Continuing on my post from yesterday where I wrote about photography as a commodity (Mark points out in the comments that a better term is fungible product) several of the panelest from the ASMP symposium on sustainable business models have posts up on the strictly business blog that I want to highlight. If you cannot attend in person there will be a live video feed (here) starting at 9am EST Thursday the 27th.

Richard Dale Kelly on organizing the event:

In organizing the Symposium, Sustainable Business Models: Issues & Trends Facing Visual Artists, ASMP’s Education Director, the late Susan Carr, and I focused on three key areas. We decided to start the day with working professionals who, through their own practices, have discovered sustainable solutions they are using today. Next, we wanted a conversation with users and distributors of visual content who are working at the highest levels of the publishing, advertising and technology sectors who could give us a glimpse of the opportunities behind the curtain. Finally, we brought in industry observers to discuss the challenges facing the professional in creating a sustainable career.

Liz Miller-Gershfeld, VP, Sr. Art Producer at Energy BBDO talks about the “new normal” at an agency meeting:

At the table were creatives and account people from the agency side and a team from the digital end of things. On the phone were teams from the promotional agency, the PR agency and international marketing counterparts. There were a few more voices on the phone.  I’m still not clear who they were, perhaps a wrong number, probably not…  Today clients have multi-channel marketing plans and multiple agencies to accomplish them…and we all have to play nicely.

I need a photographer who has deep human resources…
I need a photographer who can ask good questions…
I need a photographer who can simplify complexity …
I need a photographer whose producer can, at any given time quantify (in terms of time and money) what the inevitable changes and additions mean…
A photographer who is always thinking of the most efficient way to solve any problem and is able to articulate it from that perspective…

But perhaps most importantly, I need a photographer who can hold the idea that we brought to them – the one the creatives have spent the last few months and weekends developing, presenting, refining, presenting, selling, testing, presenting, resuscitating, presenting, refining and reselling…  A photographer who can hold it like a torch, amidst all the chaos and needs, in their unique style; the reason we came to them.

more (here).

Fiunally, Stephen Mayes CEO of VII Photo talks about the many business models being tested now:

But there’s a hugely expanded appetite for photography and with this comes new opportunities; the greatest obstacles to commercial expansion are the limits of our own imaginations and our fear of uncertainty. I see more and more brilliant business innovations, often sparked by young entrepreneurs with low overheads and little to lose.  Some of them are experiencing short-term success, some are not and it’s still too soon to judge which will sustain as the world moves forward.

Right now we’re experiencing the best of times and the worst of times.  There will be winners, some by chance and some by vision and sheer hard work, but there will be no rewards for the faint of heart.  We can’t step backwards, only forwards, even if it means letting go of some dearly held ways of thinking.

More (here).

thx, Peter.

I believe much of photography is already a commodity and I plan to speak about it during the ASMP Symposium next Thursday the 27th in New York at the Times Center. The topic for the event (more details here) is “Sustainable Business Models: Issues and Trends Facing Visual Artists” which is a topic I’ve been thinking and writing about since I started this blog. the ASMP goes on to say “the rules of the game have changed and it’s no longer business as usual in today’s crowded visual arts marketplace” which to me leads to an obvious conclusion: photography is a commodity.

Commodification is a scary thought. It means you are competing on price and racing to the bottom.

Ok, so that’s the bad news. But, there’s an upside. Before we get to that, let’s destroy this cliché that I hear all the time how “photographers brought it on”, because they didn’t do something to prevent it. All the bitching and whining about weak willed photographers who wont hold the line and clients who wont pay the fees. Commodification is a natural market process. You cannot stop this.

To see the upside you need to take a more nuanced view of photography. You need to consider photography services a value chain and the act of taking a picture, what I like to call being a “camera operator”, as one part of this value chain. You also need to understand that commodification occurs when the improvements to a product overshoot the needs of the client. Better equipment and techniques matter little to the majority of clients. There will always be exceptions, but sadly, it seems we are all past the point of good enough (even if in some parts of the industry good enough is distirbingly low). Nevertheless, don’t dwell on it. Technology that blew your mind ten years ago is now completely commodified. It can’t be stopped.

The upside is that if you have commodification, somewhere else in the value chain a reciprocal process of de-commoditization is at work. In the book I’m reading now (The Innovator’s Solution) author Clayton M. Christensen goes on to say that “commoditization destroys a company’s ability to capture profits by undermining differentiability, de-commoditization affords opportunities to create and capture potentially enormous wealth.”

You just have to find the spot in the value chain where performance is not yet good enough, where you can differentiate yourself by being better than the others. Exciting, right?

I have lots of thoughts on this that I will get into during the symposium but here’s one simple observation.

Not too long ago your personality mattered little in photography. You could be the most abhorrent dick-wad and land all the work you wanted if your photography was awesome. I see plenty of evidence now that this is not longer possible. An art director I sat on a panel with even said “the top 5 photographers for a car shoot are all qualified to do the job. it comes down to personality as to who will get the job” Personality is one tiny part of the value chain, but it’s now more important than the photography. That’s astounding.

Sad if you enjoy operating cameras, but very exciting if you enjoy the entire value chain of photography services. My favorite photographers to work with have always been the creative problem solvers. Now I can clearly see the de-commodization at work.