Emerging Trend: Professional Ads Turning to User-Generated Photography
By Karla Robinson
November 14, 2012
November 14, 2012
- “User-generated content — the feel and the actual images — is very intimate, and that visual language is very familiar to people,” says David Gelb, a documentary director. Advertisers are starting to take advantage of this by incorporating simple smartphone pictures into their top-brand ads.
- Already, there has been notable traction. Two pictures of the same mirrored chrome nail lacquer were posted on the e-commerce site theFancy.com. The traditional product shot by Barneys was liked or “fancied” about 1,400 times. The second photo taken on an iPhone was fancied 9,000 times, even though Stacey Bendet, who posted it, has around 9,000 fewer Fancy followers than Barneys.
- “Our customer doesn’t want to be sold to all the time,” says Bendet, who designs her own clothing label. “She is moved by the real thing.”
- Taco Bell made an ad for its Doritos Locos Tacos using customers’ Instagram pictures. The online dress-rental company Rent the Runway features real women wearing its clothes on the home page, rather than showing traditional images with professional models.
- “The point is to manufacture glamour that doesn’t seem manufactured. Consumers ‘like’ your ad, share it with friends, and soon it has a life of its own, bouncing around social media sites at no extra cost,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
- While companies still work up professional glossies for magazines, the use of smartphone cameras and street-style photography is becoming increasingly popular, even among haute couture companies.
- “The photos that are resonating online are the ones that come from our phones,” says Stacy Mackler, Lancome USA spokeswoman.
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