Pepper Stark business trip to Hamburg

On 24th-25th February we visited several clients and a number of German stock agencies in Hamburg we hadn't previously had dealings with.

Our objective for this trip was to gain a greater understanding of the German stock photography industry at the present moment and the current trends in pricing and content development.

There were several things that were interesting overall. With regards to pricing, there is without doubt a strong downward pressure being exerted by clients. Germany is no exception. I see and hear this continually from press agencies throughout the world and it seems a trend without an end point.

This pricing trend and serious concern of these press agencies stood in very stark contrast to feedback from some of the picture agencies we spoke with who focused their business on supplying imagery to the German advertising agencies.

It was incredibly positive to hear from agencies that are seeing not just their turnover but also their per image sales price holding strong. This was the case with the specialist content provider: the picture agency that has and is known by its clients for a specific type of subject matter or creative focus and these are agencies that have a high quality collection that is exclusive to them. This is their unique selling point. They have something of value that the client cannot get elsewhere.

These are agencies that in the international world of stock imagery have what many would consider as small collections – from around 20,000 to “just” several hundred thousand images. However these are all images that have been hand picked to meet not only quality standards but subject matter and creativity that fit with the brand and exactly what their agency is known for to its clients.

So, within a market which is seeing the increasing use of microstock imagery, and stock agencies competing for clients on the number of images they can offer them – many well into the tens of millions -  there are a vast number of picture libraries out there that have only a small collection, through strategic choice and very selective editing, that are supplying the advertising clients with unique high-quality content that the advertisers are prepared to pay thousands of Euro for due to the quality, the relevance and the uniqueness of the image.

There is a place for all licensing models and pricing points. Different buyers have different requirements and different budgets but our trip to Germany, a country with over 500 picture agencies, illustrated to us that there are many picture agencies focusing their time and resources on producing and representing only the “best” most relevant images for their target market. Their investment in quality and specific focus on their creative / content specialism ensures that they can command a price for their images that is based on the value of that image – value meaning both its production value and the value of its uniqueness and commercial potential to the client.