On morality and parchment paper: the role of photography in corporate branding.
I recently wanted to try a dessert recipe that called for parchment paper, so I headed to the grocery store to pick some up. I didn’t expect to have my core values confronted for such a trivial purchase, but there they were: two options for baking sheets, and my morality hanging in the balance.
The first option was from your standard cost-saving big brand, and the other from a company called “If You Care.” Their eco-friendly products offer a lower carbon footprint while avoiding the use of harmful chemicals. I just wanted to try a cool new recipe I’d found on Instagram, but now I had to deeply reflect on whether this cake was worth contributing to climate change or my early demise.
There’s no subtlety here — the very name of this brand challenges you to examine the value you place on the environment and your personal health. Our emotional response to brands is a key determinant along the path to consumption. Really, a brand’s relationship with its consumers is not all that different from our relationships with one another. It’s a continuous journey of discovery that’s deeply rooted in emotion, and successful businesses know how to leverage those emotions into the creation of a loyal consumer base.
Photography In Corporate Branding
Photography plays a vital role in shaping the narrative around your brand and fostering an emotional connection with your audience. In addition to supporting your general marketing efforts, your brand’s visuals are an extension of your company’s mission, values, and culture. When executed well, all of these elements work together to foster an emotional bond with your audience and distinguish your brand from the competition. Choice is abundant in most every industry; once essential needs around price and utility are met, our emotional response to brands serves as the differentiator.
A transaction doesn’t begin and end at the exchange of goods or services. In return for a customer investing their loyalty, time, and resources in a brand, they expect fulfillment of that brand’s promises and alignment with their own beliefs and values. Though on it’s surface, your photography may just be showcasing your products or services, it has the potential to convey your mission and signal your brand’s values and culture. Businesses that take advantage of this opportunity are the ones that build loyal customers and brand ambassadors.
Use Cases
Understanding real world applications for photography in corporate branding will allow you to make the most of your visual assets. These are some of the areas where photography can play a major role in communicating your brand’s mission and values:
Culture Showcase: Businesses that offer transparency are most likely to earn their audience’s trust. Provide your audience with a behind the scenes look into the inner workings of your business with photos that document your process. These visuals work to demonstrate your brand’s commitment to its values and culture in a way that resonates and aligns with your audience. Create modern corporate headshots of your staff to showcase your team’s diversity and talent.
Leadership Spotlight: Portraits of your executives can be used to convey their unique leadership traits, highlight their vision, and give them a sense of approachability. These images humanize your leadership team, bringing C-level to sea level and making them more relatable to clients and employees alike.
Workplace Appeal: Showcasing well-designed areas and vibrant communal spaces within your offices creates an attractive workplace narrative. Coworking scenes and photos of your team both engaged in and taking breaks from work will help to communicate that your company values employee well-being and fosters community.
Perks and Benefits: Photographs of in-house chefs preparing meals, staff enjoying lunch in a communal setting or partaking in breaks in your game room, relaxing in comfortable lounge areas, or utilizing any other workplace perks will highlight the benefits of working at your company. These are major recruiting tools, as top talent know’s their worth and is looking beyond the benefits package when choosing where to work.
Corporate Retreats: Capture the spirit of team-building and community by documenting corporate retreats and events. These photos showcase unity and shared experiences, demonstrating your commitment to employee satisfaction.
Branded Elements: Abstract visuals of your branded elements—logos, signage, unique office features—have myriad use cases across your marketing. Whether as a background element for a social media post, a header for a blog post, or general use across your outreach, having a suite of these images helps to keep all of your messaging feeling branded.
Differentiation: Too many businesses rely on stock imagery in their branding. Consumers can spot this a mile away —it leaves your brand feeling empty and prevents your audience from forming connections. Businesses that invest in branded content will immediately stand out and feel more trustworthy than those that utilize stock photography.
Marketing Overlays: In all of the above, ensure that some of these photos are produced with intentional negative space. This allows for overlaying marketing copy or quotes, making them a highly versatile asset for any campaign.
Implementing Corporate Brand Photography
Building a suite of branded corporate photography assets is a long and continual process as your business grows and evolves. Here’s a guide to start this process from scratch — even if you’re further along in creating some of this content, it’s always good to check in and make sure that your content is still aligned with your messaging.
Create a Brand Guide: You may already have one if you’ve worked with an agency to build out your brand. This guide, among other things, serves to define your visual identity —colors, style, and tone. Use these to inform the content your photographer creates to ensure consistency across your branding.
Identify Core Values: What do you want to emphasize? Innovation? Community? Sustainability? How do you want to be perceived by your audience? Your choices will inform the direction your photographer takes when creating content for your brand.
Research Your Market: Review your competitor’s websites, social channels, and marketing efforts. Identify both what they are doing well and where they struggle, and use this to inform what your brand needs.
Plan Your Shoots: Have your marketing team draft a creative brief using reference images as inspiration and lay out your goals for deliverables. Review this with your photographer to structure a plan. Schedule sessions for corporate headshots, executive portraits, office and coworking scenes, corporate events, and any industry-specific content that you’ll need.
Curate: Work with your photographer to select the images that best convey your brand’s values and culture. Create an archive where you can easily organize and pull from these assets as they continue to grow.
Integrate: Begin to incorporate the images into your website, social media, outreach, and campaigns. Be thoughtful here, making sure to select the images that best support the specific page, post, or ad that you’re putting out. Tip: if applicable to your industry, interweave this with some UGC (user-generated content). This refers to content created not by your brand but by the consumers themselves. This kind of raw, unpolished consumer created content is very popular at the moment and adds a very authentic and trustworthy voice to your brand.
Every brand has a story. The ones who succeed are able to communicate that story in a way that aligns with their audience and strengthens trust in their brand. Photography plays a vital role in corporate branding and offers businesses an invaluable opportunity to differentiate from their competitors and demonstrate value and integrity to their consumers. Control your brand’s narrative and invest in your audience with branded photography that authentically captures your identity.