I’ve followed a blog of the much-respected photography marketing consultant, Carolyn Potts, for years. I recently read one of her posts that touches on what I have for years thought was missing in the present Ad Agency business model.
For past few years, ad agencies have been relying on Stock agency’s, Flickr, and Royalty Free images for their source of images and creative conception of ads. The idea of working with a professional image creator was considered too expensive and sending a stock shot as layout or concept became the norm.
She commented on recent articles posted on both The New York Times and ADWEEK sites about a couple of ad agencies that are turning to "crowd sourcing" for campaign strategies. By adding photographers into the Crowd, along with art directors, copywriters and creative directors, she suggested this could be a business model capable of generating a creative synergy– a synergy that actually that was quite common in the ad business in the 1960s and early-70s; with the right mix of creative participants, it could indeed become the next big idea in the agency world.
I’ve already had a bit of experience in this realm as I've been working with MN Opera on next year's marketing material since October; I was invited in to help with creating the feel and approach to this year's work. I’ve loved the process and I’ll be able to show the results next month when we finish producing the campaign.
I’d love to see if there are any agency guys out there that also might want add a photographer with 20-years of production experience, (and art and photography degrees), to their table during the conceptual phase of creating ads. If you want to read her blog post about this model, I'd love to know what you think. You can call/text me at 612-275-3186 or email me at steve@mchugh.com.
