Meaning, an Art Director (the people responsible for the pictures and the look of Advertising) looks at stock photo websites (getty, corbis, istock, etc), and picks a person who might best represent the brand. It's not the best way to do advertising, but it's useful on brochures, collateral, and regional ad campaigns. (On bigger campaigns, you hire talent, take their picture, and use that likeness).
The stock photo images are royalty-free, meaning you pay for them once and you can use them over and over. Rights managed photos cost money depending on usage -- one never owns a rights managed photos.
Are you still with me?
Well, the issue with royalty-free shots is that anyone can buy a royalty free image. Even the one you're using. And with so much low-cost advertising in the world, more and more people are using these cheap, royalty free images. There's a good chance that the royalty-free picture you pick will be picked by someone in Utah or something.
Which brings us to a fun little website called Cockeyed.com. It's a fun website offering all kinds of neat information, but the best is this, a love story based on the use of a woman's stock photo. She goes from shopping, to dating, to single, to Christian, to married, to pregnant.
Readers help chart the life of this woman based on ads companies do with her likeness. I wonder if Yahoo wanted to be ridiculed this way when they set out to advertise? No, probably not. So be careful of the stock photo choices you art directors. Your ad might end up being parodied.
Just so you know, this isn't a royalty free image.
No comments:
Post a Comment