Don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone to care enough about advertising to bail it out. I decided to come up my own plan. It’s the subject of my new column on Talent Zoo,
Here’s a sample:
Ditch the use of stock photography for a month. Hire a photographer. Take your own pictures. Or use an illustration or just type. It’s getting too easy to do a stock image search. And while some stock images are good, many are just humdrum and they always get force-fitted into a layout. Make a note to yourself to do it some other way–and persuade your client to try it some other way, too.
Oh, and please share your ideas as well.
Our reclusive executive creative director recently offered some words of wisdom to ad folks suffering through the new depression. Thought they might be worth sharing. Or not.
http://www.duncanchannon.com/?p=392
Great ideas. I’m partial to the ditch stock and “hire a photographer” idea.
Along the lines of your do “something your agency doesn’t do” idea, how about making this a time to get really out there with campaign concepts. Get out of that safe comfort zone and pitch that idea from left field.
Couldn’t agree more! Stock photography screams stock photography in most cases because it’s force fit into an ad to cut costs, but it doesn’t give the right feelings that most brands want from their campaigns. Spend a few bucks, have some original photography done, and let’s leave stock photography where it belongs.