Corporate photography is a big part of my business. While it is a solid source of work, many times corporate-types shy away from creative photography. The concept of “No one ever got fired for buying IBM” permeates into the marketing departments, ensuring that everything is safe. While I can (and do) respect that professionalism is an important aspect of a corporation’s image, so many times clients are unwilling to take any risk whatsoever to create an image that stands out. How refreshing it was to meet Andrea Barnard of Electrocomponents. We were introduced about a year ago through one of my favorite clients, Hoffman Europe. Andrea and we discussed at length how to use photography to help solidify brand identity.
Our conversation lasted about two hours and we left the meeting with a number of great ideas. But even better than the meeting itself was that over the course of the last year, we have actually executed many of the photos we first discussed, culminating with the photography for Electrocomponent’s 2010 Annual Report.Electro Component’s 2010 Annual Report
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or those of you not in the business of international distribution of electronics or electrical components, they are one of the world’s largest distributors of electronic products. They handle thousands of manufacturers, millions of products and have offices in twenty-seven countries. They started out selling radio parts during WWII at Elephant & Castle and grew to become this massive international player.
Working with Electrocomponents for the last year has been really cool, particularly since the work has been quite varied. Starting with some cool executive portraits, we then moved onto capturing their first ever investor’s forum in London. Getting the chance to create the cover for their annual report was really a lot of fun though. Upon getting to their offices just outside of Oxford, they presented me and my assistant Marek with one of their delivery vans. For the next eight hours, we got to shoot the van. It was great. Marek drove the van up and down the drive while we captured both a day and a night version of the speeding van. I’d never photographed a moving van like this before, so it was a bit like being back in photo school. A little trial, a little error, and then success.
By the second day of our trip, Marek and I felt quite at home with the Electrocomponents gang. They took us up to their UK distribution center in Nuneaton. It was a massive facility that reminded me of the Boeing factory in Everett, Wash. When we got there, they gave us some heavy boots to wear. Marek was got a pair of Red Wing boots, as I grew up in the same county these boots were from in Minnesota, I knew it was going to be a great day.
Our mission was to capture the massive facility in a way that supported the overall brand. Yes, shots of the interior and the whole process were important, but creating a visual link between what was happening in the warehouse and its positive impact on the customer experience was paramount. Everything neatly found its way back to that first conversation–the importance of a strong image on brand identity.
Electrocomponents was hands on through the whole process. They understood that each resulting image was part of the brand identity and by entrusting my team to deliver all of the images, they could ensure they had a consistent consistent set of photographs that were stylistically in keeping with each other.
