Image Source launched the latest element of its aggressively creative marketing campaign "Open Your Eyes." This time, the royalty-free producer wants to "Open Your Ears" to a new CD and Web tool that use sound, dialogue and audio effects to describe stock imagery.
"Open Your Ears" introduces images with audio tracks, composed to encourage open interpretation. Image Source founder and CEO Christina Vaughan says this challenges people to use their imagination. "These audio tools encourage people to listen with their eyes, not just their ears," she adds.
The interactive CD has been mailed to Image Source clients. Available at the recently launched campaign sub-site, the online component of "Open Your Ears" invites Web site visitors to match five images with their audio descriptions. Those who do get a chance to win one of three iPod Touches in a drawing.
In a multimedia world, marketers look to sound, movement and interactive elements to promote products and services that lack such attributes. Fine art galleries, particularly those that focus on photography, often use multimedia in Web sites and exhibit backdrops to highlight still works. Photojournalism collective Magnum runs "Magnum in Motion," an online project that aims to create a new language for photography. Image Source offers a marketing-oriented interpretation of the technique.
In addition to efforts geared at communications and marketing, sound has similar commercial potential as stills. Several stock-image companies, including Getty Images and Jupitermedia, have music-licensing business lines. In June, Getty CEO Jonathan Klein said the company was also working on bundling stills and audio.