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Last month, our Client Outreach team — consisting of Emily Walls, Suzanne Lindsay, Larry Westler, Andrew Souders, Ashley Vaught, Julie Clement, Laura Wontor, Bryan Sheffield, and Craig Oppenheimer — continued to make strides updating records for client companies and the people who make up their creative and production teams.
In August, we added 258 new companies and 239 new people to our database — who we have been contacting to promote our roster of photographers. Additionally, we updated 1826 companies, 3052 people, and sent out over 500 emails to photo editors, art directors, producers, and marketing managers around the world. Below are some examples of the projects our Client Outreach team has been diligently working on.
Emily’s work has been centered around updating agencies. She noted that it’s interesting to see how specialized some agencies can be. For example, Ink Global (which we categorize as a Custom Publishing agency) focuses exclusively on creating magazines for travel brands (like Hemispheres, which is United Airlines’ in-flight magazine).
Suzanne has been busy updating agency people. Her challenge is keeping up with all the changes as people move from one role to another or to new companies altogether. She sometimes marks clients for deletion if they’ve retired, left the industry, moved to a new role that’s not a viable prospect, or became unable to track down because of an outdated Linkedin profile. Suzanne explained the most interesting part of updating a client’s profile is playing “match-maker.” She puts a lot of thought into choosing a member photographer to promote, so that a client will find it both interesting and a viable option. As she noted, “I always try to put myself in the client’s shoes.”
Larry has been steadfastly working on our “Oldest Promoted” process. Since everyone else on our Client Outreach team is going through our database of clients and recommending one of our member photographers – inevitably, some of our photographers get promoted more frequently than others. So instead, Larry works through our list of member photographers (by oldest promoted date) and finds clients to promote them to. In addition to that work, he also finds time to do deep dives into companies that have merged or split off, which can result in what we call, “going down the rabbit hole.”
Andrew is currently researching and connecting with people who work at creative agencies and have the title “Executive Producer.” EPs are especially good prospects for us because they are at the center of the decision-making process of selecting a photographer or an outside producer or production company. When Andrew identifies an Executive Producer who we do not already have in our database, he adds them and sends them our production portfolio, and invites them to a Zoom call to learn more about their needs and how we may be able to help them. For example, an Executive Producer at Dentsu Creative (the creative/production arm of Dentsu International) replied letting us know they are always on the lookout for great directors — Andrew followed up with a shortlist of some member photographers who are also directors.
Ashley, who has been updating and emailing people who work for publications, received a number of positive responses from his outreach efforts last month, including from a photo editor at the WSJ: “Thanks, Ashley! Yes, I’ve worked with Wonderful Machine before,” and from the media director at Spectrum News who recognized the work of one of our photographers and replied, “Oh yes, I do like [him]. I’ll keep him in mind, thanks for sending.”
Julie has been busy updating our records for the biggest companies in each of LinkedIn’s 150 industries. Along the way, she decides approximately how many companies we need in each industry. For example, we only track 25 companies with the Security and Investigations industry. Julie will also sometimes include companies on our list that may be small, but well-know. For example Izod is super-small, as Retail Apparel and Fashion companies go, but they’re so famous, we include them anyway. Instagram is another way to judge the significance of a brand even if we haven’t hear about it ourselves. For example, Kylie Cosmetics or Pat McGrath Labs, which are in the “Personal Care Product Manufacturing” industry (along with lots of other cosmetics brands) are relatively small in employee count, but have an enormous Instagram following.
Laura has been working hard reviewing companies with the LinkedIn Industry: Marketing and Advertising. She’s reviewing the 2500 biggest companies based on employee count. At the top of the list are giant agencies like Publicis Groupe, who have lots of children agencies, which she also selectively adds.
Bryan hosted a number of capabilities calls in August, most notably with the Chief Creative Officer at Harvey, where they discussed some of the agency’s upcoming production needs and how we could help. Also, he also produced a stills and motion campaign for Espolòn tequila with Berlin Cameron agency. In between all that, Bryan has been reaching out to people who work at creative agencies and have the title Executive Producer.
Craig connected with a large investment management firm to discuss headshots and video projects of their offices around the country, and with one of our regular agency partners to discuss a series of projects for American Express. He also connected with LG to discuss a shoot featuring a celebrity using their products, as well as another one of our regular creative agency clients to discuss a project for Grand Marnier. Lastly, we discussed a licensing extension of stock images we helped to procure with Petco.
Have questions about how we promote our photographers? Check out our Membership page. Want to know how you can get the most out of your Wonderful Machine membership? Check out our Jumpstart page or just reach out!