Marketing collateral refers to the various forms of communication a business publishes on its own. By contrast, paid placements, such as advertising, are not a form of marketing collateral. Advertising is part of the sales process whereas marketing collateral supports the sales process. To a small extent, marketing collateral might be considered “advertorial” content produced by the company.

Advertising often fails because consumers simply don’t trust ads. Advertising claims are not always backed up by any information. Customers are very skeptical because they know that advertising is only concerned with taking their money.

This is where editorial-based marketing collateral comes to the rescue. The public trusts editorial content. Newspapers prove this every day. Editorial content not only informs and educates customers, it also builds credibility and earns trust.

Marketing collateral should educate the consumer about a product, service or the company itself, rather than try to make a direct sale. Good editorial content talks to the customer in their language and doesn’t use any advertising jargon.

Thanks to the Web, it’s easy and inexpensive for a company to publish editorial content. Yet for some unknown reasons, many companies don’t do it.

• Use an About Us web page to talk about key people in the company. Don’t just list business hours and location.

• Create a blog to explain how to get the most from the company’s products. Talk about how the company’s services are delivered.

• Use testimonials and case studies to show how other customers have used and benefited from the company’s products or services.

• Produce online white papers to elaborate on key specifications, highlight design features, showcase the manufacturing process.

There’s no such thing as too much information for a consumer trying to make a purchasing decision.

But there’s one important element that can never be left out.

Photography.

Good editorial photography tells a story, enhances the marketing message and draws customers in.

Guaranteed.

And if that isn’t reason enough to hire a (editorial) photographer, consider this:

• Generally speaking, photography for marketing collateral is priced lower than that for advertising.

• Newspapers won’t accept advertising as a public relations handout but they will accept most editorial-based marketing collateral.

Lower priced, more opportunity for free publication by the news media, more credibility, more trust.

What’s holding your company back?

Pickerell writes that since there’s such an oversupply of stock images, photographers need to get their pictures seen by photo buyers. He then goes on to list some numbers and statistics.

The interesting takeaway from this article is for any business that’s thinking about using stock pictures for its marketing instead of commissioning its own original corporate photography or business photography.

For any given subject matter, Pickerell points out that there can be thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of available stock images. However, his statistics show that most photo buyers don’t go beyond the first 300 pictures. He says “buyers often follow the herd”. He means that stock photo purchasers usually buy the same pictures that other people bought. They buy what’s popular. Some stock agencies even encourage this.

For business marketing, this means that using stock pictures is the absolute worst way to stand out from the crowd. It’s the least effective way for a business to get noticed.

When a company uses a stock picture, the odds are very good that other businesses, including its competition, are already using that exact same photo, (examples: here, here, here and here).

Custom corporate photography and original business photography help a company avoid an identity crisis. Commissioned photography allows that company to create and control its own unique identity.

As we move into the traditional season for annual reports, here are some suggestions for the photography:

• Some photography should be done throughout the year and not just during the weeks prior to publication of the annual report.

For example, if a new factory is opened early in the year, photograph it while it’s still clean and shiny. Product launches, important press conferences and other larger events held during the year should be photographed with an eye towards the annual report.

• Do exterior pictures during the summer or early autumn (especially here in Canada). The best image of a building can depend not only on the time of day but also on the time of year.

Exterior photography isn’t just pictures of buildings. These photos should make a statement about the company. What image is it trying to project? Big and strong? Friendly and approachable? A good neighbour in the local community?

• Executive portraits put a face on the company. These portraits must show that the company and its leaders are professional, trustworthy and capable. The executives should look the viewer in the eye. These pictures are about facial expression and body language. The photography is often understated.

Environmental portraits serve another purpose. This type of portrait tries to show that the executive is a take-charge, hands-on, confident leader. Eye contact with the viewer is not required. This picture is about body language and photo composition. The photography can be more dynamic, more creative.

• Some companies also use portraits of various employees. This is to show that the company is more than executives in suits; it’s also a family of everyday folks. This type of corporate photography brings the company “down to earth”. It helps the general public better identify with the company.

• The design of an annual report should reflect the personality of the company and its audience. The annual report for a toy manufacturer should be different than that for an accounting firm. The annual report photography should reflect this personality.

• The use of stock photography should be avoided:

1) When a company uses someone else’s pictures for its annual report, it’s misrepresenting its business. Can it be trusted with its financial numbers?

2) If a company can’t be bothered to create its own photography to enhance its corporate image, what does that say about that business?

3) When a company decides to go cheap by using stock pictures, it proves the company likes to cut corners. Will investors be impressed with that?

4) Investors want to see where their money is going. It certainly doesn’t go to anonymous people in generic settings as shown in stock pictures.

5) How embarrassing will it be if a competitor uses the same stock pictures in its publications or web site? Stock pictures do get around and a company has no control of that.

If the photo budget is small then it’s much better to do a handful of images really well than use a large number of cheap stock pictures.

• A business that isn’t required to publish an annual report may still want to consider doing it. In this case, the company isn’t going to release any financial numbers but it will use the “annual report” to talk about the previous year, list its accomplishments and perhaps indicate some of its future plans.

This document is for soft marketing. It’s about reaching out to customers to build another avenue of trust and communication.

This kind of report can be an online PDF or just a long blog post by the company president. Quality business photography is still required because:

(1) Readers love looking at good images.

(2) Pictures create immediate interest.

(3) It’s always more effective to show people rather than to tell them.

(4) Photos are more memorable than words.

Annual reports are not just for big corporations.

We have built an imaging solution that allows us to visualize propagation of light. The effective exposure time of each frame is two trillionths of a second and the resultant visualization depicts the movement of light at roughly half a trillion frames per second. (…) Then we rearrange the data to create a ‘movie’ of a nanosecond long event.

From an easier-to-understand article in the New York Times:

To create a movie of the event, the researchers record about 500 frames in just under a nanosecond, or a billionth of a second. (…) If a bullet were tracked in the same fashion … the resulting movie would last three years.

To help promote this first-in-the-world announcement, MIT has media handouts. If you scroll down the page to the three pictures of the scientists behind this research, you’ll find that one link is dead due to bad page coding and the two other pictures are virtually useless.

The four-person picture is grossly out-of-focus with poor exposure, bad colour and poor composition. The two-person photo is out-of-focus with bad lighting but, to some extent, it can be corrected. Neither picture has any IPTC information. Full and proper IPTC info is mandatory especially for media handout photos.

Similarly, on MIT’s own news page, there’s a metal pole going partly through the face of one of the two lead researchers as they look at a glowing soda bottle.

A huge institution like MIT couldn’t be bothered to get it right the first time. Too bad it doesn’t do any research into public relations photography.

The answer to all of those questions is the same: no such fee exists. There is no day rate, no half-day rate and no hourly fee.

It would be like calling a restaurant to ask, “What’s the going rate for a dinner?” Does anyone ever ask a dentist, “What’s your hourly charge?” Can you ask a store, “What’s the standard price for a pair of shoes?”

Professional photographers base their fee on how the pictures will be used, what’s involved in producing those pictures and the photographer’s talent, experience and overhead costs. Since every job is different, there’s no one-size-fits-all price, no going rate, no standard hourly fee.