Another Public Relations Failure

Canadian company Communitech today launched its Communitech Hub in Kitchener, Ontario. From its press release:

The Hub . . . is now home to start-up companies, small-medium enterprises, and global multi-nationals all aiming to accelerate the pace of development of new ideas and products in the digital media sector.

…leading-edge facility…

…will help launch more made-in-Ontario companies…

…state-of-the-art facility for digital innovation…

…the commercialization of innovation in Waterloo Region…

…dedicated to establishing Canada as a world leader in Digital Media…

Sounds good so far.

So how does this company promote the opening of its new, multi-multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art facility dedicated to Canadian innovation in digital media?

By using a cheap stock photo bought from US company Getty as its media handout picture:

Being a cheap, stock picture, this photo is currently being used on at least 200 other web sites. This means that Communitech knowingly chose to be unoriginal.

Couldn’t Communitech get any of its own “digital media” clients to produce a usable photo? Couldn’t it find a Canadian photographer to create a unique image? Didn’t Communitech just say, “state-of-the-art,” “innovation in the Waterloo Region” and “help made-in Ontario companies”?

This is another example of a company that intentionally decided to be cheap. It just proved that its business image is not important, not unique, not worth noticing. It decided that its marketing photography didn’t have to support its marketing message. The message of this picture is the exact opposite of the text in the press release, (more on this in a moment).

By using a low cost, stock photo for this important image, Communitech is saying that cheap is good enough for them, it’s happy to cut corners, there’s no need to stand out and it doesn’t respect its viewers enough to give them custom-created photography.

But wait, there’s more. (You may already have noticed this).

Look at the headline in the photo. It says, “The Future is Digital.”

So why is the guy holding an old film camera, a Canon Auto Zoom 814 Electronic Super-8 movie camera that came out in 1972?

Future? Digital?

Is this just a lack of understanding of photography (and video cameras) by a business that’s now the punchline to its own public relations failure?

There are reasons why most thinking companies don’t use stock pictures in press releases: the photo is absolutely meaningless and the picture can’t be legally used by any of the media recipients of the press release. One wonders if Communitech even bothered to read the licence that came with the stock picture.

This is why you never use cheap, anonymous, stock pictures for your business photography. Why, oh why, do companies go cheap when their business image is on the line?