Four things marketers love (and three they hate) about stock photography

Have you seen the above stock photos before (or something similar)? You probably have. Everyone has. Cheesy images like these are used, and over-used, all over the digital and print marketing universe.

Say your brand needs visual assets for a marketing campaign, website, presentation, or other collateral. You search the web for images. If your message happens to involve themes like 'teamwork,' 'partnership,' or 'customer service,' chances are that you will be served photos similar to those above. There are hundreds of millions of stock photos for sale (or free) online. A lot of them are not what your brand needs.

Content marketers, creatives, and graphic designers often have a love/hate relationship with stock photography. But let's first focus on the love. There are (at least) four great reasons to use stock photos and feel good about it.

1. Impact: It's no surprise that words are aided by the influence of compelling supporting images. Photos just trigger our brains to think and do things the way that words cannot. A Michigan State University study determined that our brain's visual cortex, the part of responsible for seeing, is more powerful than previously believed. More than simply interpreting the image we see, our visual cortex helps us decide what to do with it. Photos can strengthen words to help inform, influence, and entertain.
2. Inspiration: Sometimes the creative process for building a marketing asset starts with a copy idea. Sometimes, though, you browse through a catalog of images and one pops out and sparks a better idea for a theme, headline, or other creative play. Be patient. Browsing hundreds of high quality, unique stock photos may delightfully trigger some great creative inspiration for you.
3. Convenience: For speed and access to an ever-growing universe of choices, you can't beat the immediacy of finding and acquiring the images you need. The ubiquity and single-click availability of stock photos from leading sites like Getty Images, Adobe Stock, and Shutterstock make quality photo downloads just plain quick and easy.
4. Low Cost: An alternative to stock photography is custom photography. Often it is necessary to hire professional photographers and models, buy props, and rent sets, costumes. equipment, etc. If you need your visual asset to be truly your brand's and no one else's, a professional and costly custom photo shoot may be the way to go. Otherwise, buying a licensed use for an existing image from a stock photo site is probably your lower cost alternative.

Reasons 3 and 4 above may bring a trade-off or an inverse challenge, depending on your budget, brand strategy, and appetite for risk. So let's also look at why marketers also *dislike* stock photography, for (at least) three reasons.

1.Risk of duplication. If you can get the photo, others probably can as well. The answer may depend on what kind of license you have to use it. Here are the three types of stock photo licenses:

Public domain (PD): the image is free to use without purchasing a license, and it can be used for commercial or personal purposes.

Royalty-free (RF): this is a copyright license in which you can use the image without many restrictions based on a one-time payment to the licensor.

Rights-managed (RM): RM or 'licensed' images allow for one-time use as specified by the license (either exclusive or non-exclusive).

In most of these three license types, except for exclusive RM, you risk the chance of market seeing your selected asset elsewhere, possibly even in a competitor's message. If that occurred, what risk might it impose to your (unique, personal, thought-leading) brand?

2. High Cost: Depending on your purchase volume level, license type, use case, and your own 'cost/value' definition, stock photos can be high or low cost: "High" meaning up to hundreds or thousands of dollars per image per use, and 'low' meaning a few dollars or even free. A growing range of subscription plans are available at varying costs. If you can't afford or don't wish to pay 'higher' costs, there are many interesting sites that offer free/low-cost licenses, including Burst, Life of Pix, Pixabay, and Pexels. Check the license terms of each site and be sure to appropriately use the image and credit the licensor if asked.

3. Risk of going off-brand: The risk of using a bad, low-quality, or inappropriate image with your brand can happen anywhere, anytime, no matter the price, or whether custom or stock. The problem seems to be that people get careless or lazy when selecting a stock photo. Consider the image above of the frustrated man with the sticky note on his head. Maybe this image fits your brand image and your campaign theme. If so, great. Otherwise, if your brand voice is about being genuine, you should be careful not to select 'people' images that are obviously posed, contrived, or artificial. Haven't we all seen enough trite images of 'unhappy customers' portrayed by models with their heads in their hands or pulling at their hair.

In the end, finding the right stock photo for your marketing asset shouldn't be a scary task. Oh, no!