The Power of Brand Photography and The Three Point Business Plan #FreePhotos

The Power of Brand Photography and The Three Point Business Plan #FreePhotos

How important is brand photography to your business? How much time and effort do you spend focusing on the brand, and how much on the photography? Perhaps your product photography and publicity or marketing photography forms a significant part of your overall marketing and business strategy, but have you thought carefully about how much your marketing photography says about your brand?

After all, no matter how important your products, no matter how professional your product photographs, and no matter how slick and well produced your marketing publications, many of these will fail, or at least fail to take off in the way they should, without the underlying impact which brand undoubtedly has.

Today's commercial world sees brand and the concept of business branding as one of the most crucial aspects to the success of both a business and its products, and if tackled successfully it is certainly possibly for the brand to carry both the business and its products.

Brand photography capitalizes on this concept, and with the right commercial photographer and the right tools and approach, effective brand photography can be the third point of your overall business success triangle.

The three aspects of business, brand and product must work in harmony, balancing one against the other, with each supporting the other two, and being supported in turn. Brand photography can communicate highly effective messages about your business and by extension, your products or services.

How many times do you consider making a purchase based on the brand alone? Yet how much do you really know about that brand other than the messages which have been communicated through marketing, promotion, and media messages such as brand photography?

The images a company chooses to distribute say a great deal about the direction in which the business is going, its aims and its values. Concepts such as supporting the local community, promoting environmental awareness, maintaining a low carbon footprint, offering good value for money, targeting families, and many other such messages can be communicated in many ways.

One such way is through the written word, distributing editorials at the start of a catalogue, press releases, articles and such like. Possibly you might consider radio or television adverts where the messages, values and aims are expressed. But these are all very easy to ignore. They all require people to pay attention, and to become an active participant in the communication process.

Brand photography works differently. By associating these messages and aims with your brand images you can communicate them just as effectively, and considerably more successfully through pictures alone.

How is it possible to communicate such concepts as working with local people, or striving for a more environmentally friendly approach through images alone?

This is where a professional brand photographer will be able to assist. Much of the art of brand photography is in the planning and conceptual design. The values and aims of your business need to be understood and condensed into simple but essential messages.

These messages then need to be communicated through the brand images, and it will be the partnership that develops between your business and the creative commercial photographer which will result in an overall plan.

From sets to scenes, from props to lighting, there are many different ways of conveying concepts through photographic imagery - just look around at the examples of brand photography in posters, leaflets, catalogues, magazines and on websites.

Colors, tones and subliminal associations are all highly effective. The message needs to be conveyed effectively, but in a fraction of a second.

It's also important that brand photography remains consistent in some way. For brands to be recognizable, there has to be something about it which is consistent. This might be a particular prop, or a color theme, or even a style.

Once this theme has been established, and the messages clearly understood, an effective creative commercial photographer will be able to work with you to ensure that brand photography works to support your business and its products or services.

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but where brand photography is concerned, it's important to realize that those thousand words will tell prospective clients all about your goals, your ideals, your aims and your values, and by association, any future brand images will echo those same words. It's vital therefore to make sure that you work with a brand photographer who is able to help you achieve a clear message, and communicate that message accurately and consistently throughout your current and future campaigns.

Source: William Penworthy