A big oil slick

Once again, JupiterMedia has released its quarterly results. Once again they are they loosing money on the photo side ( JupiterImages). Out of the big three , Corbis, Jupiter and Getty, only one has posted profits. Corbis is notoriously a cash hungry beast with a huge appetite for cost while Jupiter seems to be on an ever growing decline. Only Getty Images has been able to pull off the acquisition/consolidation scheme. Not without hurting. No longer the aggressive growth company, it was brutally manhandled by Wall Street and had to retreat into the protective hands of an equity investment company that took it out of the public playground.

There is a lot of resentment inside Guetty these days. Photographers are unhappy : Commercial stock RM revenues are declining while there is too many celebrity photographers rubbing elbows at every event. Something has got to give and it will be a no surprise to see it reduce its snapper staff as soon as the public doors are closed. 2008 will not be a good year for the Getty staff in general.

However, what is causing these monopoly hungry corporation to fail ? A few things:

- No passion : Only Jonathan Klein seems to be passionate about photography. Do you ever see Jupiter’s CEO at any industry event ? or Corbis new CEO ? what about those A21 guys?  NEVER. They sell images like others sell socks: With a passionate disinterest. Like a bunch of accountants recently named CEO.

- A dry corporate culture. It takes dedication to take and license images. It is not a 9 to 5 job. Walk in at the office of any of these companies and you will see rows of cubicles populated by clock-watching workers spending more time surfing job sites then their own. Most of the staff in these photo factories are in a transition job, passionately looking for something else. The only passion you see, or feel, is the passion to get promoted before your colleague. Walk into small or medium agency and everyone is ready to cut their arm to make sure it will work.

- A fundamental misdirection:  Mark Getty has a long term plan that fits in a very long term perception of the world economy. The others just want to make money. Even Bill Gates’ plan was a bit more sophisticated than just making money. Money is what happens when your plan is succesful, not the opposite. I never heard Meckler or Schenk formulate a vision besides “we will be profitable one day”.

- A complete lack of risk taking: Corporation are all about control, prediction and risk management. Everything photography is not.  Spending fortunes on marketing is just not enough. You still need the content. But understanding what is the right content is not something so easily predictable. It is not, for example, because you purchase a successful brand that it will continue to be successful. Without taking risk there cannot be a succesful photo agency. Its all about being one step ahead of picture buyers who themselves are not sure where they are going before they get there.

One could continue on and on why these business structure are inadequate for the photography world. Everyone knows that Jupiter Images is for sale for lack of being successful. No one is foolish enough to believe that Corbis will ever be succesful with its current structure. They will only obtain profitability by downsizing and reducing themselves.  A21, we will not comment as its days are numbered. There is no surprises in these quarterly reports anymore and I doubt there will ever be anymore. The non performers are going to not performed as Getty Images will position itself to be acquired by one of the media giants such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft when these will realize that after owning the distribution channels they will need to control content. As Mark Getty very rightly said ” IP ( intellectual property)  is the oil of the 21th century”.

This entry was posted on May 12, 2008 at 11:35 am and is filed under Search, Jupiter, celebrity, commercial stock, yahoo, google, getty, corbis, finance, Royalty free. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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