With the recent uproar about Instagram selling your pictures for others to use as stock photography and their quick reaction to the uproar, I thought I would write a little about the world of stock photography and its role in marketing. Long before Instagram was even a glimmer in Kevin Systrom’s eye, stock photography was a contentious issue. On the client side, a responsible CMO has to constantly keep costs and budgets in mind when they are producing a campaign for their product. On the agency (and more specifically the creative) side, we are always concerned about creating effective and ORIGINAL creative to represent that product.

The word original is really the key to this debate for me. There are typically two licensing options when you buy a stock photo to use for advertising purposes — “Royalty Free” and “Rights Managed”. Royalty Free means that with the purchase of an image, you can use it for whatever purposes you need and in multiple media (e.g. Print ads, on your website and in email campaigns) and for as long as you would like. Royalty Free photos are typically less expensive, but they also tend to be of poorer quality, and there is a high chance that the same photo you are purchasing for your campaign has been used by multiple other companies. That means there’s a slim chance it’s been used by your direct competitors. (Take a look at an amusing example of this.)

When purchasing Rights Managed photos, you must first state what you will be using the photo for (e.g. a one-year run in a full-page print advertisement being circulated in the US in 10,000 magazines). The parameters you set for the photo determine how much it will cost for you to use that photo. If you need to reuse the same picture in a different medium or for a longer period of time then you will need to license it again. Rights Managed photos are almost always more expensive than purchasing Royalty Free ones, and the quality of the picture is usually better. But a common misconception is that when you purchase a rights managed photo, you are going to be the only one using it. This is NOT true; you must also purchase exclusive rights to a photo for that to be the case. Yes, there is less of a probability that your competitor will be using the same picture you are because you priced them out, but there is no guarantee.

Even if you are going to purchase exclusive rights to a photo, you are still purchasing a picture that has already been created, and it is most likely not the exact one you want. I don’t even want to begin to think about the amount of time I have spent during my career as a creative professional searching through stock photo galleries looking for an exact image that I or my client has in mind only to have to settle for something close or for one that has to be heavily photoshopped to make it work in the situation I need it for.

The common complaint for hiring a photographer is the costs associated. First off, without completely railing against stock photos, (they have a legitimate need and place, but their place is not in hero images of your marketing campaign) you get what you pay for. An inexpensive stock photo will not even come close to the quality of one created by a good photographer. Secondly, between my time spent searching and the money spent on an exclusive rights or even plain rights managed photo, it would have been much easier (and probably cost effective) to have hired a professional photographer to create a high quality custom image for us. And finally, if your brand is unique, it deserves unique images. Messaging isn’t the only way to differentiate your brand; photography is an essential part of the equation.