Your Brand Images Matter
Blogs, vlogs, influencers, print editorial, online publications, print and digital advertising, and social media. The sheer number of marketing channels available today can be overwhelming, especially if you’re an entrepreneur trying to maximize a modest budget. That’s why it’s crucial for brands to optimize the channels through which clients interact with them by wisely allocating both budget and time. But to get a brand’s DNA and messaging across on so many platforms and connect with both current and potential clients, brands need to produce a variety of visual content tailored to each one.
Of course, that means a significant investment in imagery and content creation. In my Catching the Editor’s Eye course, I advise participants to not use the same images across advertising and social media platforms. I’ve had clients shoot a seasonal lookbook of 30 to 45 images and then use them for all their marketing. While I understand the desire to maximize a budget, repeating images on every platform is not a good strategy. It’s boring for an audience, shows limited creativity on the brand side, and doesn’t effectively tell the brand’s story.
An advertising campaign and collection lookbook require separate creative direction because they communicate different things to customers. Ad images can be shot during a lookbook shoot to show a relationship between the two, but their purposes are very different. While a lookbook serves as primarily a sales tool by showcasing every element of each look and captures the overall collection mood for the season, an ad campaign must go beyond this and tell a story based on the brand's identity and vision for the season.
This is why when a brand’s imagery is out of alignment with its DNA, it’s a major problem.
Gucci is a great example here. We all know the brand is currently experiencing considerable market challenges as creative director Sabato de Sarno and Gucci’s new executive management simultaneously push the brand upmarket and try to grow the business. Yet, the brand’s visuals aren’t helping them. Under Alessandro Michele's creative direction, the brand’s maximalist storytelling style, characterized by extravagant collection films and meticulously staged ad campaigns, was identifiable as clearly Gucci. But now, the brand visuals are more product-oriented, including models shot against a generic white backdrop. It’s a visual look that any brand can do (and many are right now, like Versace).
If a brand is not producing compelling, impactful imagery, then they are wasting their money. If that sounds harsh, then consider this: Group M, the world's leading media investment company, puts the median luxury brand advertising spend as a percentage of revenue at 8.0% for fiscal year 2022. For a $1 billion luxury company, that’s an $80 million advertising budget.
This kind of investment by major brands is why marketing is no longer about hiring clever advertising firms - it’s about storytelling visuals. And the best storytelling does not push product in an obvious way, but rather is editorial or cinematic. The best creatives understand the power of storytelling, which is why entrepreneurs should be expanding their relationships with editors, copywriters, stylists, photographers, creative directors, film directors, videographers, etc.
To wrap this up, it's crucial to have a well-crafted narrative that effectively conveys brand DNA and aesthetics, as well as the current collection’s story when creating brand visuals. Rather than mirroring competitors, allocate resources for differentiation and prioritize investment in creativity. Finally, focus on engaging clients on an emotional level with your visuals instead of just promoting the latest products. By creating a diverse range of unique visual content, your brand will stand out from competitors and your audience will have multiple opportunities to connect with your brand on a deeper level.
Images courtesy of Ekaterina Jurkova and Victoria Fox / Shutterstock
