It’s the content, stupid

November 6, 2007 by pmelcher.

I was reading something about creative research. This is a field, for those who might not know, that is particularly devoted in researching what type of images will sell. It is not really a science and it is very similar to what advertisers do when they try to sell a product to a particular crowd. They try to smell a trend when it’s at its peak or just about to break and try to surf it all the way to the shore.

Not an easy task indeed. Too early, no one notices, too late and it’s a backslash. The photo industry, at the least the traditional one, has bought in into this “research” in order to provide the images that will illustrate a campaign, outsmarting the advertising agencies. That makes a lot of people trying to figure out what will be cool next week. However, the photo industry research doesn’t really go outside, in the street, to look what people are doing with their time, money, leisure, vacation, clothes and other things. Rather they look at the images they sold and project that they will keep on selling.

Then comes the micro/mid stock . Absolutly no creative research. No rules. Just a wide bunch of unchained people taking pictures of whatever they feel. “Insane”, would say a corporation. “Crazy”, would add a long time RF photographer who made millions. “Totally immature”, would conclude the research analyst paid fortunes to spread excels into long sheets of numbers.

Well, a bit like the success of the first Napster, the illegal one, Microstock has actually brought images in the market, that no one really had but that people needed. No one took close ups of toothbrushes, or apples, or pens or even computer keyboards because, well, according to the analysts, there was no market. And why would they say such a thing ? well, because they had never seen an image like that sell before, according to their sales reports. No one actually checked to see if such an image even existed. It would have explained why the images had never been sold.

One of the reason of the success of Napster was not so much that it was free, but mostly, it was because you could find one song, that one track that you wanted. Nothing else, nothing more. You would have never, ever gone to the music store to get a whole CD just for that song. But there it was. And you took it. The explosion of I tunes is a confirmation .

Micro and Midstock is the same. No photographer in their right mind would have ever taken a photograph of a cell phone transmition tower . They are the ugliest things in the world. And even if they did, their agencies would have flatly refused, saying ” this is the ugliest thing in the world”. The crowd doesn’t have the fears or limitation that the traditional stockers have. They have no “creative research”. Even better, they have their ears and eyes in the streets because they ARE the streets. Those who take these images are also those who buy-in these trends, fashion, coolness and other ephemeral movements.

So while mister “I am the best stock shooter in the world and I make millions a year” looks at magazines, TV, movies, ads, in order to smell a trend, and ends up shotting the same thing over and over again, the trendmakers are taking pictures.

Everyone knows that, in this industry, it is not the pricing that decides the success of an image. It is the image. A bad photograph, even for free, will never be used. Microstock companies could charge more, and they know that, because they have content that people want to us. They deliberately keep the pricing under the level of the demand, as a marketing gimmick. The recent licensing of an image at Dreamstime for more than $5,000 is a proof.

Thus the lesson of the mid/macro stock is not in the price slashing. It is in the creative research slashing. It is in creating content that is needed, even if it is a snapshot.

Agencies, these days, should stop trying to mimic the Getty’s and Corbis and start looking at their juniors who are reinventing the market. And rejuvenating the content.

PS and unrelated:  Althought they have some of the greatest commercials of people having fun, dancing, enjoying life, all I see are sad looking, empty eyed zombies who wear these I -Pods. They all look like they are listening to a requiem or a general announcement about their salaries being cut in half. Shouldn’t music make you happy ?

Posted in Midstock, prosumer, flickr, getty, Microstock | Print | 2 Comments »