Who the hell ARE these people?

Maybe you can help me. I really want to know:
Who the hell are these people?

Who are these young, happy, pretty, multi-cultural people with great teeth and even better hair who hang out with notebook computers in sleek and modern conference rooms on B2B company Web sites all over the world?

Who are these international inhabitants of virtual corporate locales?

The reason I ask is because I've personally been inside hundreds and hundreds of B2B company offices in over 20 countries and have spent time in probably a thousand conference rooms over a 25-year career. Yet I have never seen these people who seem to inhabit a weird virtual world of corporate Web sites at organizations across the globe.

Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with stock images used in a clever way. In fact I use frequently use images from Shutterstock on this blog. I use stock images in presentations and I use stock images in my ebooks. It's not the photos. It’s the ways they are used.

Visual gobbledygook

The problem with the B2B happy multi-cultural conference room with computer shot is that it has become a cliché. It is world-class, cutting-edge, mission-critical visual gobbledygook. Just like written gobbledygook, this kind of image is so overused to have become meaningless.

These models don't look like you. They don't look like your employees. And they don't look like your customers (unless you run a modeling agency).

Because these models don’t look like you or your customers, it is insulting and demeaning to everyone (your employees and customers especially) to use these shots on your homepage and throughout your site.

Who is pimping your company?

Its sort of fun when I spot the same pretty model on two different sites. I've found one particular photo at use at multiple companies, including one of the biggest and most famous technology companies in the world. Is that really what you want? Some model representing your valuable brand? Really?

Use real people instead

Why not just use real people on your site? How innovative! Use real employees in a real conference room to represent your employees in a conference room! Damn. Why didn't we think of that? And use your real customers too.

Last week I presented at a meeting of executives at Jackson Healthcare. I went into my rant of stock photography (in this case happy multi-cultural models posing as healthcare workers). I popped up a screenshot of the Jackson Healthcare homepage with a model pretending to be a doctor.

Then a remarkable thing happened. Just a few minutes later, the CEO of the company, Rick Jackson, raised his hand in the middle of my presentation to say they had swapped out the pretend doctor for a real one!

Wow. That was fast. And the actual doctor has a wonderful story too.

The baby being held in the picture is the child of a woman having surgery on the JH medical brigade in Honduras in 2008.

The story with Dr. Eustis was that he brought a teenager from Honduras to the US to take care of him and provide needed care for his leg in order for him to live. He did surgery on his leg in Honduras on the JH medical brigade, but wasn’t able to give him the proper care he needed there.

Now, isn’t that a heck of a lot better than a model dressing up like a doctor?

Just say NO to pretty models

Let me say again that stock images are great. I use them all the time. I'm not saying that you shouldn’t use stock images.

However, I am saying you must re-think using models to represent your employees and your customers. Lose the visual gobbledygook.

Credits
Top photo: Shutterstock / Sean Prior
Second photo: Shutterstock / Andresr

Comments

[Meredith]

I would rather see models or no people. No one wants to look at unattractive staff. The stock photos have never bothered me and honestly if presented with two sites, one with models and one with ugly "real" people, all things being equal I'd choose the company with the models on their site.

[Bianca Te Rtio]

A thought comes to mind, if you are using ‘Real People’ or actual ‘Staff’ images ensure that you have done a full background check on the individual. I recall a high profile TV advertising campaign in New Zealand featuring 'everyday people' going about their business. An individual that was ‘Hero-ed’ in the television commercial was up for pending sexual assault charges. The victim of the assault made several complaints to the advertiser and broadcaster and the $$ campaign was pulled.
Just food for thought regarding whose images you use – to represent your brand and /or company.

[Jodi Kaplan]

Why, they're pod people. Didn't you know? ;-)

[John W. Furst]

I am so glad that I found this blog post. Great post, great discussion. There are already so many good comments, therefore I'll try to be as brief as possible. A couple of "bullets":

* Testing images for conversion is great advice! (do not believe research. Test specific photos on your site yourself. You might be surprised about the results.)

* Personally those images portray to me: distance, expensive, ineffectiveness. (Aren't many meetings ineffective ...)

* Stock photos are certainly more inexpensive than professional photographs of "real" people. And no matter what in many cases the photo needs to looks professional. (But maybe not.)

* The worst problem with most B2B websites is not photos; it's in general bad copy, bad usability, and not using specific landing pages.

Yours
John

[Russ Henneberry]

The two words that comes to mind when I see a ton of stock photography is -- STERILE and SAFE. Neither of which will garner much attention.

[twitter.com/Sue_Anne]

We use stock photography on our web site for two reasons:
a) Most of our clients can't be photographed due to privacy concerns (we treat children with mental health issues)
b) We are a non-profit and it's less expensive for us to use stock photography than to find and arrange models, photo shoots, etc.

I do agree that if you have the budget and want to authentically communicate with your customer, you should be using "real" people -- even if they don't look like models.

[Stephen Johnson]

Excellent post mate. The shiny, happy, well lit, bright smiling, professional... is more reminiscent of a soap opera than real life these days. You hit the nail right on the head!

[Codruta Moga]

Toni, you are right, customers want above average company. But I think they want this in terms of results, of what the company does for them.

And I am sure that in every company there are remarkable, unique people that can add a flavor to it's image, a thing that these smiley models can't.

great blog post,
thanks

[Amelia Vargo]

This is a good point well put! I hate the use of models for real employees.

However I would advocate the use of models / presenters for videos on websites as they are professionally trained to present the scripts better than most employees who haven't had that training.

I think it's all about balance really.

[Jessica Ojeda]

WOW! I'm glad I'm not the only one who isn't exactly comfortable using stock photos. (I especially get annoyed with the beautiful, bright eyed telemarketer.) Pretty does sell, but really that depends on what you are selling. For example, if you're selling cosmetics, you wouldn't want to show them off on a "normal" face. I believe most things that are sold don't have to be pretty. It's important to keep in mind who you are selling to.

[Aaron Wrixon]

Lorraine and Sue Anne are the only ones who seem to have hit on the cost issue. Several of my clients have used stock photography, but only one could afford to pay a professional photographer to light, shoot and retouch photos of themselves. When you're talking $2 a photo vs. $200 an hour, the math is pretty easy to work out.

[Volkan]

Funny story:

a major software company (#1 worldwide) used a similar image in Poland. The interesting part was that one woman was on the same pic in the US afro-american and in Poland suddenly she was white.

Miracles happen... The company apologized and she was afro-american again.

Greetings from Istanbu, Turkey

Volkan

[John R. Sedivy]

Finally someone has said what the rest of us were thinking. Hopefully your article will begin to reverse this trend!

[John Beckley]

Thanks David for another insightful post. I have been on about this point for a while now with our clients. This is our about about us page ...our team ...our conference room...it's real http://www.sortedsites.info/web-site-design-and-internet-marketing

[Amanda O'Donovan]

David,

I spend my days persuading B2B clients why they should avoid verbal gobbledygook. As you say, tired, over-worn cliches are meaningless and often mistrusted by the people who read them. Pepper your site with too many and your bounce rates will soar.

I've also always been irritated by multi-cultural stock photos of unnervingly successful boardroom suits, but have never made the gobbledygook connection. I love your term "visual gobbledygook" and plan to use it frequently to underline the wasteful nature of vacuous images in support of cliches that will inevitably be ignored.

However, like you and many others, I can't entirely rule out the use of stock photography. Used properly (I particularly like istockphoto), it can be very effective and economical...not all B2B companies have big budgets. Just be prepared to have the discipline not to get side-tracked by the search (I've lost hours following the path of eye-catching images).

[David Meerman Scott]

I love all the great comments. Thanks.

Once again to clarify. I use stock images a lot. They are valuable...

Just think before adding photos willy-nilly.

David

[Jeff Jackson]

David, great post. I wrote about this last week but I framed it as a missed storytelling opportunity.

Employees come and go, stories change, so why not reflect that on your site?

[twitter.com/Kimota]

Since arriving at Netregistry a couple of years ago, we have gradually removed all imagery that screams stock image cliche. It's not just the issue of not representing a true face for the brand - which they don't - it's that a cliched image says we have no imagination, creativity, talent or ideas of our own.

So gone are the pretty women in suits smiling next to laptops. Gone are guys in suits punching the air FTW. Well, gone are suits completely.

Considering we're a technology company (webhosting) the new website we're building doesn't have a suit or a laptop in sight. That's because 99% of our audience are SMEs with less than 5 staff, meaning they're running their businesses in their pyjamas from the spare bedroom.

I've loved this rant when I've seen it before and I can only agree with it again here. Sure, pretty can help conversions, but relevance and originality do a better job!

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=589537929]

David, you are in good company with your opinion: http://j.mp/NOFku

[Greg Smith]

Ha-ha. It's so funny. Only this eek I was saying to some students tat I'd seen the handshake they used in their presentation many times before. You know it: one white, one black. It signifies many things. But above all, it says: "I didn't look far to get an innovative image". @prlab

[xavier Izaguirre]

Good post.

David, Ttake a look at a great opportunity seized upon. A spanish consultancy, the actual people in the best possible light. This interactive PHP page rises the self steem of the employees and makes clients feel how real the service is.

http://www.loop-cn.com/en/ourpeople.php

If you hide your employees behind idiotic models you're yelling the world they are not worth your client's money.

Let me know your thoughts,
Xavier Izaguirre, London

[David Meerman Scott]

Isaac - Classic. Thanks for sharing.

Xavier - The photos are great. And the ideas come through really well with these photos.

But why not let the photos speak for themselves? The whole image is lost in my opinion when in huge letters the text says "We are a multicultural... team." Why point that out in text? I think it is better to show, don't tell.

[Santiago Merea]

How convenient! My girlfriend and I have a networking website for couples that met online. We met online. But for some reason we used a stock picture for the website. It doesn't look that bad (you can check it out at www.onlinecouples.com), but we are currently thinking about changing the 'couple' we have on our site for... us! We think that people are not stupid and they know that the couple in the website is not real. Also, it would be a good trust statement: 'we don't mind putting our picture here... we love this site, and it is from us to you.'
Thoughts?

[Tim Parker]

Great point David--one of my pet peeves. Speaking for professional services sites, we know from our own research that people want to get in touch with people--that means email addresses, phone numbers etc., and photos seem to help. Conversely, stock photos, especially in the professional services setting, look totally phony. I don't buy the notion that people want to see perfect--we know how good they are at sounding out phony blogs and I don't imagine that (intelligent) people are any more easily hoodwinked by stock photos. And it's not really hard to do it properly. Here's a site of a client of ours (www.catenion.com) where there's a photo of a bunch of people on the home page... they are the employees. If you dig into the site you'll find photos of partners, clients and the office manager. Not everyone has Abercrombie model looks, but that's not what prospective clients are going there for--it's genuine, which is far more important.

[Jkrueg]

There is a very fine line between "cutting edge" and "cookie cutter". This very fine line is comprised of fear plain and simple - fear of putting your true self out there, fear of failure/rejection, fear to be sincerely different, and mostly fear of going outside of cultural/societal norms. Why do most people insist on using 2.5 x 3.0 business cards?