Most Bang for the Buck: Stock Photography or Original Photography?

Does Your Brand Really Matter?

Posted on: 08-3-2011 Posted in: News

Stock Photography or Original Photography? (…does your brand really matter?…)

Websites are becoming primarily driven by imagery. Great photography that grabs the viewer; less copy to bog them down. As you put together your website, the questions arise: where do you get great photography, and what does it cost? There are two sources for photography: stock and original. Stock is available from an existing pool (…ocean…) of imagery. Original photography is commissioned from a professional photographer. How do you choose? What route do you go?

When making the decision on how to acquire photography, two factors to consider are availability and dollar cost. Let’s analyze these two factors from the perspective most often used by people:

Dollar cost:
Stock photography: It’s cheap. Really cheap. A site I clicked on from the “happy family” search offers images for $1.67, less than two dollars.
Original photography: It’s more expensive. Think hundreds to thousands of dollars.
Winner of dollar cost comparison: Stock

Conclusion: when you need photography, choose stock. It’s cheaper and there are millions of images to choose from.
Bottom line decision.
Easy.
End of discussion, right?

Wrong.

There are two bottom lines to look at here.
One bottom line is the balance in your business checking account––easily measured in dollars.
The other bottom line is much more important: it’s the balance in your brand’s “perception” account––much more difficult to measure. How is your brand perceived in the marketplace and how is that perception affecting the growth of your business?

Let’s do another quick analysis of the two factors mentioned above––availability and dollar cost––this time from the perspective of building the balance in your business’s “perception” account:

Availability:
Stock photography: There are a literally 100′s of millions of images to choose from. Do a Google search for “stock photography happy family”. You get over 41 million results.
Original photography: There are no images to choose from. You start from scratch each time. Thank goodness. No one will have the same images. The images will be authentic to you and your business. You have the opportunity to really craft your brand and control how you are perceived in the marketplace.
Winner of availability comparison: Original

Your brand is your single most valuable asset. It determines how customers make their buying decisions. You have to work hard to build it, and even harder to maintain it. Brand value is measured by soft-edged things: credibility, reliability, responsiveness, attention to detail, innovation, uniqueness, differentiation. These are the things that matter most to your business. Every day, people make buying decisions based on these factors. (Notice that I left out price as a measure of brand value. How else to explain Apple selling $2000 computers when $400 computers are available that will do the exact same thing? More on that below…Diluting your brand with generic imagery, design, or writing damages your bottom line.

The real bottom line on stock photography is:
Stock photography dilutes your brand.
It’s not specific to you and your business: it’s generic.
It’s not real, it’s a stand-in for the real thing. It betrays your customers’ trust.
It’s not genuine. It doesn’t show your business; it shows what someone else thinks your business looks like.
Stock photography is not authentic: it’s like a rented suit off of someone else’s clothing rack. It stands out––like a sore thumb.

Here’s a little story about the importance of your brand, how you’re perceived in the marketplace, and how that perception is directly connected to your company’s bottom line:
Steve Jobs left Apple Computer in 1985 (… actually, he was voted out by Apple’s board of directors…) and immediately started a new company, NeXT. His vision for NeXT was to embody all the ideas that he started at Apple and refine them into hardware and software products. The first thing he did at NeXT, before making a single product, was to establish NeXT’s brand. To do this, he hired the legendary designer Paul Rand (Google him) to create the company’s logo. For NeXT’s brand logo, Jobs paid Rand $100,000.

Jobs believed so strongly in the value and importance of his brand that he invested a significant portion of his severance from Apple into the logo. He understood that in the marketplace, you can bring forward a great product, but without a well-defined brand, it will fail. He understood that the brand is the roadmap for every move the company makes as well as the narrative every customer will bring to mind when they think of the company.
NeXT did not become a household word because Apple acquired NeXT in 1996. Jobs returned to Apple as CEO, bringing with him the focus on brand and customer value, turning Apple from an on-the-brink basket case in 1995 to what it is now: the most successful company in the history of American business.

The lesson of this story is not that you should spend $100,000 on your logo. The lesson is that your brand is paramount; it’s everything. Guard it like the life of your business depends on it. Your brand is yours to enhance or diminish, and the market will respond.

To reframe the question posed at the beginning of this blog post:
Why should you use original photography instead of stock photography?
In two words: BRAND AUTHENTICITY

Think long and hard about your brand, its value, how you’re perceived in the marketplace, and where you want to take your company. Then, invest accordingly.

Post By: Rick McCleary – rickmccleary.com