Well Produced Imagery Can Make A Huge Impact In Your Digital Marketing & Advertising
In the world of digital marketing and commercial advertising, well produced commercial imagery can make a huge impact in how your products, services and brand are perceived by consumers, especially in an oversaturated marketplace. If you work in a marketing or advertising role, it's important to educate yourself on the types of imagery you might need in order to help sell your companies products and services. Learning how to articulate your photographic needs can help you make more informed decisions that ultimately lead to more impactful and meaningful photography. This in turn will help promote the health and wellbeing of your brand's image and longterm growth strategy.
In a previous article, I wrote about the 4 most common types of product shots. Being that my name has become somewhat synonymous with the industry term "hero shot," mainly due to the high end product photography that I'm known for producing, I thought I'd write an article to expand a bit more on what a hero shot is as well as the important role that it plays in the world of digital marketing and commercial advertising. I'll also provide various sample images from my commercial product photography portfolio as well.
What Is A Hero Shot in the field of commercial advertising photography?
In commercial advertising photography, a hero shot is a highly produced image that puts emphasis on creative strategy, technical execution and production value in order to invoke emotions within a consumer that create a want, a desire and a need to purchase a product or service from a specific brand. A hero shot is often referred to as "the face of an advertising campaign." This is because it's a consumer facing image that essentially serves as eye candy due to its flawless execution and visually stimulating qualities and characteristics. It's an image that stands on its own but also compliments a larger body of work.
In my humble opinion, I also believe that a really well executed hero shot is simply fine art in a commercial market. Take all the typography and design away from the ad, and you're left with a piece of photographic art that you'd gladly hang on your wall. That to me, is a hero shot.
Hero Shots In Real World Advertising
Imagine for a moment, that you're sitting at the doctors office. You pick up a magazine based on two things, your interest and the cover image (a hero shot). Why, because it resonates with you and captures your attention. Now imagine that you're flipping through the pages of magazine. As you're flipping through, you instantaneously stop on a page. What made you stop on that particular page? I'd say about 99.9% of the time it's an image. And there's a high probability that it was a hero shot that caught your attention.
You'll find hero shots on the covers of magazines, in magazine ads, outdoor billboards, transit advertising, as well as the landing pages of company websites. You'll also see them in the digital advertisements that capture our attention when scrolling through our social media feeds or surfing the web.
The Importance Of A Hero Shot In Digital Marketing & Advertising
Hero shots play an important role in any marketing or advertising campaign because it's a piece of visual communication that represents the purpose and intent of your brands specific marketing and advertising initiatives. A hero shot should not only have amazing aesthetic qualities, it should also speak to the target demographic as well as visually establish value in the products or services you're trying to sell.
When done right, hero shots can help build brand equity and increase conversion rates. However, just like spending boat loads of money on advertising doesn't necessarily guarantee a return on investment, it's important to remember that just having a hero shot in place does guarantee the success of a campaign or product launch.
I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but a successful marketing and advertising campaign involves a combination of market research, a strategic marketing plan and well executed creative visual communication. All of those things combined can create a successful campaign. A hero shot is usually the final piece of the puzzle. It's the cherry on top of an already well thought out campaign. It's important to think of a hero shot as part of the larger picture of your brands long term growth strategy.
Using hero shots to market and advertise your brand's products and services will help:
Build brand recognition as part of your long term growth strategy
Invoke emotion from your target demographic
Increase conversions (sell more products and services)
Hero Shots Are Not Necessarily Limited To Commercial Advertising Photography
Most people associate hero shots with commercial product photography. However, I think it's also important to recognize that hero shots can also serve purposes outside of selling products and services. In terms of editorial photography (photography that is used in education and journalism) for example, a hero shot could be used as a header image on a news website to spotlight and invoke an emotional response to a breaking national news story. It could also be used to bring attention to a specific message or public service announcement as a call to action.
Furthermore, the term "hero shot" doesn't only apply to still images. They can also apply to video production in the film industry as well. A movie trailer for example, is simply a series of hero shots cut together as a sequence or hero reel if you will. The goal of the trailer is to capture the viewer's attention in a short amount of time, intrigue and stimulate their senses and ultimately get them to purchase a ticket to see that movie in a theater, stream it on demand or buy a physical copy.
Hire A Commercial Advertising Product Photographer
As I'm sure you've gathered by now, I'm a commercial photographer and digital artist specializing in heroic product and architectural photography with an emphasis on the post production process. One the key benefits to hiring a professional such as myself, is that once I have an understanding of your commercial photography needs, (usually provided to me in the form of a creative brief or shot list) I'm able to use my skills as an artist to translate your message into visual communication tailored to your brand's specific needs.
