What value do the studio bring?
Companies that have their own studio understand that product photography is important but do they really know why? In many cases, the studio, is regarded as a cost of marketing. It is common to have it as an extension of the marketing department as it is regarded as a creative process. But is that really the case?
E-commerce re-defines product photography
With e-commerce producing images is not just about creating nice looking images for marketing purposes, it is all about being part of the core value chain of product development. The studio work is a crucial part of putting the product to the market. An e-commerce store without an image is like a shop without a product, you simply can´t sell it.
The consequence for the studio is apparent, viewing the value of good product images in the core value chain menas that the studion has to:
- The studio must act faster, provide images as soon as the sample reaches the studio
- They will have to provide images for a lot more channels
- They have to provide more information to the channel
The consequence for the studio
What does it mean if we consider product photography as a critical part of the company’s product value chain? What are the implications on the studio operation? Three things stick out:
- Shorter time to market requires better Planning
- Support for more channels requires better workflows
- Better channel information will require updated distribution
Planning
With planning we argue that it is essential that the studio has relevant information about the coming products to be able to plan photo production. This information should be managed with tools that allows the studio to pre-define how to shoot the different products when they arrive at the studio.
This is the foundation that will allow the studio to act fast but without stress, i.e. with the right information beforehand more time will be given for creative work but still on time.
Workflow
If you want the studio to provide content for more channels without dramatically increase cost of production you need good workflows. These workflows must allow the studio to create content in parallell and more automated in order to perform at the highest standard and provide creative excellency without letting the cost sky rocket.
Standardised workflows should make it clear who is doing what and when and they can provide controlling mechanisms that secures the quality of the process with minimal administrativ efforts. They should also enable the studio to monitor progress and efficiency, this will help planning and visualise studio capacity.
Distribution
What to distribute and where to distribute is also important to manage. It is not uncommon that images are distributed via different types of FTP servers with no, or limited, logging. In other words, it is a function that does the job well as long as no one wants to see what was distributed and when.
With a structured way of distributing images, the studio will be in full control and can always tell when images were sent forward. With a transparent process other would be able to look for themselves.
