Monday, August 25, 2008
The Care & Feeding of Stock Photos in the Wild
The last couple of years has brought a huge number of low-price stock imagery websites to the marketing department's toolbox. If you don't have experience in photo editing or art direction, here are some things to keep in mind to maximize the effects of your images.
- Think conceptually. There are millions of images available that cover some common themes. The CSR with a headset smiling, a team of business people looking at a computer, shaking hands, etc. Make a mental list sometime of all the cliche images you see during the course of a day. Now suppose you're putting together a small tri-fold brochure and you want to show that your company is solutions-oriented. Instead of the engineer working on a computer, how about an image of a swiss army knife, or puzzle pieces. These images will resonate in the readers mind better. People are so bombarded with marketing images that they gloss over things that they have seen many times. There is power in using images to support your text, but only if those images are unique enough to break through the clutter.
- Only use an image if it's going to help. There is a temptation with all this cheap stock to use images just because there is space in the layout.
Use images like you would use garlic: just the right amount and the food is wonderful, too much and you can't eat it. Sometimes a powerful headline is more effective than an image. For example, can you think of any image that is more powerful than the headline announcing "We've found a cure for cancer"? - Avoid using the images everyone else is. Most stock sites will show how many times an image has been downloaded. If you see one that has a high number of downloads you can bet you're going to see it again, maybe by your competition. Look into those images that haven't been used much. They'll have more impact than something everyone's already seen.
Keep these basics in mind and you're advertising and marketing collateral will be much more effective and influential.
