Abundant images: Why Nakedize has invested in the Excio Image Library

When I founded Nakedize Limited back in 2004, society was still firmly addicted to the pursuit of ‘more’– more busyness, more stuff, more words. Clear and concise communication was not something organisations cared about.

Thankfully, that tide turned about a decade ago, and since then the demand for concise documents – and the skills for how to write them – has grown steadily. Throughout, my job has been to produce, and teach, only what is essential.

But English happens to be the world’s most abundant language, and that is one of the reasons why our writing can be so good (choosing just the right words from our unmatched selection), and so poor (getting lost in verbiage and ambiguity).

So, abundance can have two distinct impacts: it can smother us through oversupply, overconsumption, and overstimulation; and it can enhance us through nature, community, and creativity.

Today, I am proud to share a success story that combines the best of the essential, and the abundant.

In 2020, I found myself standing in front of Ana Lyubich and two of her talented team from Excio, an online community of photographers with an idea to create an altogether better (and bigger) kind of stock image library.

We were in Wellington, where I was gigging as the entrepreneur-in-residence of an accelerator program being run by the great people at Creative HQ and Tourwriter . Excio was one of the successful startups.

I recall speaking to Ana about a world oversupplied with poor-quality information; and she speaking to me about a world undersupplied with authentic, fair, and affordable stock photographs. We lamented the far-reaching impacts of poor words and poor images: no wonder so much essential knowledge seems lost in our digital deluge.

And I should point out that my interest in photography runs deep. My first role as a professional writer was as a photojournalist – back in the days when cameras weren’t phones, and every click came with a cost. One of my clients was Wellington's The Evening Post, before it merged with The Dominion. I loved that work.

So, Ana's comments about stock imagery intrigued me. I reflected that I had never been a customer of the industry because its images were either free and overused, or expensive and not quite fit-for-purpose. I asked questions and quickly learned about deeper failings.

Did you know that only a few percent of professionally-equipped photographers bother to contribute to image libraries? This is because their pay will either be nothing or next-to-nothing, and this unfair reward is the root cause of an industry not coming close to its potential.

Let’s join the dots.

Unfair reward means unmotivated photographers (the industry’s ‘suppliers’), which means limited choice for consumers, which means unimpressed consumers, which stunts the market, which limits competition, which accommodates overpricing, which further stunts the market, and so on.

It’s a recipe for how not to fulfil market potential which, in entrepreneur-speak, is called ‘opportunity’!

What if Excio’s then-400-strong community of photographers could create a library they were intrinsically motivated to contribute their images to?

Such a library would have to pay photographers fairly and, likewise, charge consumers fairly. In short, it would have to serve image creators and users ahead of itself.

I knew this was the kind of library Ana and her team envisaged, but I also concluded that if they were unable to seed the library with a critical mass of around 20,000 images, their good intentions were unlikely deliver the breakthrough they rightly sought.

Alternatively, if Excio could find a way to achieve that critical mass, they could launch a community-driven image library with an unmatched ability to attract fresh, quality photographs from across Aotearoa New Zealand (and, in time, the world).

And that would make it possible and affordable for organisations like mine (and yours) to proudly make use of photographs that are not immediately recognisable as ‘stock’ photography. We would be able to find photographs of 'real' people, like this guy (photo credit: Markuza on excio.io) …

… and places we may not have seen before, like Tongapōrutu (photo credit: Isaac on excio.io) …

… and images that just take our breaths away (photo credit: Paul Foxall on excio.io) …

Well, Excio did find a way to motivate their passionate community of photographers.

They did this by rewriting the rule book. They rejected the three incumbent business models: the advertising-revenue-from-free-images model, the subscription model, and even the commission model that they had planned to transform with a 50/50 ‘FairShare’ split (instead of the shameful industry average of around 2% for the photographer).

Instead, they developed a new membership (or community) model, made possible by a digital token they invented (called a PhotoToken). In a nutshell, photographers earn PhotoTokens for contributing images to the library, and image users each buy one of these tokens to gain access to the combined pool of images. The library just takes a yearly service fee, as it should for providing the platform.

While it’s still early days, and there is much work to do behind the scenes to fully realise the master design, the basic transformation has occurred. More than 90 photographers have contributed more than 30,000 images, and dozens of organisations have jumped on board as ‘foundation customers’ to show their support for an altogether better kind of stock image library.

And, most importantly, precious Excio photographs, like the gems I have used in this article, are helping all manner of organisations and individuals to communicate more clearly and engagingly with their audiences. It's an inspiring story of a truly better business.

And all this is why Nakedize has invested in Excio and its revolutionary image library, and it’s why I am doing all I can to assist the team to fulfil the staggering potential of this much-needed social enterprise. This is Nakedize’s first and only investment during 18 years of business and, for me, it’s a big deal, a privilege, and a delight.

So, I proudly encourage you to follow the Excio Captivating Photography Library here on LinkedIn. And I also encourage you to visit the Excio web site (excio.io) to explore for yourself if it's the right time for you or your organisation to participate in Excio's FairShare photography movement.

#fairsharephotography #betterbusiness