Reduce Your Photography Costs
Roughly speaking, all catalogs are styled in the tradition of either Louis Vuitton or Wal-Mart.
No, really.
The former are created using a traditional catalog workflow: merchandiser, designer, photographer, stylist, color house and web printer. The result often is a high-end look that’s inspirational enough to coax customers into paying the substantial product costs.
Cocktail-party stories about these catalogs feature the photographer too heavy to fit into a helicopter and an art director arguing with modeling agencies by cell phone while standing on an island in a remote Alaskan lake shooing deer away from a fully styled bedroom set at midnight (true, by the way).
Stories about Wal-Mart-style catalogs, on the other hand, involve panicked people reacting ridiculously when they’re pushed to save money beyond all reasonable limits. Let’s talk about these folks.
Presto, You’re a Shirt
”We have five new shirts for the next catalog,” said the manager of a mid-sized outdoor apparel catalog.
“I’ll schedule a photo shoot,” replied the art director.
“Sorry, there’s no money for a photo shoot.”
“So how do you plan to get these new shirts into the catalog?” asked the art director.
“We’ll PhotoShop some products we already have.”
“We have coats! These are shirts!” said the art director. “We can’t PhotoShop coats into shirts!”
“Have you really tried?” asked the manager.
As computers get cheaper and faster, catalogers are increasingly finding themselves in gray areas concerning computer manipulation of images. You want your images to fairly represent the products, otherwise you get crushing returns and angry customers. But nothing in law or marketing requires you to fund a new photo shoot each time you need new images.
Following is a snapshot of how some catalogers used aggressive image manipulation this year to cut imaging costs to zero or nearly zero:
1. A specialty food manufacturer’s catalog sells two types of SKUs: basic food products in supermarket-style packaging (which doesn’t change much from year to year), and gift baskets (which change every year and feature different combinations of items from the basic product line).
This year, the cataloger did not fund a photo shoot. Instead, it changed old photos by digitally deleting old products in baskets, adding new items, removing a handle from a jar that had a handle last year but not this year, and so on. It was all done in-house, using high-resolution images from prior years. The final images nicely represented the new products.
Total photo cost: $0.
Total photo-manipulation cost: effectively $0, since it used in-house staff to do the work.
Total color correction cost: $0. The pickup images already were color-corrected.
2. An outdoor apparel cataloger introduced many detailed product improvements (e.g., altered pockets, added holders, changed gussets) to its functional garments. In a very brief shoot, a photographer took closeups of only the altered features, then cloned those features into the large product shots from previous years.
It was studio lit throughout, so there were no lighting mismatch issues (as would’ve happened with outdoor photography). And color correction was easy; the art director just picked up the curves of the prior photos. The resulting images looked just like brand-new photos.
Total cost: about a quarter of the cost of new imagery.
But Do We Dare?
”What shall we do for the next cover?” asked the art director of a mid-sized home products catalog.
“Use manufacturers’ artwork,” replied the catalog director.
“We did that last time, and our biggest competitor picked up exactly the same artwork for their cover. It was awful — we looked exactly like them!”
The catalog director paused. “Our competitors knew it happened, right? Which means they’re probably having the same conversation you and I are having.”
“Well ... probably.”
“And they’re concluding that they can’t risk using manufacturers’ pickup art for their next cover, because we might, right? They probably won’t do it again. So we will. Let’s use manufacturers’ art again and save the bucks.”
Most catalogers hesitate to use manufacturers’ art for covers. Manufacturers’ art literally is zero-cost — a very powerful draw for any cataloger. Following are some examples of what’s working with manufacturers’ art in current catalogs.
1. A large home products cataloger uses every bit of manufacturers’ art it can. At a large merchandising meeting, the catalog’s designers examine each of the manufacturers’ shots to see which sell the products strongly enough. The catalog ended up with about 25 percent of the manufacturers’ pickup art this year, and the catalog looked good.
Total photography cost for using manufacturers’ art: $0.
2. An apparel manufacturer with a large catalog funds a full-scale studio shoot twice a year. But after each main set is styled, lit and shot (generally with a view camera), the cataloger has the photographer step into the set and, using a hand-held 35mm camera whose flash-sync cord is plugged into the main lights, shoots a variety of smaller-detail shots. Art directors then use these shots as the manufacturers’ art to send to dealers, publications and other catalogs that sell the merchandise. They also use the shots in ads and press releases.
This cataloger looks at manufacturers’ art from a standpoint that we seldom hear about: that of the manufacturers. Most manufacturers’ art is pretty bad — often quick-and-dirty shots taken for sell sheets, in low-res images that can be poorly lit.
But consider what a great manufacturer’s shot can do. Remember that popular night-time photo from a few years ago, the one of the cozy home covered with cascading icicle lights? That image must have been very difficult to create, but the result was strong, both visually and from a marketing standpoint. Those lights were a hot-seller, and I have to believe it was significantly due to that one great image.
Last year and this, a similar phenomenon is happening with a manufacturer’s shot of a throw draped on a leather armchair, a shot that was picked up very widely because it’s such a strong one.
It’s a Color-free World
”And we’ll need some money in the budget for color work,” said the catalog consultant.
“Oh, you can skip that,” replied the food catalog owner.
“How so?”
“We shoot all digital,” she said smugly. “It’s perfect.”
“But didn’t you come to me because you were unhappy with how your photos look?” asked the consultant.
“Yes. Our designer is a dope.”
“But have you considered that your catalog photos might look bad because you’re not correcting them?” asked the adviser carefully.
“Don’t be ridiculous — they’re digital! We just need a new designer.”
Like all breakthrough products, digital photography is going through a honeymoon phase — after which reality will set in. Digital photography can do remarkable things, but it isn’t a cure-all for high photo budgets. Here’s how two catalogers pursued zero or near-zero photo costs using digital photography this year:
1. An old-line food cataloger switched to digital photography. The prior budgets had been so lean that few images in the catalog were adequately color corrected, and digital photography seemed to be a way to save even more.
The images from the photo shoot were 100-percent digital and badly lit. Because the cataloger thought that digital photography was “perfect,” she blamed everyone else in the workflow chain, namely the designer who struggled to design around the images, the color house that worked partly on its own dime to salvage the project and the press crew who printed the images in the final catalog.
This is not a way to achieve zero-cost photography; a digital camera is just a capture device. It can’t light your set or style your product.
2. A mid-sized home products cataloger bought its in-house designer a mid-range digital camera that he used to take various inset shots of products. So he had to pay a professional studio only for the big shots. The insets used were fairly small, and since the cataloger already had the appropriate computer equipment, the only cost was the camera. The designer could preview his shots immediately, so he could tweak until he got the lighting right.
The result: a large number of acceptable inset shots that enhanced the sell of the function-oriented products.
Total cost: (except for the camera, which will be amortized over many shoots) almost $0.
Susan J. McIntyre is president of McIntyre Direct, a full-service catalog agency and consulting firm based in Portland, OR. She can be reached at (503) 286-1400.
