In February, our team engaged with clients in a variety of ways. The Client Outreach department, consisting of Domagoj Smud, Sara Maričević, Lana Jergović, Kelly Spagnola, Gina Martin, Laura Wontor, Ian Crammer, Denise Florendo, Craig Oppenheimer, Bryan Sheffield, and Andrew Souders produced some noteworthy updates.
We added 269 companies and 401 people to our database last month. Additionally, we updated 1,502 companies, 2,289 people, and sent out over 660 emails to producers, art directors, creative directors, marketing managers, and photo editors. Below are some examples of the projects our team has been diligently working on.
It seems like we’re always coming across companies that have either restructured or rebranded themselves. It’s usually larger companies with multiple locations (sometimes offering different services). We often refer to these companies as “Parent Companies”. When we find that the information in our database differs from what we’re seeing on a company’s website we systematically go through and reorganize our information to match what the company provides. We then mimic these changes on our website. These updates include naming and logo changes, locations, specialties, and all social links. We sometimes even find great contacts while going through this process! It’s important that we keep up-to-date with all of these changes so we can provide accurate information to our clients.
Additionally, this month, a Communications Officer for WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme responded to an outreach email expressing interest in going over their contract process. Andrew, one of our producers, has a meeting scheduled with her for sometime this month. A Vice President, Integrated Producer from Townhouse also responded to an outreach email expressing that she loved our work and wanted to schedule a call because she recently transitioned to the Midwest office and wanted to broaden her base. Andrew also has a meeting scheduled with her this week.
My current role focuses on updating the contact information of clients within our CRM platform who work for publications. Firstly, I fix any email addresses we have on file that are incorrect or outdated. Additionally, I update and/or add their company’s information to our internal database as well as our website. After ensuring the contact information is accurate, I send the client an email promoting one of our member photographers. I always promote member photographers who live within or nearby the same city as the company I’m contacting. Initially, I was concerned there wouldn’t be a member photographer to promote in several remote cities or faraway countries. However, that has yet to be the case which wonderfully demonstrates the diversity among our member photographers.
I am currently working on updating our records for publications in our database and on our website, making sure we have at least one viable contact for each. From my experience, working in this department is very challenging. I used to see newspapers and magazines as “boring” and I was not the type of person who would read them, but through this work, I have changed my opinion. In fact, it’s contacting and connecting with the people behind these publications that changed my mind. These individuals passionately spend their time conveying relevant information to us. In today’s world, it is very important that we share information with each other with transparency, and newspapers and magazines have always been the foundation for authentic storytelling and representation. I especially enjoy reviewing tourism magazines, because I like that at any moment I can “peek” at a part of the planet and be transported by a detailed description with beautiful pictures. Because of this, every time I go to work, I look forward to what I will see and to which part of the planet I will travel, at least virtually.
Throughout February I continued working on updating our records for companies that are agencies and the people connected to them. My priority was updating the companies in our database with a blank “Employees” field because size is such an important filter when building a list of clients for an individual photographer or just evaluating a client for our database in general. This month, a photographer connected with me via LinkedIn and expressed interest in our services, specifically our marketing mentor program, and I put him in touch with Nicole from our consulting team for more information.
I have worked at Wonderful Machine for four months now, and my role this month consisted of conducting our outreach process for clients — to be precise, companies that are brands (as opposed to agencies or publications). Once I connected with the companies at large, I began to work through the contacts listed for each brand to ensure all information was up to date.
The second month of the year for me included the continuation of adding top pharmaceutical companies to our data records and classifying those who are specifically “Drug Makers” – those focused on drug manufacturing – in a separate specific list. Some new companies that were added are PCI Pharma Services, Laurus Labs, Pharmascience, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, Patheon, Molecular Partners, Rubicon, etc.
I also added some new records for top companies in the Insurance industry: Intact, Brown & Brown Insurance, Covéa, ICBC (Insurance Corporation of British Columbia), UNIQA Insurance, Seguros, Great Eastern, QBE Insurance, etc.
The Internet and Software Development industry: Tencent, iBest, Zomato, Nova, Hepsiburada, Behance, Redbubble, SYOU, etc.
And the Investment Management industry: Bridgewater Associates, Balyasny Asset Management, Oaktree Capital Management, PSP Investments, Alger, etc.
This month, we’ve been in the process of working with Cencora on a series of lifestyle shoots, and are in the process of sharing portfolios and honing in the creative.
We also bid on several projects this month, including:
This month, Andrew Souders and I had a call with an Associate Creative Director at Apple. The ACD was interested in our photographer directory, in particular how we note all photographer’s specialties and locations across the globe, and we hope to work together on upcoming projects.
We were awarded, and have moved into production, on a multi-day environmental portraiture shoot for an automotive client, and a celebrity shoot for a personal care/beauty brand. We’ll share more on these projects as they happen!
Some of the current projects we are bidding on with clients include: a stills shoot production for a global commerce client, a multi-day photo production for a global healthcare brand, and multi-day photo/video production for an international hospital/healthcare brand.
As Bryan Sheffield mentioned, he and I met with an Associate Creative Director of Photography at Apple over a video call last month to share our capabilities and learn more about the creative team’s needs. We were happy to hear that she’s known WM for a long time, and was impressed by our extensive photographer’s directory and the services we offer to photographers as well. She also liked the search by “location” and “specialty” features, as that is extra useful to them. Her creative team works on the content for Apple Services (https://www.apple.com/services/) which is the “Only on Apple” marketing material. She clarified that not all marketing material for Apple is done through TBWA / Media Arts Lab anymore. Her team regularly works with freelance creatives, production companies, producers, line producers, etc. and would be interested in working with us in the future. The type of work they focus on and need photogs for is more editorial style and content heavy for all of the Only on Apple services (Apple Music, Apple Fitness, Podcasts, etc.).
Now that we’ve identified and added all of the Fortune 500 companies to our records, I’ve begun updating this information and researching new prospects at each company, emailing them and inviting them to a call to share our capabilities and promote our directory. A lot of the nuance in my process has been learning the job titles each company uses for their creative and marketing teams and which are the best prospects for us at WM. Encouragingly, one of the new prospects I’ve emailed has already responded, and we’ve gotten a call lined up with a Manager of Creative Services at one of the Fortune 500 companies for later this month.
For the month of February, I worked on connecting with client representatives who work for brands. I mostly worked on records for people whose emails had bounced back. I was able to correct most records with their new company information or the original company’s email changes. This is important work to do for when we reach out to clients on behalf of photographers – we need their contact information to be as accurate as possible. Once I found the correct email for a person, I sent them an email introducing myself and Wonderful Machine and proposed a photographer’s portfolio to them.
My current job role is OOO (out-of-office) Emails. I’m working in our emailer’s inbox to review any automatic replies that bounced back after our email blasts go out. As I’m searching, there is important information to be gathered from these emails like new email formats, phone numbers, and new potential contacts we previously did not have in our CRM database. What has been most interesting to me about this role is how many new clients I’ve added to our records just from information gathered from OOO Replies.
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!