Why successful Product Promotion needs tailored photography, not stock photos

In advertising and promotion, photos carry more than the beauty and fine detail of your product – they carry messages to create interest and desires. Photographs are quickly scanned and interpreted by the human visual system which is trained by evolution to immediately analyze situations and meanings, dating back from times when it was vital to escape a predator.

Photos can transport very complex messages such as positive mood and trust, they can evoke feelings of warmth, summer, weekend, holidays … all in one single shot, and almost all immediately perceived by the viewer – some consciously whilst other messages reach the subconscious. Such subliminal messages are particularly important in business fields like tourism, banking, or insurances.

Promotions for products such as fashion and cosmetics or the automotive industry produce photographs that are so highly stylized that they become almost eternal brand representations, these photographs sometimes become icons in themselves with a strong notion of trust and recognition. Timelessness and emotionalism are strong features of such brands which have been successfully installed and promoted through photography. Here is where I would like to warn against using stock photos. Some of them may be good in technical terms but they are never unique. In today’s ‘internet world’, people are saturated with uniform pictures that are all interchangeable. High quality individualized photographs transport not only the quality of the product but also the caliber of the organization behind the promotion. Of course, this helps in building corporate integrity, brand credibility and loyalty of the customer for the product, advertising photographer and the associated company.

Unlike stock photos, these tailored quality photographs have the potential for becoming viral in social networks and other online communities. According to recent research with Twitter and Facebook users, favorable responses increase by 40% - 65% for those who use visual content in their posts (Regina Luttrell: Social Media - How to Engage, Share, and Connect, Third Edition). Needless to stress that top photographs are best to be connected to other first class content. It is key that the photographer must work closely with the client to collect rich details about the product and associated messaging, the market context, the competition, the promotional season …..

New channels need to be used to gather rich data about clients, markets, competitors etc. A very well known hi-class pen company almost lost their business before they learned that they really are in the gift market rather than the writing business ...

Deloitte (https://www2.deloitte.com/de/de/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/future-of-advertising.html ) recently presented important thoughts on the future of advertising, stating that the whole promotional industry is in a fundamental structural change where established players are losing ground on companies that fully embrace the possibilities of the digital and internet world. This change already created new major players and the question is not whether more change will happen, but rather how radical that change will be and at what pace. HGA

Solutions to successful Product Promotion

product or service providers need to understand and embrace the immense value of tailored promotional photography
the photographer must work with the client to fully understand the product and desired messaging, the market context, competition, promotional season …..
the photographic part needs to go hand-in-hand with top quality content and the appropriate promotional channels
ensure that novel data providers are used to get a rich understanding of your client base to support positioning and differentiation
the strength and possibilities of the digital world need to fully embraced and the promotional campaign to work with experts that fully understand these novel channels