Killer Visual Strategies

CHAPTER 8RULE 5: AVOID THE STIGMA OF STOCK

Figure 8.1

Source: Khoja, “14 Visual Content Marketing Statistics to Know for 2019.”

Let me introduce to you to the Everywhere Girl (Figure 8.2). In 1996, while Bill Gates was writing his iconic “Content Is King” essay, Jennifer Anderson was graduating college. To make some money and start paying off student debts, she posed for a stock photo shoot. Keep in mind that this was a time when the internet was just starting to take off. Stock-photo sites were in their infancy and rarely could someone simply browse a portfolio and directly download high-resolution photos. Instead, brands were accustomed to stock-photo subscription services that delivered images via CD-ROM.

Brands would pore over the images they received and add them to their marketing collateral, but without an online tool to show the number of downloads an image received, they had no way of knowing what other companies out there were using the same image.

In Jennifer's photo shoot, she was wearing a blue, knit ski cap over her blond hair, a white-shell choker, a leather jacket over a preppy sweater, and a backpack slung over one shoulder. She was tall, pretty, and had an endearing smile. She was the epitome of a late-'90s college student. But she was one of many models in the group of shared photos. No one could have predicted that so many organizations would find Jennifer's ...