Analysis #18--Are We Enough International?

Few may know this, but my stock photo agency's name was originally "Index Stock International."  We changed it to Index Stock Photography, because we kept getting calls from folks who wanted to buy stock and bonds!  Then, we took the opportunity presented by our combination in 1996 with Denver-based Stock Imagery, to tip our hat to the many illustrators we work with, and change our name to Index Stock Imagery.  We liked that this brought us back to being "ISI," rather than "ISP."  It made us feel we were once again somewhat "international."

But, are we enough international?  I was recently looking at some data on this subject.  We generate a substantial amount of our revenue via overseas licensing--with most of this business managed for us by our network of foreign agents.  However, many of these licenses are generated by images of the United States.  How "international" is our file of images, and how many contributors do we have, overseas?

Overall, I would say that I was pleased with the answer to the first of these two questions.  We actually have a huge file of international images.  45% of our images have a keyword indicating that they were taken overseas.  However, I wasn't as pleased to see that more than 90% of our artists were from the U.S.  That suggests that these overseas images are being seen, selected, and captured by American eyes.  Our agents have told us that this sometimes leads to an American style for our collection, that is increasingly inappropriate and out of step with their needs.

To put things further in perspective, I summarized the above data by region, and added two more pieces of information--the GDP of each region and the number of people who live in it.  (This latter data came from the excellent Geohive site--which has a wealth of details about the world's economy and demography.)  Looked at this way, our artist base is surprisingly strong relative to Europe.  We have many artists in the UK, Germany, Russia, France, Spain, Italy, etc.  We are surprisingly weak in our own hemisphere.  We have a good set of contributors in Canada, but relatively few in South and Central America.  Then, there is Africa and Asia.  Africa is bad--more than two times the population of the U.S., but with only one tenth the number of images and one hundredth of the artist coverage.  Asia is worse--especially when you factor in that the GDP of the region is more than that for either the U.S. or Europe as a whole!

The result of this imbalance is that while we have images of the Americas, Africa, and Asia, they probably aren't the images we would have if we had a "native" viewpoint.  I'll give a few examples that I hope illustrate this issue.

Teenager in Italy (top image is a classic shot from Bill Bachman, bottom is from one of our newer artists, Gianni Lanza.)

A Japanese woman (top is from U.S.-based but Japanese artist Kentarou Taya, bottom is from Gary Conner).

This subtle problem of cultural perspective works both ways.  Here are two skylines of New York City (top is from a Dutch artist who calls himself "Walker," bottom is from U.S. artist Lauree Feldman).

I hope no one takes these comparisons as criticism of the non-native artist.  All six of the folks I've featured above are top artists with great skills.  I am not saying that "local" images are better than those taken by outsiders--just that they capture a different mood.  It is possible for non-local images to license well--even in the foreign country they are taken in.  Foreigners can sometimes catch more of the essence of a place, than locals can.  However, I feel in the long run that local artists should understand, penetrate, and reveal their local market, better than a foreigner can.  If this is true, and we want our library to be truly international in its appeal, we need to recruit more local artist talent.

Africa, Asia and the Americas have huge populations, big economies, and immense opportunities for growth.  We need to be ready to serve the needs of potential buyers in these countries--and of the many people in Europe and the U.S., who will want to market to them.  I invite our current artists to help us with this process, by volunteering the name of a foreign artist they respect and would like to be associated with.  Our staff will follow up and see if they would like to contribute to making our international side, even better.

Comments

[Jeff Greenberg]

"Our agents have told us that this sometimes leads to an American style for our collection, that is increasingly inappropriate and out of step with their needs."

Am not clear on differences other than post-processing. Perhaps a scenario:

Two groups of (20) stock shooters are sent to small Asian Island Nation XYZ
for one week, enough time to capture images of people, places,
attractions, activities. Each shooter selects (20) favorite images
from their results & (20 x 40 = 800) total mixed images are delivered en masse
to a consortium of EUROPEAN travel catalogue publishers needing 100
images of small Asian Island Nation XYZ for marketing to EUROPEAN residents.
The two groups of shooters are (20) typical US shooters & (20) typical
European shooters.

The questions: are majority of images selected likely to be by
European shooters because they collectively have a shooting style
distinct from US shooters that European publishers marketing to
European consumers prefer? If yes, what is that style?

[Meredith A. Conti]

Jeff, the question is not so much about image style as the focus one takes when they are living in a certain area versus “just visiting”. Therefore the answer is not in the style of the image but in the subject, at least from my experience. In your scenario you state that 20 stock shooters are “sent” to the small Asian nation. I think you have to stop right there, as right away they will all be visitors to the nation and therefore will shoot with a visitor’s eye.

Although I disagree that the sample images Bahar has presented are the most balanced (with the exception of the skyline, he is comparing images that are about 5 – 8 years apart in creation date), I do agree with the end product of the American shots being more traditional-culture based where as the foreign native versions are more contemporary in their representation of the people. I believe this is because an American is shooting from a visitor’s stand point, to draw in more visitors (ie: market to the travel industry who want to show the place as exotic). An American artist would not necessarily shoot the teen boy in image #921934, as he looks as though he could be the American artist’s neighbor from Brooklyn. What is so exotic about that?

The problem with that type of thinking, however, is that we have a worldwide client base. We have customers in Italy, and they want to see their neighbor in Castellaneta and use it in an ad for a local barbecue grill brand. So even though it would not be an American’s version of exotic Italy for the travel market, it would work for the Italian market’s standard needs.