Press Releases 26

01

November 28, 2006

Corbis Names Gary Shenk President

Corbis today announced the appointment of Gary Shenk as President. Shenk's promotion from SVP of Images is a validation of Corbis' strategy and an explicit step toward becoming an organization focused on industry leadership and operational excellence. Shenk's new role is part of a broader realignment of the company's go-to-market functions into an integrated team, and he will assume oversight of marketing, sales, and the creative resources businesses.

During his tenure with Corbis, Shenk has earned a reputation as an industry visionary with the passion and operational skills to transform and grow successful businesses. Most recently as SVP of Images, he has overseen Corbis' image licensing business. Previously, Shenk led the growth of Corbis' industry-leading Rights Services offering.

"Gary brings exactly the right combination of industry experience, entrepreneurial energy, and operational intensity that will enable Corbis to maintain its position as the fastest-growing major company in our business," said Steve Davis, CEO, Corbis. "Under Gary's capable leadership, we have significantly improved our product quality and execution in Corbis' image licensing business. It is only natural in this intense competitive environment that we expand Gary's role to drive our complete range of go-to-market activities."

In addition to his new responsibilities as President, Shenk will continue to direct Corbis' image licensing business including product management, strategic partnerships and photographer relations. Shenk will continue to report to Davis, and assumes some of the responsibilities formerly held by him in his dual role as President and CEO.

"Corbis thrives on creativity and with the greatest assets and the most talented people in the industry the opportunity before us is awesome," said Gary Shenk, President, Corbis. "With strategic focus, a tight integration of critical go-to-market functions, and overall operational excellence, we are in a great position to lead the industry in fulfilling our customers' needs for imagery and creative resources around the globe."

Prior to joining Corbis, Shenk was a founder and general manager of one of Hollywood's leading media licensing agencies, FlixMix, a wholly owned subsidiary of Universal Studios. Shenk began his relationship with Universal while he was a leader in the media and entertainment practice of The Boston Consulting Group. At BCG Shenk developed a digital distribution strategy for the world's leading music company. Shenk's entrepreneurial talents served him well in Hollywood, where he was instrumental in establishing new licensing formats and brokering deals between studios and talent agencies. It was this success that led Corbis to recruit Shenk for its Rights businesses in 2003. Shenk led the new Rights Services unit of Corbis and executed a series of further acquisitions and business development successes that helped to reposition the company as a full-line creative solutions firm.

In 2005, Shenk took over the management of Corbis' core image licensing business, where he spearheaded a transformation from an editorial focus to a combined editorial/creative offering. Under his leadership, Corbis has emerged as a leading provider of world-class historical, editorial, and creative photography. Among his other accomplishments Shenk holds an M.B.A in Finance from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A in Social Studies from Harvard College.

Alamy & BK Wine Collaborate

A new source for wine, food and travel stock photography is now available with the launch of the collaboration between BKWine and Alamy. BKWine, a company in France that supplies wine information, consultancy and photography to media and the specialist trade, will make available its extensive library of pictures through Alamy. The collaboration marks a mile stone in the wine and travel picture business for BKWine.

"We've selected nearly ten thousand of our best photos on wine, travel, gastronomy and related subjects. Those are immediately available on Alamy" says Per Karlsson, responsible for BKWine photography. "We plan to add several thousand more during 2007 and beyond and will make the major part of our 30,000 images collection available on Alamy. We choose to work with Alamy because of its worldwide reach and because of their commitment to customer service and to making it easy for the picture buyer to find the right pictures."

The library includes many winemaker portraits, vineyard pictures, technical photos on winemaking as well as more general travel, wine and food pictures. It currently covers France well and it also has coverage of many other countries: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, and in the Balkans Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and Montenegro. In South America it includes Uruguay and Argentina.

An overview of the subjects covered in BKWine's initial collection on Alamy can be found the BKWine website.

Corbis Offers Financial Award For Pro Bono Creative Work

Corbis has announced its global signature community relations program, the Corbis Creativity for Social Justice Award, to honor innovative digital media work produced for a non-profit organization on a pro bono basis. The award is part of a special partnership with the Art Directors Club (ADC) and will be presented at the ADC 86th Annual Awards Gala on May 31, 2007.

The professional award comes with a $20,000 cash prize presented to the non-profit client for whom the winning work was produced. In addition, Corbis will present a $5,000 scholarship to the winning student work created for a non-profit group.

"As a global company working with media companies around the world, we know that social justice is everyone's responsibility, including our own," said Steve Davis, President and CEO of Corbis. "Corbis has always been aware and involved in the fight for social justice issues and we're thrilled to partner with the ADC to recognize creatives with that same passion for social justice."

"To my knowledge, this is the first time cash awards have been offered in connection with ADC's Annual Awards competition," says ADC executive director Myrna Davis. "We are excited to participate in this initiative because the Corbis prizes benefit non-profit causes and education, in keeping with our mission."

Since 2003, Corbis has helped hundreds of creatives working for nonprofit organizations by waiving over $4 million in licensing fees on images from the Bettmann Archives, one of the world's largest and oldest collections of photographic images, with approximately 11 million images ranging from iconic pictures of human history to depictions of everyday life. The company also supports charitable industry programs throughout its 21 offices worldwide.

Work considered for the Corbis Creativity for Social Justice Award will comprise winners in any non-profit category in the ADC competition that was created on a pro bono basis. This includes Advertising, Design, Interactive Media and Hybrid and everything from print to out-of-home, integrated campaigns, television, guerilla marketing, interactive media, annual reports, brochures, publication design, packaging, photography and illustration. The final recipient will be decided by ADC's Hybrid jury, made up of jury chairs and selected members from the Advertising, Design and Interactive Media juries.

All eligible professional entries must have been printed, published, broadcast, or presented online for the first time between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2006, in any country. Entries may be submitted by any company or individual involved in the creation or production of the work. Student entries must be created with an existing non-profit organization in mind, but the public production requirement is waived.

ADC and Corbis plan a fall 2007 seminar to showcase the winning work and to publicize resources available to those interested in creating pro bono work. Corbis and the ADC will also host a series of exhibitions in North America, Europe and Asia to showcase the ADC awards.

Eye Candy Images

Eyecandy Images based in New York and London has announced that they launched successfully at this years PACA (the Picture Archive council of America) annual conference.

The company has been founded by BJ Formento and Richeille Formento. Both have worked for the major advertising and photo agencies and have combined their experience to form a company that was quoted by Jack Hollingsworth ¬ Jack Hollingsworth Photography at his seminar about Wholly Owned Content "an example of the way forward for the industry". Eyecandy images produce new, relevant and vibrant imagery for the emerging photography markets such as Asia, Latin America and Niche understated photography World Wide.

BJ Formento of Eyecandy Images says "It was great to be finally launching our product, especially amongst our peers. We were showcasing our images for the first time to our competitors at PACA with tremendous feedback, it was also a great way to meet potential partners and build great relationships to expand our distribution network."

"The images are a very modern and different take on an existing format. At Eyecandy images our desire is to produce the most creative images with a multicultural edge so needed within the market and many of our peers stated that we were as good as, if not better than Photonica" says Richeille, Creative Director.

The new range of images are available for purchase from EyeCandy Images e-commerce website which will be fully active at the end of November but in the meantime check out their collection so far at
(www.eyecandyimages.com)

Masterfile Tag Clouds

Masterfile Corporation has implemented Tag Clouds on its site, making it easier to find images.

What are Tag Clouds? Tag Clouds display the most popular words and compound phrases used by clients to arrive at a particular image. The bigger the font, the more popular the word is. Clicking on one of these Tags automatically invokes another search. Trying interesting compound phrases can help designers find the images they want more quickly.

John McDonald, Vice-President Marketing, Masterfile Corporation says, "Tag Clouds can reduce the amount of time you spend thinking of keywords to filter large generic searches, like 'woman' or 'man' or 'people'. If someone else has searched for 'woman portrait eye contact' in the past, you can simply click a link to refine your search. The introduction of Tag Clouds is yet another way we are enhancing the user experience on Masterfile. "

Alaska Stock Promos Win Coveted International Recognition

Alaska Stock Images' "North of Normal" series of self-promotional direct mailers recently won two Creativity Annual Awards in the categories of best campaign series and single promo. The mini photo catalogs included seasonal stock images from all over Alaska by over twenty photographers and were distributed nationwide on a quarterly basis. Creativity Annual 36, featuring the winning designs created by Mad Dog Graphx of Anchorage, will be released next summer.

The prestigious competition culminates in the publication of the Creativity Annual, a 400-page, full color hardcover distributed worldwide by Harper Collins. Founded in 1970, the Creativity Awards is one of the oldest and most recognized design competitions. This year, entries were received from 38 states and 29 countries. (www.creativityawards.com)

Greenhouse Gas Reduction Program At Alamy

Alamy has been working since 2004 to offset some of the effects of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere through air travel and office electricity use.

In 2004 it offset its emissions with contributions to Climate Care and in 2005 used the offsets to pay for a project to supply solar powered electric lanterns to low-income families in Kerala, India.

Over this period it has become clear that a much bigger commitment is necessary to reduce the impact the company has on the environment. To this end Alamy has launched a number of new initiatives to help achieve its goal of making the company 'carbon neutral'. These include:

• £50,000 (approx. $100,000 USD) 'start-up' funding for greenhouse gas saving projects in Kerala, India where the long term potential for greenhouse gas emissions saving extends beyond the initial investment.


• Further investment in videoconferencing technology to reduce travel between its offices in India and the UK.


• Greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to be included in the objectives of managers where relevant.


• 'Double offsets' - restarting contributions to third party offset organizations.


• Sourcing electricity from renewable sources where possible.

The table below shows the amount of greenhouse gases Alamy has released

CEO James West said: "It is important to recognize the relationship between economic growth and environmental impact. We want to be transparent about our emissions and what we are doing to tackle the problem."

The company plans to update the figures as it pursues new and more effective ways of reducing the impact its activities have on the environment.

Alamy's estimated emission (Metric tones) are:

Going Global With Pepper Stark

At Pepper Stark, one of the services offered is the set up and management of international distribution networks for image collections. Pepper Stark currently represents 8 image collections ranging from rights managed, editorial, royalty free and subscription with a current total of over 165,000 images and it is looking to take on a variety of new collections over the next few months. To accommodate this growth area in its business Pepper Stark has recruited further International Account Managers to its team, speaking English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and basic Japanese. They have joined company directors Liz Pepper and Claudia Stark who between them have over 14 years experience in international sales networks.

Selling internationally and building a globally recognized brand is a hot topic at the moment with industry veterans looking to bolster already existing distribution networks to new production companies or photographers looking to develop a new stock photography product. Pepper Stark has set out a flexible service where it can advise and equip people to realize their global ambitions themselves or actively work alongside them to ensure they realize these goals as quickly and effectively as possible. Pepper Stark has therefore developed a 4 Step Service for Going Global which allows a client to choose those services they need.