The Importance of Using High Quality Imagery
As the old saying goes, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ This is especially true if you are in the business of selling an aspirational - dream product like an expensive kitchen.
Yet surprisingly, you do find both manufacturers and retailers who aren’t willing to invest in high quality photography or CGI. This can be concerning given the levels of competition within their market. When you consider the value of just one kitchen sale, whether it be at trade or retail, to hold back on such investment is rather short-sighted.
To help sell the dream to the retail customer, high quality, attractive, aspirational imagery is vital and this requires either the skills of a very good CGI specialist or a highly skilled home interest / room photographer - not a wedding photographer or a keen friend with a camera!
A professional photographer and their assistant will take around 5 hours to professionally shoot a kitchen (on location). This includes the styling, propping and lighting of each shot and of course taking all the necessary exposures which can be edited together to produce the final images. Such a shoot should achieve around 12 x images to include around 3 to 4 main pictures and around 8 detailed cameo images - (this is the requirement of a home interest magazine should they wish to run a feature on the kitchen)
A professional home interest photographer (one that’s good) will cost around £600 to £850 depending on their location and rates. At P&MD we charge around £450 net of VAT; a special rate achieved through a long-term working relationship. Still sounds expensive? Well consider this; they arrive with an estate car with around £40K’s worth of photographic kit to include varying lenses, tripods, lighting equipment and soft boxes - aside of a powerful ‘Apple-Mac’ where images are instantly viewed and edited. Once you have the finished re-touched imagery, it can be used to make multiple marketing tools ‘sing and dance’ to include websites, social media, brochures, advertisements, company reception areas and even van sides! Furthermore, the imagery can be used to gain online and printed editorial coverage in both trade and retail - home interest magazines. Such space is FREE and dependent on good imagery. Magazine features can run to multiple pages worth many thousands of pounds in terms of media space! Suddenly, £450 doesn’t sound quite so expensive does it?
If you don’t wish to go the photographic route OR you have a brand new furniture concept that needs marketing with good imagery, you could consider high quality CGI. This way of generating imagery has come on by ‘leap’s and bounds’ in recent times to achieve photo realistic results. Depending on how many images are required and who you use means that you could spend from £200 to several £1000’s. It’s worth considering that if the imagery is of new furniture concepts to be launched, that the imagery expenditure could form part of a ‘HMRC’ R&D claim; P&MD can advise on this.
To discuss imagery, get in touch with P&MD.