Day #157: How your brand visual ends up in the media

Photos in classic media, that are including your partner brands, are bringing value to your sports organizations. That's why most of us deliver photo content directly to the journalists. But there are different worlds we have to understand. My simple advise first: deliver a selection of stunning shots no one else can take.

Use cases that lead journalists to a image search are mostly if they are doing a game/event coverage (preview or recap), doing a person related background story (protagonists), and if they are doing a club related story (club's DNA).

Let's take a look which sources journalists have for images.

1. Stock or agency photo databases

Image agencies like GettyImages are the traditional source of every journalist. Most media outlets have long term contracts with such companies and the workflow is integrated smoothly into the whole publishing process. Services like Unsplash are offering photos even for free which sounds interesting to smaller publishers like bloggers.

2. Individual photo databases

More and more individual sports organizations or leagues are offering a photo database to journalists. For me that feels like to be in the middle of something. You have the value like you have with a stock or agency photo database, but you have to sign-in at an other place. Most of these databases are not connected with the media's internal workflows.

3. Selected photo collections

With content hub solutions like the Pressroom solution sports organizations are offering a hand-selection of photos to journalists. At the place where journalists are also getting other valuable content like quotes or stats. This solutions ensures that the correct protagonists and brands are used. It gives you as sports organization the power of control and don't put a ceiling on the work of the journalist.

Giving a hand by selecting images is a small but important task that media executives of sports organizations should do.

Sending out press releases with photos as email attachments is a common but not good solution. The only good aspect is that it will be delivered directly into the editor's inbox. In general this solution feels like paternalism to me. Everybody receives the same image to use. We like giving the journalist an more 'active' part by using one of the above mentioned solutions.

How to rock your images!

Remember that you are the source and only you can deliver stunning shots of your sport where no journalist has access. Don't misunderstand that with locking out photographers. The opposite counts. Claim to do better then everybody else. That's also part of the success of the "Red Bull Content Pool", where newspapers around the globe take photos to enhance their editions.

Today I'm signing off with three secret ingredients every photo should have:

– Integrate the brand of your sports organizations
– Integrate one brand of your business partners
– Use an exclusive point of view

To demonstrate what an effective editorial photo look like, I share the following example with you. The photo shows the arrival of a team during the corona crisis (as exclusive view because agency photographers where not on the location at that time), shows the club's brand as well as a business partner in the background on the team bus.

Have a good day,

Christian Dreier
cd mediateam Est.