PR and the photography budget

By Adrian Toon, director of a2n.

If you have a budget for PR then you should have a budget for promotional photography. As each piece of PR text is unique, so should the photograph be that is supporting your news.

This may sound logical, but I am sure, like me, you have read magazines and seen different messages with the same supporting image from time to time. The reason why so few of these go to print, is that the editor rarely publishes anything with a repeat image.

While it may seem unfair, think about the editor’s job and how he or she needs to ensure that the readership retains interest as to what is in print or online – a repeat image does nothing to captivate a reader.

Remember that as we consume news, we always follow the subconscious flow of image first, which always portrays a great deal of information very quickly. Remember the idiom: ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. Then we read the heading or ‘tag’ line, and if the ‘hook’ is there, we read at least the first couple of sentences. If we have a repeat image, this somewhat breaks this flow.

As we have discussed in this column, not all images have to be professional. As long as they are unique, well taken exposure wise, and clearly add support to the text, then this works to your advantage when editors select news for publication.