It may shock you to hear these words from a commercial photographer, it certainly took me by surprise as one of the guiding principles handed down when I started to serve my time in Advertising Photography in 1986, but it was great advice and remains just as relevant today.
So what to do instead? Next time you commission a photograph or video, whether you sell a product or a service, bear these time-honoured principles in mind:
1. Don’t commission a photograph of your product when you could commission a photograph that sells your product. People buy products and the action of purchasing is triggered by collaboration between the head and the heart. The exact proportions of these influences depends as much upon the type of product as it does on which school of advertising you subscribe to, but both organs are involved, that’s for sure.
2. Speak to your audience. This has two important messages. “Speak to” means address directly and this involves engagement with the potential buyer, no engagement means it missed the point. “Your audience” means the target demographic for your product because there’s very little point trying to sell nursing home places to school children, they’re just the wrong group for the proposition. In summary, what sells more cold drinks, a picture of a glass of liquid or a picture of a group of friends (representative of the target demographic) having fun sharing a drink?
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