I'm a huge fan of stock photography. It's a cost effective way of adding interest to your marketing literature as well powerfully communicating to your customers. But it does have it's downsides…
When we created the Grow Your Business brand back in 2007 we selected an image of a girl on istockphoto to be our 'face' of Grow Your Business. Over time she's come to be a strong representation of Grow Your Business in the local area, and is synonymous with our branding. But the trouble with stock photos, is that they're just that: stock photos. Which means that anyone can use them. Even if you pay a lot of money for exclusive use, you will still see the same model popping up.
As she did in the Daily Mail franchise section for a care home franchise!
So the only way to protect against this is to have decent, professional photographs taken and use your own model. Or accept that if you use a stock photo, you're going to see it in a few other places!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Fiona
I came across this very example – I went to a business breakfast a few months ago and saw the same face on a roll up poster.
I thought it was something to do with Grow your Business, but discovered it was someone who had used the same picture when designing his poster.
He was somewhat embarrased though when I told him about the campaign where I knew the image from(he was from outside the area)
Regards
James
We’ve experienced stock imageryitus with our clients, mainly in the beauty industry, but the best example we have is when we shot some imagery for a FMCG software provider. The model for the shoot was a colleague and although she didn’t harbour any dreams of becoming a model, her face was then used on another campaign within the same industry, who were incredibly a competitor to our client!!!
Luckily the law doesn’t shine favourably on copyright thieves!
James: thank you for your comments! It’s always going to be an issue so just worth bearing in mind when you use stock photos.
Eddie: thank you very much for stopping by and sharing your experience. So you’re saying someone actually **stole** your image? It’s a real shame people don’t have more integrity when it comes to this.