Yes, seriously. "Sign up and Automate." Consider it the call of the new age marketer. There will be no tuning in and dropping out here. A new mantra—at least when it comes to stock photography—is to sign up and automate. In other words, subscribe and sit back and wait for great images to come to you.
That's what a number of stock photography sites out there allow you to do. Offer up your email address and on a regular basis—say once a week or once a month—you'll receive a zipped file of images in your inbox to use in your marketing efforts. Seems like a fair deal, no?
It's almost like receiving postcards regularly. There's just such delight in opening an email full of new images that spark your imagination and make you think about your marketing a fresh with each click.
(I haven't felt this excited since the time I had my first record-of-the-month subscription!)
Here are some sites we've signed up for recently.
You get a zip file every seven days in your inbox. Photos are usually grouped by a visual theme. The images have an artistic feel with high production values.
They call their site "Death to the Stock Photo" but it's meant in a seemingly indie-ironic way, kind of like how Death Cab for Cutie isn't about mutilating music, but I digress. Dramatics of the name aside, this is a useful site. You get a pack of photos zipped to your inbox once a month. The photos are stock-esque in that their lighting is contemporary and the scenes are oriented to advertising and editorial projects. But they aren't obviously stock photos because not everyone is crossing their arms and wearing a fake smile. The scenes are more nuanced.
The images are available under a Creative Commons licence. Sign up and Unsplash will send you 10 new photos every 10 days. What I like about this site is that they include images such as this one by Keith Misner: basic backgrounders that can be used under text, as a texture behind another image, or in its plain glory all on its own.
Sign up for these sites and sit back and let the art come to you. You don't have to use every image you receive in a marketing campaign. Keep looking until you find something you like. While doing this, you'll be training your eye on quality imagery; something we all need need to be attuned to in our increasingly visual society.
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