Is Your Company a Laughing Stock?

No Comments

If your company still uses cheap stock pictures and you enjoy irony then keep reading.

Last month, McSweeney’s published “This is a Generic Brand Video”, a satirical piece by Kendra Eash about the generic branding used by some companies.

Many businesses today use meaningless, generic stock photos and stock video. These companies may think they’re sending a strong message to their customers and building a unique corporate image but they’re fooling only themselves. Everyone sees stock images for what they really are: just a quick way to cut corners and save a few bucks.

Now the irony.
Continue reading →

Corporate Photography for First-time Customers

No Comments

When a company decides to dip its business toes into corporate photography, the first photo project is usually either business portraits or pictures of the office. This is all well and good but it may help to have an overall plan for the photography well before a camera shutter button is clicked. Corporate photography should do more than just fill empty spaces on a page.

Sure, the easy marketing plan is, “we want more customers to buy more stuff.” But that’s too vague to be of any help. If you work things backward and break it down to specific steps, you can get it to work:

How do you get more customers to buy more stuff?
Continue reading →

Photo Editing Skills

No Comments

People know which pictures they like but they may not understand why. Few people understand the art and craft of photo editing.

There are few publications today that still have a photo editor. It would be surprising if any non-media business has a photo editor. Instead, photographers are left to edit their own work and then someone at the client-end selects the pictures they like to look at.
Continue reading →

Close Enough

No Comments

If you made products for digital cameras, what kind of camera would you show on your web site to help market your products?

If you’re Eye-Fi, which makes WiFi-enabled memory cards, you would use an old film camera from last century. [Sorry, the link has gone dead. Screengrab below]. And to make it worse, you would state “The power of WiFi for the camera you love.”


Continue reading →

Types of business headshots

No Comments

When a company needs a number of business portraits, is it better for those headshots to have a uniform look or a uniform style?

Uniform Look

A uniform look means all the portraits have the same, or very similar, lighting, background and pose. This shows consistency and a strong brand.

Having a uniform look in business headshots is common at law firms, insurance companies, banks and any other company that wants, or needs, to create a feeling of stability, consistency and comfort.

A business that has many locations may want a uniform look to imply that the company is the same no matter which location you visit.

A consistent appearance creates a consistent message which helps build customer trust.
Continue reading →

Do You Look Like Your Business?

No Comments

Do you look like your business? Does your business look like you?

A business is judged by its various appearances: appearance of the store, appearance of the web site, appearance of the employees. A less than favourable appearance will create a less than favourable impression on the customer.

A “good looking” appearance encourages a customer to trust that business. A poor appearance makes the customer suspicious.

You look like your business:
Continue reading →

The Most Dangerous Phrase

No Comments

According to former US Navy Rear Admiral and computer scientist Grace Hopper, the most dangerous phrase in the English language is: “We’ve always done it this way.”

Hmmm…

We’ve always used stock pictures.

We’ve always done a big group photo.

We’ve always done our business headshots against that wall over there.

We’ve always had our president photographed at his desk.

We’ve always done a cheque presentation ceremony.

We’ve always done our product shots on white.

We’ve always used only small pictures on our web site.

We’ve always had little media interest in our press releases.

We’ve always thought business portraits were like passport pictures.

We’ve always chosen the cheapest photographer.

 

css.php