The 29th of May 1986 was an important milestone for me and the beginning of my career in photography. I started work at Advertising Photography in Belfast, where I served my time working for Tom Russell. These images are scanned from contact prints of the crew on a shoot later that year. It all seems like yesterday (until you look in a mirror) – great memories and great hairstyles…
After months of work the exhibition is now installed in City Hall and will run throughout May, June and July admission is free.
Many thanks are due to DSD for commissioning the project (and writing the captions) , to Iris Colour for making the panels and to all at City Hall for hosting the exhibition in their magnificent venue.
A preview of the content is available here – http://www.stephenpotts.co.uk/nomadicpres.pdf
Here is an opportunity to own an interesting piece of Belfast’s continuing maritime story and help support the SS Nomadic restoration project. Proceeds go towards the restoration of the ship, which has positive implications for Belfast as a visitor destination, especially with the important Titanic sinking centenary being next year.
Background - This view of construction work on the Titanic Visitor Centre, seen through the eyes of the SS Nomadic, is the work of Belfast photographer Stephen Potts. Launched just a month before the Titanic, who she was built to serve, the SS Nomadic has come home to Belfast for restoration which secures her place in the city’s maritime heritage. She is also the only surviving ship of the White Star Line.
Edition – a limited edition of 50 framed prints, individually signed and numbered by the artist.
Media - 12″x18″ Giclée prints on Baryta 325g Cellulose.
Price - £500 (proceeds go to the restoration of the Nomadic).
Available from – 25th April 2011 (exactly 100 years after the SS Nomadic was launched).
To purchase - contact the Department for Social Development, Lesley House, 25 Wellington Place, Belfast BT1 6GD (Gerry AcAlinden on 028 90277652 / gerry.mcalinden@dsdni.gov.uk)
Note – This proof is watermarked and subject to copyright.
I first saw large-scale photography used to produce building wraps when I rode my motorcycle into Berlin in the summer of 2008. I was struck by the use of the media to provide environmental appeal in areas where buildings were in a state of disrepair and to preview the possibility of reinstating historic buildings that were lost during World War 2. The concept being that, in addition to their obvious aesthetic qualities, these representations could serve with a view to gaining support for building projects.
I was already producing images for print onto outdoor display media to be used in banner advertising and felt that this work could naturally extend into the concept of much larger formats to enclose entire buildings. In order to proceed certain technical issues had to be overcome:
The first application of this work can now be seen at the Belfast Harbour Commissioners Office in Corporation Square, Belfast where the renovation process is taking place behind scaffolding which is shrouded in life size images of the building. The clock tower was the first piece installed and the whole front of the building followed a few weeks later. The main frontal image had to be printed in sections and an empty warehouse was hired for the jointing process to be carried out.
About 18 months ago I started to look more seriously at my website’s function as a marketing tool. Understandably, I guess like most folk, my first priority was to make sure I had good content that would say the right things to prospective customers when they visited, so once that was accomplished I turned my attention to getting business from the site – in other words generating some traffic.
There is much talk about SEO and loads of activity out there aimed at attracting business from companies who are at this stage in their web development, so I wanted to share my experiences on this aspect of online marketing. I hope you find it useful and maybe it will help to avoid some mistakes.
There are 4 main routes to SEO:
I eventually opted for a local SEO company but I would suggest getting some knowledge of the field yourself in order to avoid problems later and make sure you negotiate a contract which protects you as well as it protects the SEO company. It is easier to get the terms right when they are pitching for your business than it will be to sort things out later in the event that you are not happy with their progress and / or service.
It may shock you to hear these words from a commercial photographer, it certainly took me by surprise as one of the guiding principles handed down when I started to serve my time in Advertising Photography in 1986, but it was great advice and remains just as relevant today.
So what to do instead? Next time you commission a photograph or video, whether you sell a product or a service, bear these time-honoured principles in mind:
1. Don’t commission a photograph of your product when you could commission a photograph that sells your product. People buy products and the action of purchasing is triggered by collaboration between the head and the heart. The exact proportions of these influences depends as much upon the type of product as it does on which school of advertising you subscribe to, but both organs are involved, that’s for sure.
2. Speak to your audience. This has two important messages. “Speak to” means address directly and this involves engagement with the potential buyer, no engagement means it missed the point. “Your audience” means the target demographic for your product because there’s very little point trying to sell nursing home places to school children, they’re just the wrong group for the proposition. In summary, what sells more cold drinks, a picture of a glass of liquid or a picture of a group of friends (representative of the target demographic) having fun sharing a drink?
3. Give your product a first class ticket for its journey. Way back in the 1950’s, when the idea of brand image was starting to shape advertisements, David Ogilvy (the original Mad Man) was saying, “Every advertisement must contribute to the complex symbol that is the brand image”. The idea that every appearance of your product must add to its image is pivotal and widely accepted The image of the brand, which is the company who produces the product, should also be served by each appearance.
4. Only employ hard working photographs. A hard working photograph sells product by engaging the viewer but way beyond that it makes the product desirable, the company recognisable and the brand memorable.
I have never forgotten being told – it is the advertising photographer’s job to mix science with art in order to give an advertiser access to their clients’ hearts and minds – it was good advice in 1986 and continues to translate well 25 years on.
David Ogilvy’s “man in the Hathaway shirt” campaign in 1951 produced sales that outpaced factory production capacity. The reader was intrigued by the mysterious portraits of Baron Wrangell wearing an eye patch photographed in a variety of interesting settings and so they read the copy to find out more, this copy sold shirts, lots of shirts. Ogilvy summed up his view on the subject - The kind of photographs which work hardest are those which arouse the reader’s curiosity. He glances at the photograph and says to himself, ‘What goes on here?’ Then he reads your copy to find out. ‘Story Appeal,’ the more of it you inject into your photographs, the more people look at your advertisements.
So in 2011, with fewer clients taking full-page adverts in the New Yorker than Ogilvy had in 1951, I hear you say; “how does this relate to what we do today?” My answer is “social media”.
Few now fail to grasp the value of weaving social media into a marketing strategy because its success stories are all around us. The value of showing your personality and becoming more of a known quantity or real person to your otherwise impersonal online connections is an important part of this, just like the appeal of a mass audience reached with a very modest cost of communication.
What I propose for Story Appeal in 2011 is that it be used as a page turning stopper, an attention grabber but better – a hard working photograph which includes a call to action – click-through action. Placed in social media posts with pictures which leave the viewer wanting to know more, intrigued, hungry and most of all wanting to click-through for the answer.
Wanted – the right client to try this in 2011; The right client will have a suitable proposition, a corporate strategy that favours this approach and a willingness to be experimental.
Having started with David Ogilvy I will finish the same way. As early as 1955 he was saying “Every advertisement must contribute to the complex symbol that is the brand image”, although this is an accepted concept today it was pioneering stuff in the 1950’s. So the other secret ingredient in the Hathaway shirt campaign was that the model, his surroundings and everything about the images said the right things about the Hathaway Shirt Company. This will also be a core principal of the Story Appeal campaign we will shoot in 2011.
