News, Views + Info
Image keywording tips and more to help you make improvements to work practices, and get a better understanding of issues surrounding the management and profitability of image businesses.
Candid or Event – Which is Better for Brands?
When looking for brands in celebrity images and videos, which are most likely to make money - Candid or Event? Here are the pros and cons, and a conclusion: Event Images/Videos Available targets? - Given that a red carpet event in particular is like shooting fish in...
The Angel Is In The Detail
Running a successful photo business is seen to be mostly about getting the right photographers, and good marketing. To make the most of those it's important to get all the little things right. The angel (or the devil) is in the detail. Many a business has failed, or...
Putting The Customer First
Getting a reputation for customer service is a great way to keep and build business. It sounds like an easy thing to do, but in the rush to automation and making sales online, it is easy to forget about the basics. Here are some ways you can increase customer focus:...
Re-assess Staffing Every Season to Stay On Top
With the change of season just around the corner, it's a good time to do a thorough assessment of your staff, and staffing generally. Looking at employee performance at the beginning of each new season is a great discipline that stops managers from becoming complacent...
Outsource or Inhouse – What’s Best for Brands?
To identify brand items in celebrity images, it is tempting to make it an extra task that can be added to the duties of existing staff. In practice this almost never works - but outsourcing can solve the problem in a cost effective way. There are multiple reasons why...
Stop Wasting Time With Email
Streams of emails between photo desks, photographers and editors can kill efficiency. Here are some tips to stop burning through the time and money with unnecessary hours spent generating, sending, receiving and responding to email. Engineer email out of your...
Take Your Trends In New Directions
Celebrity brand images are the perfect ammunition for fashion editors and others to show what styles are in this season, which fashion-conscious celebs are leading the latest trends and what are the most popular fashion items - but why stop there? Just as there are...
Reclaim The Night (Sales)
The best time for promoting imagery, is all the time. So if you're not doing it yet, get ready to go 24/7. It is a rare thing for a photo agency to work around the clock, except for the largest players in the industry. That means those large companies not only have...
Get It Right With Quality Control
One of the major differences between high-quality stock keywording, and the rest, is the system of quality control. In many cases the level of QC is no level at all. This can be due to a lack of money, but also because the library/agency does not have the personnel to...
Does Your Brand Yield Measure Up?
If asked how many brands could be identified in their images, it is doubtful many photo/news agency managers would be able to give anything like an accurate answer. Such a total is based on two important figures - how many images contain any identifiable brands, and...
Old School Techniques for New Sales
When the CD came along, the vinyl LP was considered as relevant as the wax cylinder of Edison’s day. Yet in the year 2017, CDs are on their way out, and vinyl is having a resurgence. Could it be that photo agencies need to look at some old school ways of making sales?...
Avoiding Keywording Drift
It's not quite in the same league as continental drift, but for photo agencies, keywording drift is a lot more serious. Put simply, keywording drift is the slow (or sometimes not so slow) change in the way keywording terms are applied over time. The consequence is...