The practice of crowd sourcing for ad images was a painful trend I first heard about well over a year ago. An ad agency art buyer told me about her frustrating assignment to satisfy a major account. They’d asked her to source a photo for one of their ads– not from Corbis or Getty, or even one of the Royalty Free image resources–they wanted her to look on Flickr.

Fortunately, for professional photographers, this didn’t become a huge trend at the bigger ad agencies. The legal paperwork necessary to safely license work  (e.g.model and property releases) was sorely lacking back then on most of the images posted on photo-sharing sites. It made buying images off Flickr for ad usage not worth the headache. So professionals still got calls for stock.

But, as we know, things have since changed and now pros regularly post their released-images up on Flickr hoping to catch the eye of an ad agency photo researcher.

Once crowd-sourcing photos became a viable solution for big ad agency creative departments, it was only a matter of time before someone in a corner office decided to connect the dots.

It seems that crowd sourcing has folded back in on itself. What was “good for the goose is now good for the gander”. Renegade employees from the traditional ad agency world, have opened an agency that is pitching itself as a radical break from the traditional ad agency business model. They are going to use “the wisdom of crowds” (as crowd sourcing is often referred to)  to generate ideas collaboratively. But that collaboration will occur outside the traditional teams of art director and copywriter. The ad agency will “curate” the best ideas from those submitted. To feed this trend,  new agency models are starting to spring up to satisfy their clients appetites for fresh ideas.

This news makes me wonder about two possible outcomes:

1. Is this the dawn of a new opportunity for photographers to be more collaborative and have more creative influence? Can they once again–as they were in the “Mad Men” era of advertising (1960s)–be involved in the conceptual phase of an ad’s imagery? (That is, if they want to pitch their idea as one of the “crowd’s”).

One upon a time, when art directors drew layouts by hand,  the layout was  more of a ‘jumping off point”; art directors and photographers were much more collaborative in creating the image that would illustrate the ad concept. It was a wonderful synergy.

2. How does this impact a traditional hiring hierachy? With a new source of inexpensive ideas, will this be beginning of the end for over-paid agency staffers? Will the salaries of art directors, copywriters, and creative directors soon face the same downward pressures that photographers’ fees have endured ever since RF stock and Flickr arrived? When affordable and easy digital imaging technology arrived on the beach, photographers were set adrift on whatever life rafts they could find. With the opening of these new agencies, will a huge wave of empathy now flow from a tribe of nervous staff creatives toward the photographers (with whom they may soon be paddling)? Will freelance art directors start to team up with their talented photographer friends/fellow crowd members to pitch their highly-polished and collaborative ideas directly to the new “curators?”

This could be viewed as a tremendous new opportunity and a return to creative synergy.  Let’s at least hope for that.

That’s where I’ll be doing free 20-min. portfolio review sessions on  both Friday and Saturday afternoons. Get feedback on your web site or portfolio. Find out if your presentation’s track or if it’s missing the mark.

There are only a few sessions appointments available. If all the times are taken you can put your name on a waiting list that I’ll leave at the booth. If there are any cancellations, I’ll call your cell or text you to come by the booth.  If you aren’t able to snag a spot but still want to schedule a free 15 to 20-min. session with me, we can set up a future phone session.

And if we’ve met at any of my “ReBooting your Business Brain…”  events over the past year, please either email or call me to let me know you’ll be at PPE. I’d love to connect.

In each of those cases the photographer had failed to notice that their business email addresses had more than one email account User name or Reply-to name. If all your User names are consistent, the email you send from your desktop, laptop or iPhone will all safely go through; any inconsistency in your Sender address increases the risk of your message being quarantined.

Like many people, you probably have multiple email addresses. Here’s an important but subtle marketing communications question to ask yourself: Do all my business communications have EXACTLY the same From and Reply-to addresses? You probably have multiple business email addresses e.g.,  patsmith@fapbphotographer.com and patsmith@att.net and pat@fapbphotographer.com. While messages sent to you at any of those address likely end up in your in box, they are NOT the same addresses when it comes to someone else getting a message into THEIR in-box.

Why is this so important? To make your client’s life easier by using best practices within a business communication tool they still have to use.

While many of your potential clients are using social media (FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) as a way to build business relationships, don’t forget that in the corporate world, email is far from dead.

Most people in large companies, spend many hours responding to colleagues about their multiple projects. While they are using social media for some aspects of their lives, they’re probably not using FaceBook and Twitter to handle their internal business communications. Because of the volume of work email, many adopt the habits of  “email power users.” To manage their time more effectively, they use email filters and rules. They may have initially added your email address to their address book to ensure your promos reach their in-boxes. Don’t make them have to do it again. And again. And again.

Don’t waste their time making them scan their spam folder for messages from you that have a different “From” field; they’ll then have to manually add those additional identities to your address record–unless they like keeping multiple address cards for you in their electronic address books!

Help them, help you–be considerate of their time by being consistent in your business communications.

More details about the event and the registration links are here.

solves a problem/answers a question/broadens my

worldview/makes me laugh/makes me aware of important

information or upcoming events/inspire me to get involved

in making the world better. I suspect your potential

clients have the same perspective when deciding if

they want to follow you.

One other thing I love-and also hate-about Twitter is its “Jungle

drums, real time reporting” of what’s happening…NOW.

It’s a central part of the information-overloaded zeitgeist. I

think anyone who spends more than 15 min. a day on-line has

psychological chip in them that’s programmed to want

current information and fears being out-of-the-loop.

OK..so I’ve just publicly admitted my personal neurosis; no

doubt created by too many years in the photo ad biz

The informality and connection-by-choice
“ambient connections”  that Twitter (and
FaceBook) create, can be low-key, low-stress ways to keep
your brand in front of people who already know and like
you.

I suspect, for example, that if you just attended a
multi-day photo tech conference, news about your new-found
expertise in HDR might be worth a tweet.

When everyone has is so little time to do it all,
there is real value in getting news and cool resources.
from a community of choice.

What makes you follow someone? I’d love to know.

Read more about the size of the Twittering audience in this article. 

Over the past several months, we at comScore have watched how quickly traffic to Twitter has exploded. Worldwide visitors to Twitter approached 10 million in February, up an impressive 700+% vs. year ago. The past two months alone have seen worldwide visitors climb more than 5 million visitors. U.S. traffic growth has been just as dramatic, with Twitter reaching 4 million visitors in February, up more than 1,000% from a year ago.

Reuters reporter Alexei Oreskovic recently authored an interesting blog post about the demographics of Twitter users. What he discovered was that 18-24 year olds, the traditional social media early adopters, are actually 12 percent less likely than average to visit Twitter (Index of 88). It is the 25-54 year old crowd that is actually driving this trend. More specifically, 45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30 percent more likely.

The skew towards older visitors, although perhaps initially surprising for a social media site, actually makes more sense than you might think at first. With so many businesses using Twitter, along with the first generations of Internet users “growing up” and comfortable with technology, this is a sign that the traditional early adopter model might need to be revisited.

I’ll be presenting the latest version of my photography
marketing talk to the ASMP Kansas City/Midwest chapter.This new
talk is filled with updated strategies that you must have
to survive in today’s always-on, short attention span,
radically-changed, and economically challenging business
environment.

When:Thursday, April 23rd. Door open at 6:30 p.m. for social time. Program starts at 7:00 pm

Where: Johnson County Community College-Room CC211
12345 College Blvd
Overland Park KS 66210

Directions and parking info.

You can register here

This talk is geared to professional photographers who’ve been in the industry for over 15 years. Understanding how the marketing of images has so radically–and so swiftly– changed, can benefit these photographers the most; those who are concerned that in this economy, they can’t afford to “not know what they don’t know.”  They suspect that things are different when it comes to promoting their work in the digital age. But they’re not sure which strategies they should implement– and which ones they can ignore.

Nothing changes faster than online promotion. What worked
great last year might not be the best tactic this year.
At this event I’ll provide some tips, guidelines and
resources, on how to stay current.
In a recession when work is harder to find and pricing is
dropping daily, you can’t afford to shoot yourself in the
foot with an outmoded promotional strategy. Buyers have
exponentially greater choices; don’t let them pass you by
because your online strategy is not as good as your
imagery.
Come join in!

Register here
When: Thursday, April 23, 2009
 at 7:00 PM
Social time starts at 6:30 PM

Where: Johnson County Community College-Room CC211
12345 College Blvd
Overland Park, KS, 66210

***This event is being sponsored by Agency Access,  BlinkBid and
Livebooks who are generously providing some GREAT door prizes
(almost $2000 in retail value!) as well as some special discount codes.***

Pre-registration is necessary to be eligible to win.  You can register here.

I will also be doing a limited number of private 1-hour
review sessions while I’m in the Kansas City area.
Invest in your career and find out if your current presentation is
helping or hurting you in today’s radically-changed
assignment market.
Please call me directly to book a session.

I predict that Pixazza, will have an impact on the traditional advertising revenue model–and one that might benefit photographers. Photographers know how to create attention getting images. They’re also used to key-wording their content for stock agencies. It’s a small side-step to become a publisher; they can tag their content and earn some cash. When clients’ sales can be tracked DIRECTLY to how many people clicked and purchased products via images tagged via Pixazza, I suspect that kick-ass images will draw more traffic–and sales–than dull, cheaply-produced images. (I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before the Pixazza’s current iteration–which displays tiny yellow price tags–evolves into something slightly less-intrusive but still relevant to shoppers.)

Forwarding great content is what we all do on a daily basis. Forwarding click-able and money-making image content was going to show up sooner or later. The see-it-on-a-screen-buy-it-immediately consumer product business model has been predicted for years. But now the technology is here.

In the current era where assignment photography seems to be driven more by bottom-line costs than top-line creativity, having sales tracked to a show-stopping image (think of the viral marketing value), may be just the creative game-changer some photographers have been waiting for.

While we hold our breath waiting for the clients to pay creative photographers for the real value they bring to ad campaigns, there’s another way Pixassa might be able to help some photographers.

It’s currently still cheaper to use humans to identify and tag image content than to write computer code to do the same task. While machines can serve up ads based on a page’s text content, Pixazza needs humans to create the ad links to image content. Hiring staff would be expensive. But there’s the modern way;  if you’ve ever tagged or been tagged in Flickr or Facebook, you already understand the new business model: Crowdsourcing.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of crowdsourcing, in June 2006, WIRED magazine’s contributing editor, Jeff Howe, wrote the feature story “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” He shows how a new pool of cheap labor comprised of everyday people using their spare cycles to create content and solve problems.  Ironically, in the four examples of companies using this business model, he mentions iStockPhoto first.

We know all too well how iStockphoto, negatively affected the bottom line of Getty, Corbis, and the photographers who supplied them with premium content. Perhaps now there will be an opportunity for photographers who lost revenues to crowdsourced-microstock to earn some tidy commissions tagging Pixazza’s content.

I just hope the US economy gets fixed soon–or there won’t be too many consumers partake of Pixazza’s ad-served content…

Many art buying departments are issuing “heads up” emails to photographers letting them know that the policy of issuing advances on big productions in many cases will cease. Simply put, if the ad agency hires you,  but the client they’re working for stiffs them, you have to go after their client to recover your money. Unfortunately, the PO you get from the agency won’t be giving you contact info of the person on the client side to call if you don’t get paid.

While I understand that the ad agency doesn’t want to get left holding the bag if their client (e.g., General Motors or AIG) doesn’t pay them for 120 days–or more– but can you imagine the photographer  having to call the GM switchboard asking to speak to the person in A/P at GM who can issue a check for an outstanding $85, 000 unpaid invoice originally submitted to the ad agency who issued them the PO for the assignment?

I think that if photographers are to accept that enormous financial risk, the quid pro quo for accepting those pay terms should be to at the very least have the contact information of the ad agency’s client clearly stated in the Purchase Order.

The event will be on Thursday evening 3/19/09 at Foto/Life Studios, 9709 Joseph Campau, Loft #3 (Between Edwin and Evaline, enter via alley) 
Hamtramck, MI
View Larger Map

Register here
I’ll be discussing how these changes have particularly affected photographers who’ve been shooting for over 15 years. These  photographers are the ones most deeply concerned that in this economy, they can’t afford to “not know what they don’t know.” They suspect that things are different when it comes to promoting their work in the digital age, but are not sure which things they should implement and which things they can ignore.

Nothing changes faster than online promotion. What worked great last year is not what works the best this year. At this event I’ll provide some tips, guidelines and resources, on how to stay current.

In a recession when work is harder to find and pricing is dropping daily, you can’t afford to shoot yourself in the foot with an outmoded promotional strategy. Buyers have exponentially greater choices; don’t let them pass you by because your online strategy is not as good as your imagery.

How do you best differentiate yourself from the rising tide of part-time photographers armed with high-res point-and-shoot cameras?

When: Thursday, March 19, 2009
 at 7:00 PM   Social time starts at 6:00 PM
Where:The event will be held from 6:00 m to 10:00 pm
at  Foto/Life Studios, 9709 Joseph Campau, Loft #3
(Between Edwin and Evaline, enter via alley)
 Hamtramck, MI

Register here

There are some great door prizes donated by event sponsors Agency Access, and BlinkBid which will be raffled off at the event. Prizes are valued at close to $1000 but event pre-registration is required.

Register here

I’ll be discussing how those changes have particularly affected photographers who’ve been shooting for over 15 years on the birthday of two of the biggest names in history connected with change and evolution: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. What a nice bit of synchronicity…..

The event will be held at 7:30pm to 10:00 pm at the Little Theater of University Center – Kean University 1000 Morris Avenue Union, NJ 07083 map Registration info is here.