Can Marketers Drive Revenue With Photography? Q&A; With Billie Weiss and Andrew Fingerman

“Photography isn’t typically thought of as a “money maker” for an organization or sports team, but we’ve tried to break the mold and find ways to leverage our content to drive revenue.”

 – Billie Weiss

The popular baseball team, Boston Red Sox’s manager of photography, Billie Weiss, and PhotoShelter’s CEO, Andrew Fingerman, provide their insights on how photography can be used effective to drive revenue. They discuss unique ways to bring into play photos and content marketing to forge a real connection with fans on social media.

From the right media mix to the pros and cons of choosing a visual storytelling format, Weiss and Fingerman share their thoughts on how visuals, backed by the right technology helps build engagement and a loyal fan base. MarTech Advisor caught up with them to understand how big data helped create engaging content experiences and more.

Key takeaways from this Q&A; on photography in marketing:

• Insights on how photography can be used to engage with fans
• Top tips on ways to drive meaningful conversations with fans online
• Latest trends to follow in content marketing and photography for 2020 and beyond

Highlights of the Q&A; With Billie Weiss of Boston Red Sox and Andrew Fingerman of PhotoShelter

Here’s the edited transcript of Weiss’s and Fingerman’s conversation with us on the importance of photography in marketing:

How did Boston Red Sox create a direct line between photography and revenue? Could you take us through the highlights of your partnership with PhotoShelter?

Billie: We’re always trying to find creative ways to generate revenue through the photography and visual storytelling we produce at the Red Sox. Photography isn’t typically thought of as a “money maker” for an organization or sports team, but we’ve tried to break the mold and find ways to leverage our content to drive revenue.

Many of our images are sold for editorial use in books, magazines, advertisements, and other print and digital media. The licenses and usage specifications for these sales are all driven through our Libris account, which is one of our favorite features of the platform! In addition to the in-house editorial licensing capabilities, we absolutely love Photoshelter/Libris for many reasons. It allows us to store all our visual content year over year in a way that’s organized, easily searchable, and accessible from anywhere in the world. As a result, we’re able to respond to photo requests from both internal and external partners in a timely fashion.

Finally, it provides us with a fantastic solution for real-time content production and distribution. As games and events are happening, we are able to use Libris to transmit the photographs we are taking out on the field to our social media and graphics team in real-time.

Andrew:

For brands like the Boston Red Sox, photos have a powerful ripple effect on everything from engaging fans on social media to selling tickets. If you’re not communicating visually, you’re missing opportunities to catch the attention of your customers and motivate them to buy gear, tickets and VIP packages. More and more, teams are finding creative ways to monetize their best images. Check out the Red Sox’ Top Shots video series, a thumb-stopping roundup of the best images from every homestand that’s sponsored by L.L. Bean.

What’s the media mix of paid, earned and owned media that Boston Red Sox leverages? What are your 3 biggest learnings from this strategy?

Billie: We try to keep a healthy mix of paid, earned, and owned media, particularly when it comes to photography. We own all of our images, so the photographs taken by our photography staff are able to be utilized on all of our digital channels as well as our print materials in the park and throughout the city of Boston. This allows us to have our own unique voice, tone, and feel online.

We do of course utilize paid and earned media and try to strike a balance between the two. We have several photography-heavy content pieces or series each year that we’ve been able to pair up with our corporate partners.

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Billie, you’ve said Boston Red fans are “hungry for content”. In what ways have you leveraged content marketing to connect with fans on social media? What are the pros and cons of choosing a visual format over a textual one?

Billie: Our goal is to give our fans and followers a unique, exclusive, behind the scenes look at our team and our players that they can’t find anywhere else. As the team photographers, we are embedded with our team at every moment throughout the season.

Our staff has access that photographers from newspapers, wires, magazines, and other outlets don’t typically have, so we try to use that access to our advantage to give our viewers something they couldn’t otherwise see. We try to document the quieter moments in the clubhouse and activity in the weight room or other team areas as much as we do the game action happening on the field.

We also feel like it’s important to showcase the individual player personalities that make up this team, so away from the field lifestyle, family, or documentary-style shoots are also part of our repertoire. As the digital landscape has exploded in recent years, and consumers are seeing so much content on their feeds every day, we believe the visual format in the form of photo, video, and graphics gives our fans an immediate, impactful look into our team and organization.

Andrew:

The Red Sox do an incredible job of delivering what the content fans want at just the right moment. Seconds after they won the 2018 World Series, Billie’s photo was up on Instagram. Just a few years ago, teams might’ve shared a cell phone photo. Instead, the Red Sox shared an iconic photo of the game instantly and watched the engagements roll in. The post got more than a quarter of a million engagements – significantly more than any other post they shared over the next 24 hours. They’ve shown that the right photo shared at lightning speed can cut through the noise on social media.

What tools/technology do you use to connect fans with their favorite players? How does it build engagement and amplify fan reach?

Billie: Although we produce content for the Boston Red Sox on an organizational level, our content team works very closely with our players throughout each season. We aim to be a resource to them, and we’re often producing content that they can share directly to their own social media channels. We’ve found that the player-specific personality/lifestyle content is just as important in reaching new audiences as the more general team-based content. Our photographers are often sharing photos directly with the players via galleries in Libris. We are also constantly testing out new camera and lighting technology to execute new and unique stylized concepts for portrait shoots, creative videos, and group shots with our players.

What were your learnings and insights from using big data to create a great fan experience? How did you build content experiences around these insights to engage with fans?

Billie: To be honest, within our photography department, we don’t look at a whole lot of data. We, of course, pay attention to general, high-level trends and key pieces of demographic data from our social and analytics teams, but, our photographers fall much more on the creative side of things.

We tend to operate more on the mood and feeling of the team and players at any given time, and often must be nimble and reactive as big games, milestones, trades, etc. happen throughout the season. I think as a whole, our visuals have played a part in helping to grow follower numbers and engagement on our social channels. We feel confident that our fans will get their eyes on some of the best visual content in the league if they give us a follow. But probably better to talk to our analytics/social teams when it comes to data!

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What value did you see in turning to photography to tell your own story? How did photography help you to drive meaningful conversations with your fans online?

Billie: Photography is my favorite medium for storytelling. I love that a single frame or moment in time can tell so much. I think this is particularly true of the realm of professional sports, where there are so many unique individual stories and moments.

As a photographer with a front-row seat to everything, I also get to witness the whole spectrum of human emotion, from the highs of victory to the agony of defeat and everything else in between. I think our fans appreciate being able to document the unique personalities that comprise our team and the moments in Red Sox history, big or small.

Our fans will often comment in with feedback about the images, or with questions about how they were made, which we love! Our followers let us know what they like and what they don’t like, which helps shape our overall visual content strategy. Sometimes, we’ll even poll our fans on what they’d like to see us shoot, and we’ll go out and shoot whatever they vote for. That’s the beauty of social media!

What are the big data-driven initiatives that are underway at Boston Red Sox in partnership with PhotoShelter?

Billie: We use our Libris account to manage and track our internal and external photography-related requests. Every year, we receive hundreds of requests for images, which we are able to consolidate into galleries to distribute as needed. The PhotoShelter archive allows us to keep numbers and statistics on the amount of photo requests we fulfill each year. Our online archive currently hosts over 25,000 images and grows yearly as we digitize older images currently housed in print, film, or slide format.

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Neha: Thank you, Billie and Andrew, for sharing your insights on the importance of photography in marketing. We hope to talk to you again soon.

About Billie Weiss:

Billie Weiss is based in Boston, Massachusetts, where he is the Manager of Photography for the Boston Red Sox. Since 2012, Billie has served as the team photographer for the team and the house photographer for Fenway Park, and now oversees all aspects of photography with the club.

About Boston Red Sox:

The Boston Red Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Red Sox compete in Major League Baseball as a member club of the American League East division. The Red Sox have won nine total World Series Championships, including four since 2004. Their most recent World Series appearance and win was in 2018.

About Andrew Fingerman:

Andrew Fingerman is Chief Executive Officer at PhotoShelter. PhotoShelter supports the people and brands who create and share visual stories, the people who inspire them to see the world a little differently every day.

About PhotoShelter:

PhotoShelter’s mission is to empower effortless visual storytelling. We offer a unified platform of technology, tools, and insights that help more than 80,000 professional photographers and 1,000 brands manage their visual media every day. PhotoShelter accomplishes this through two solutions: PhotoShelter for photographers and Libris for brands.

 What are your thoughts about including visual storytelling and photography in your marketing strategy? Follow us on , Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to know more about the latest in photography trends across the globe.