#8. Find a designer that is willing to work with a photographic consultant 'it takes a village to launch a photographer'

I touched on this topic lightly when discussing Martin Thiel's brand development. I brought Suzanne Sease into the process to do the image editing for his portfolio. Here is why, I have a strong design background, I have been designing for over 10 years directly out of school and from year one winning awards. I was first hired out of school at Cahan & Associates, worked there for two years doing annual reports. For those of you who advertise in the AR100, I am sure this name is familiar. I won all sorts of awards under his direction, and once I left continued to do so. He gave me great insight into the world of photography. I hired many photographers including Robert Schlatter, Jeff Corwin, Bill McCloud, for the photography. I received promos from photographers on a daily basis. I viewed websites and called in books. But with all this I do not have the same background in the advertising arena, I have one client I do advertising for, Lost Luggage, and while I work with a great photographer David Emmite, that is not enough for me to say I have the same expertise in advertising. To make sure I am serving my clients, building them up to succeed, I bring in Suzanne on almost every project. She was an art buyer at the Martin Agency, she is amazing, if I mention I like the Absolut ad, and she can tell me the agency, and often the team who created it. During her 12 years with them, she was responsible for hiring photographers like, Harry De Zitter and Michael Thompson for Wrangler and Vanity Fair campaigns.

Suzanne says this about her team experience, “When I worked at The Martin Agency, Kaplan-Thaler and Capital One (and many smaller shops) it was always a team who created great advertising. It is the same thing with a photographer who presents themselves to either ad agency, design firm, in house corporate and editorial to work with a team of people who are going to present the best of that photographer. It is virtually impossible for one person to know what is best for the target market. A photographer knows how to shoot and what is the best genre for them but do they know what their target is looking for if they have never been the target? When working with a consultant, look for someone who knows the target market because they were the target, use a designer who understands the importance of making you look good and not over design forgetting the importance of you, their client. A great designer is also your current target so they know what gets their attention. I have seen over and over photographers who live in a vacuum and are unaware of the market out there- the schools don't teach that, maybe a workshop can inspire that but to get concrete details of how to market you, you need a team.”

The team does not stop there. It often consists of, a photographic consultant (I work with Suzanne Sease and also highly recommend Amanda Sosa Stone), printers, mailing houses, email and list company (I recommend Agency Access). We create and manage this team for our clients from start of design, to final execution of all the mailings and eblasts. We pre-print all the mailings a year in advance, have a marketing plan with dates and execute all the mailings. Our clients have freedom to work, build their business while we build their name up.

I believe this basic idea: in today's market you need the best helping you get noticed by your desired audience and a team is better that an individual.
Its tough out there, there are a lot of photographers scrambling for the same job and poor marketing, web and image edit will not get you ahead. You need a great team, building you up pushing you in front of your competition. Your designer and your consultant should be open to building a team, creating a unified look, one that is unique to you, and making your marketing strategy and execution easy to accomplish. If either is not open to working in a team style, I say, move on.