One advertising trend to watch that could have a major impact on the demand for stock photography is the use of “customer stories” to market products and services.
Recently at a Dreamforce conference Stephanie Buscemi, Chief Marketing Officer at Salesforce said, “
We’ve eradicated stock photography. In the marketing organization, using stock photography is one way not to have a job. We always use customers.”
I’ve noticed that more and more of the ads I see on television and in print show real people telling their stories about how this or that product has benefited them. They tell stories about their real, personal experiences. The people don’t look like models. They look like your neighbors.
The stories may have been written for them by the advertiser, but they tend to have a ring of truth and at least they are the personal experience of the person being shown. The visuals for such stories will always have to be shot specifically for the ad. They can’t use stock imagery.
Certainly, there has always been some of this type of marketing, but there may be more of it now.
My personal observations may not be representative, but overall it does seem that the number of higher prices stock sales are declining rapidly. If customers have any type of budget they may be shooting what they need. The only people using stock are those trying to operate on a shoe string – a very short shoe string.
For more information check out this
story.