While browsing through the corporate site of Canada’s largest newspaper chain, a few things stood out:
• The corporate site uses free WordPress blog software. On one hand, this makes the site look very current and easy to read. But at the same time, it screams “we’re using a free WordPress blog” because it looks exactly like a, uh, WordPress blog. (Or maybe that’s the point?)
• The site has no pictures of its directors, just text.
• There are portraits of its entire executive team along with short bio’s of each. Perfect! But:
(a) The way the pictures are presented, it’s impossible to miss the fact that all the executives are middle-aged to senior-aged white males.
(b) The executives were all photographed in the exact same pose which kills all character and personality. If you’re trendy enough to use WordPress for the corporate site, then the photography should match this attitude.
(c) The pictures were not processed to match each other (or maybe they weren’t processed at all?). Some business portraits are light, some are dark, some are cropped tighter, some were left too loose. Some executives were front lit, some were short lit and others were broad lit. All portraits are very coldly colour-balanced. This uneven quality is painfully obvious.
Now compare this to another large Canadian publisher’s corporate site. This site is custom-coded but it still looks old and ugly. Looking at the code, some pages may not have been updated since 2007 and it still contains code for Internet Explorer 4! So when this site says a missing executive portrait is “coming soon”, it shows that the company couldn’t care less.
• This site has business portraits(?) of its directors, but no information.
• It has pictures and bio’s for all of its executives. Great! But:
(a) Every portrait is different: different colours, different backgrounds, different processing and different styles. This uneven look is very jarring and amateur-looking.
(b) Some of the headshots have been cut from one picture and pasted onto fake backgrounds. Very cheap and amateurish.
Corporate image is not so much the big things like company logo or catchy TV commercial jingle, but rather it’s all little things combined. If a company can’t do the little things right, how much confidence will customers have in the big things?
When it comes to corporate photography, the devil is in the details of that photography. Proper corporate photography should enhance the company image not detract from it.
