what to expect from your brand shoot
planning for your photoshoot
The importance of a brand strategy
As you prepare for your brand photoshoot, you need to ask yourself, 'have you got your brand strategy in place?"
A clearly defined brand, will help you plan, prepare and brief a photographer so that your expectations are met. Being able to articulate your brand story and values helps to create the scene and ensure you and your photographer are on the same creative page.
As an experienced marketeer, I have created a lot of brands during my career, so I can not stress enough the importance of ensuring you have a clear brand identity. If you need help with this step, I offer a Brand Strategy power session through The Marketing Power Hour - this power session is designed to help you create a brand strategy, a brand identity, ie HOW it looks and how to roll it out across your marketing and communication touch-points.
What is the purpose of the photoshoot
Understanding how your photographs will be used is an important next step, so consider whether you are using them for a particular project or you are looking to build or refresh your existing image library. If you intend to use them for your website and social media think about the structure of your website and also your social media content plan. By doing this you will be in a better position to determine your Shot List.
Getting the right help
Building a brand or refreshing a brand, can be confusing. As a marketeer with over 20 years of experience, I find it is important to build the right team who are collectively on the same page and able to advocate the best for your brand.
If you are using a freelancer or marketing agency to help guide you, it is always a good idea to have a pre photoshoot 'meet' to ensure your vision is communicated to the team as a whole, involve your photographer as it may surprise you the details they think about, which other's may not have done.
The brief
A tight brief is always the best planning tool to ensure the photographs captured are the ones you want. If you envisage a particular image, make sure you have the props available. As a general rule, you will need a great HERO image, a super portrait for your about page and a mix of images to tell your story.
In terms of style, personal brands are all the rage but they don't work for everyone nor are they always great for every business. As part of your brand strategy, you need to think about your brand personality and decide if images of you, ie you being the face of your business, is appropriate or if the overall look or to make it more should be more product/ service-based.
Recently a client asked to work with me because she wanted to put the focus back onto her clients and how they would feel using her products. So we created a series of lifestyle shots to create an emotional connection to the brand and products, which her clients absolutely loved.