As a business that offers products for sale, you are competing against a wide range of other products, most of which are doing an amazing job at vying for your attention. Beyond competing for that attention with the brightest and shiniest imagery and advertising what does professional photography say about your company and product? Psychologically speaking? One important place to look would be your value proposition, the thing or things make you attractive to potential customers. In the case of any product that is manufactured the value proposition is that you as a brand know what you are doing and can provide a superior product. Customers know that your company might not make each product in-house, so rather than demand that you are a skilled manufacturer yourself, you must know about and have access to the best people around. If you make an age-defying moisturizer, your customer wants to be assured that the mix was concocted by the best scientists, that the raw materials were sourced from the best sources and then mixed in the best and cleanest facility and if that wasn’t enough the customer wants for you to be an expert negotiator and get great prices for all of these services that then get passed on to them. In a word, nothing short of a “superproduct”. This mix of superior quality and reasonable cost is always with us, the customer wants a product without significant compromise. No one wants substandard beef in their burger. Rather than skimp on the materials used, they want you to save costs by sourcing locally, negotiating a better price or even farming yourself. Rather than going into details about where the beef is sourced the easier approach is to ease customers concerns with branding. So it is important to give the impression that your brand is talented enough to get the best materials and labor in the world and is pumped up and excited about making your product, your superproduct. The perfect mythical product that is a result of your agency, amazing staffing, sourcing, manufacturing and negotiating. A world class brand. No compromises.
So how does your image and your branding suggest you have what it takes to offer a competitive product? The same no compromises ethos needs to be applied across all aspects of your brand. Does homegrown packaging suggest you possess the skills to create a no compromise product? Remember, you want to give the impression that you get all of the best ingredients and have access to the smartest and best people. Your packaging needs to look like it is from the same bunch of ultra-competent people. Why if you possess the skills to pool the best talent and resources would you skimp on any link in the chain, simple answer, you wouldn’t. The same is true for graphic design and photography, they need to be of excellent quality to assure a client that you are able to get the very best people onboard with your vision. If we were to simplify this argument, whether your product is the finest in the world or somewhat less fine, the impression of quality must be achieved before you even get a chance to prove yourself. When your branding is compromised the impression or illusion of competence vanishes, and when branding is impeccable mediocre products gain the sheen of a superproduct without any of its inherent qualities.
When the customer is presented with a wall of options, say, of shampoos at the grocery store. Without previous knowledge of the products, the customer is looking for clues. They might look for features but they are also looking at branding, for signs of competence and quality. What is inside doesn’t matter much for this brief moment. What really matters is that the branding fulfills your potential customer's needs and desires. Did the brand source interesting materials? Does the packaging look generic or unique, is the labelling a sticker or screen printed, paper or vinyl? All of these are earmarks of quality that go into a consumers decision to buy. Fortunately or unfortunately at this moment image matters, a lot. And if you do have a great product this is precisely the moment that matters. Unless you can overcome the hurdle of every aspect of your brand looking uncompromised, you won’t get the opportunity to prove yourself.
This is all to say, in the range of tools you have to reach out to potential customers, your image is key. Packaging, design and photography can say volumes about what you are offering. Countless products don’t "hit the shelves" at all, rather they are sold on virtual shelves. More and more this is where the decisions are made. Photography is playing a larger role because so much shopping is being done online, a trend that seems to have no end in sight. This is allowing small independent brands access to customers that wouldn’t have been possible only a few years ago. More importantly it is allowing these same small brands to compete on even terms with huge entrenched brands. The cost of entry is simply to suggest that your brand doesn’t compromise on quality, and the easiest way to give this impression is to manage your image and what it says about you…. Most importantly if you are lookingfor creative solutions in product photography for your brand you have come to the right place.