14. The uncanny valley of stock photography

There’s nothing wrong with stock photography when used appropriately, such as creating an abstract theme or context for your website, a campaign or other creative content, but stock photography absolutely should not be used as an alternative to featuring real customers.

Since trust plays a huge part in buying decisions, turning to your customers to sell for you will quickly build trust with prospective customers.

While purchasing stock photography featuring people with great hair in beautifully staged and airy post-industrial office environments is undoubtedly easier than organising a customer photoshoot, I firmly believe the comparative return on investment is markedly negative.

I suspect it’s not entirely unlike the theory of the Uncanny Valley in the field of robotics, where people exhibit a negative emotional response to almost-but-not-quite-perfect androids that look almost human, but there’s something fundamentally amiss that instinctively provokes a negative response.

In aesthetics, the uncanny valley is a hypothesized relation between an object's degree of resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to the object. The concept suggests that humanoid objects that imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of uneasiness and revulsion in observers. Source: Wikipedia

When using stock imagery of people in artificial business settings, the truth is nobody looks that good, and no office looks that amazing. They’re also wholly generic and convey nothing about your brand or values other than you couldn’t be bothered to use real customers, or worse, you don’t have any customers.

If there’s a good reason you can’t use customer photography, then the next best thing is to use no photo imagery at all. Don’t fake it.

Customer case studies are a force multiplier of trust

If there’s a dimension of product marketing I consistently see businesses failing to harness, it’s customer case study videos and testimonials. No matter how authentic, human or accessible you may believe your brand is, nothing gets more cut-through nor provides harder validation than a user talking about your product or service.

While short video case studies are cheap to produce and, when done well, about the most compelling content you can provide, even just great customer photography alongside short, text-based testimonials do a great job of bringing your product or service to life with an authenticity you’ll never achieve on your own.

Leading by showcasing customers talking about and advocating for your product will tell a story that humanises your brand and personality, conveys your values and helps differentiate you from your competitors.

1. Take care to choose customers from a variety of business types or industries. For example, you might love that your product is a hit with the hipster coffee shops you love to frequent, but be careful your unconscious bias doesn’t lead to a testimonial gallery featuring only pork-pie hat-wearing bearded hipsters in plaid shirts saying nice things about you.

2. But seriously, social and ethnic diversity is also important, so bear in mind that in many countries, white males still statistically outnumber other groups in business.

3. If they’re happy with your product, then your customers will be glad to support you and will also love a little bit of profile and free publicity on your website or in your campaign. So, you’re not just helping your own brand development; you’re also sharing the journey with your customers.

4. Citing and referencing customers is a critical element of any PR campaign. Journalists will always be grateful if you can provide them with independent and compelling customer insights and commentary. Prepackaging this on your website will also make it easier for the press to evaluate you.

5. You can get by with just your smartphone, but it’s best not to skimp on getting a professional photographer or videographer involved. Case studies and testimonials are so powerful you’ll easily justify and recoup the cost.

GT

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