News of Kodak’s demise in
January saw even the most dispassionate publications turn to the warm filters
of nostalgia to cover the story – from rose-tinted references to Paul Simon’s
1973 song Kodachrome, to sentimental evocations of the brand’s 50-year-old ‘Kodak
moments’ tagline. Then, only a few months later, Facebook bought Instagram –an
app that lets people capture images through digital filters that evoke Kodak’s
legacy, with a logo that references its Instamatic camera – for a cool $1bn.
Kodak’s fall and Instagram’s
rise coincide with a period of explosive growth in our obsession with the
photograph. At the end of 2011, 1000memories, a site that helps people get
their old printed photographs online, estimated that 10% of all of humankind’s
photos had been taken in the previous 12 months. Partly, that is down to the
falling cost of digital imaging technology and the proliferation of mobile –
even cheap feature phones now include cameras, turning pretty much everyone
into an amateur photographer. But it’s also due to innovations in how we store,
publish and share photographs: many of the fastest growing and most engaging
social networks are primarily image-based, namely Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram.
The emotional and memorial
power of the picture – whether rendered in film or pixels – is timeless. Yet
the digital age has given the photograph a new, social currency. ‘Images allow
us to visually “staple” ourselves to places and other people – call this social
and locational collation,’ says Grant McCracken, author of Culturematic. ‘This
is critical not just to memory but to network building. Facebook beat
Friendster because it allowed us to post photos, name people and circulate the
image.’ Indeed, Facebook is now officially the world’s largest library of
photographs – by quite a long way.
Following the people
As people have flocked to
Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram, brands have dutifully followed. And perhaps
with good reason. Online intelligence firm Convertro has found that Pinterest
is the fastest growing source of referrals leading to purchase for online
retailers: in Q1 2012, the site represented 17.4% of social media revenue for
ecommerce sites, up from 1.2% a year earlier. The company predicts that the
figure will reach 40% by the end of Q2 2012, bringing Facebook down to 60% from
86% a year ago. Now approaching its third round of funding, the site is rumored
to be itself at more than $1bn (perhaps even $1.5bn).
It is somewhat inevitable
then, that Pinterest has been quickly swamped with a deluge of marketing
campaigns. Airline BMI partnered with London- based social media agency Rabbit,
for instance, to launch its Pinterest Lottery, a competition centered around
six boards related to different destinations: Beirut, Dublin, Marrakech,
Moscow, Nice and Edinburgh. Each image across all the boards has a unique
number. BMI has a weekly prize draw; people who have repined that image have a
chance to win free flights.
It’s a similar story on
other new platforms, too, with brands like Tiffany & Co, Ford and
Neutrogena flocking to Instagram with similarly tactical and attention-grabbing
initiatives. For example, Levi’s used Instagram to find the stars of its next
advertising campaign (with Wieden+Kennedy, Portland). Using the hashtag
#iamlevis, people were invited to upload their photo to the site. The faces of
the campaign for the next Levi’s collection, due to run in September, will be
selected from these entries.
Content not campaigns
But whilst many brands
have been admirably quick to turn up to the party, is this really the best way
to fit in? Competitions and campaigns don’t necessarily play to the fundamental
truths about why people care about image sharing. Pinterest, for instance, has
a fairly straightforward purpose: to curate and share visual content discovered
on the web. Short-lived novelty campaigns are great ways to generate a quick
burst of buzz, but most users are after new images that are in some way visually
engaging. Brands should therefore be focused on providing content that people
genuinely want to Like, Pin, and Note.
GE has done an admirable
job in this respect, using Tumblr to share GIFs and Instagram shots of
factories, turbines and engines – all recontextualised as beautiful, intriguing
artworks (via Barbarian Group, New York). Adam Senatori, winner of its ‘Be the
Next Instagrapher’ challenge, snapped many of the more recent pictures. It’s
amazing to see the brand pull back the curtain on its operations in this way,
providing new content that fills a particular niche, all in a visual language
appropriate to the platform’s own users.
Fashion house Oscar de la
Renta turned to Pinterest for a campaign (produced in-house) to build interest
in its bridal fashion catwalk show, highly appropriate given that the platform
has become a popular tool for brides-to-be as they gather inspiration and
create moodboards for their own weddings. During the immediate lead-up to the
event, images began to populate a designated bridal board on the Oscar de la
Renta page, allowing fans of the brand – and weddings – to follow all the
behind-the-scenes action.
Amazon has also made a
significant investment in photography, specifically as part of its drive to
conquer the luxury fashion market. The retailer now shoots 3,000 fashion images
a day in its Kentucky photography studio and images of new items are posted
online daily. Amazon has also developed a patent-pending technology where
instead of using static images, models move around to show off the clothes.
This is a smart strategy: by presenting products in a beautiful way, Amazon is
setting itself up as a primary place to find shareable images of high fashion –
again, perfect Pinterest fodder.
The upshot is that brands
need to start taking images seriously. ‘We are all hungry for content,’ says
McCracken. ‘Photos give us the most content for the effort.’ One factor holding
brands back from getting more deeply involved in image sharing has been the
questionable legality of posting photos that one doesn’t own (a common use for
Tumblr, and Pinterest’s raison d’être). Which itself raises a bigger question:
once a brand or a person puts an image out there, is it possible to truly own
it? All the more reason for companies to make the effort to create great
original images for others to share, rather than trading in other people’s
creativity. In a recent blog post
(on Tumblr, naturally), Rabbit suggested that organizations ‘need not only a
social media strategy, but a visual social media strategy as well’.
But should brands turn to
Pinterest, or Tumblr? Facebook or Instagram?
In many ways, the platform is irrelevant.
It’s still all about capturing those Kodak moments.
[ Original article by John
Ridpath on Contagious ]
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