumers will have a vastly improved way of shopping from their mobiles and tablets.

Google’s catalogue app makes it easy for clients to manage the content through either Google’s CMS system or the client’s existing one, and customers will be able to buy directly from the catalogue, and to share product information easily and quickly with their friends via social media.

Of course Google Catalogues isn’t the only way to build your catalogue, and regardless of which platform you decide to build your catalogue on, you’ll still need to understand how to plan out the pages to make it a strong, customer focussed, selling tool. The key questions that you need to be able to answer are as follows:-

• What information does your customer want and expect to see in a digital catalogue?
• How do customers want to shop from digital catalogues?
• Which of the assets that you already have (eg images, video etc) will be suitable for your digital catalogue?
• What’s the best way to use the different types of content that can be put on a digital catalogue?
• How much ‘selling content’ should you include, as opposed to ‘non-selling’ content? (I.e. Supporting information about your brand and expert advice that you can give your customer to build trust, relationships and to encourage conversion)
• How can you build in calls to action & functionality that will encourage your customers to share what they are buying from you, with their friends on Facebook and Twitter?
• How much should you spend on producing all this content?
• How should you split your budget between the different types of content?

Only once you have worked out these key areas, should you start putting the flat plan together. The rest of the process will be much easier thanks to having spent this crucial time developing your strategy before you start pulling the content together

When your customer goes on to your site, what do you assume that they have gone there for?

The idea that customers go online just to buy or compare prices is an outdated one.

Customers shop differently, depending on where they are in the buying process, but broadly they are either in buying mode, or browsing mode.

When they come to your site they could be looking for ideas and inspiration; finding a gift for a friend, researching trends for a style for a project in their home, or comparing prices on a particular item or finally, buying something right there and then.

Shoppers recognize what phase they are in and they have very different expectations and attitudes towards a browsing experience versus a buying one.

Websites are brilliant channels in their ability to provide user journeys for different types of shopping phases, but most sites are geared towards the ‘search and buy’ journey. This means they are missing out on the opportunity to create a meaningful relationship with their customers who are in other shopping modes – when they are still browsing.

Browsing time is the perfect time to really bring content marketing into your strategy, customers are very receptive to targeted content at this point, which means there is a great opportunity to reap much bigger rewards when they are ready to buy.

We all know that first impressions count, and that those first impressions often come from visual experiences. Your customers are highly receptive to images, and they form strong opinions about your brand, website or catalogue from its overall ‘look’.

A picture tells a thousand words.

In any online or catalogue based shopping experience, you want your customers to buy products from you, products that they are buying from it’s photographic image.

Your images say many things about your brand - quality, price, professionalism, experience and expertise. They tell a detailed story about each product they sell; its size, form, propotions quality, texture and colour. Consistent photography across a large product range make it easier for people to browse and select the right product to buy, and make the shopping experience much more enjoyable.

Great photography doesn’t need to come with a huge price tag. Even for high volume product photography projects. But you will have to plan in advance to reap the benefits, and save time in the long run. A strong brief will need to be provided to create a style that fits your brand, and you’ll need to decide on the most appropriate techniques. Careful logistics planning before and during the shoot will make sure that shot rates are high and that quality is maintained. You’ll see the difference, but more importantly, so will your customers.