In March, our team engaged with clients in a variety of ways. The Client Outreach department, consisting of Hanna Quevedo, Iva Mikulandra Barkiđija, Sara Maričević, Lana Jergović, Kelly Spagnola, Ian Crammer, Laura Wontor, Denise Florendo, Craig Oppenheimer, Bryan Sheffield, and Andrew Souders produced some noteworthy updates.
We added 395 companies and 516 people to our database last month. Additionally, we updated 1,430 companies, 2,482 people, and sent out over 810 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.
In March, I was transferred from the Photographer Outreach department to Client Outreach. My role was “Oldest in WordPress,” which means that I made sure that our client profiles on our website are up to date so that our photographers have access to the most up-to-date list of clients. In this role, I checked over profiles starting with the oldest ones on our website and made sure those clients are still considered to be a good match for our photographers or whether we feel they have need of our photographers’ services.
As a professional photographer, it is very interesting to check the photography needs of many companies. Some companies had fast transitions from still photography to video and that can translate into a big jump in their content. Some companies also use very different photographers in short periods of time, which also will also translate as unconnected content sometimes. At Wonderful Machine, we know our photographers very well and we can find a good continuity for those companies who need photographers all the time. Every client is so different from another and their websites should show the strongest points of each product or service, and the creativity of our photographers is always a big plus and helps to have a more engaged audience and consumers.
As a photographer myself, I love to think about how much we can help our photographers to find their best opportunities and how their positive impact can help a brand, a publication, or an agency.
It’s been an exciting time for me, as I’ve officially become a full-time member of the team since April. Being new to the Client Outreach department, I’m still learning the process, but I can already tell that it’s going to be a great experience. In my current role, I’ve been tasked with updating some of the oldest profiles on our WordPress website. Since we mirror the information on WordPress from our internal database, it is my job to update that as well. One of the most interesting parts of my role is, as I call it, detective work. Recently I found a profile under the name of Huckabee. It’s an architecture company that is owned by a larger company called MOREgroup. Long story short, by digging more and more into it, I found a lot of useful information and a trail of 8 companies from the smallest to the largest one in the bunch. It started as a question of which one is a parent company and turned into a “who-owns-who” game.
In March, I started updating records of companies that we consider to be brands and the records for the people that are connected to them. I focused on the research of the brands in our database that have a blank employee count field, as well as finding the right prospect from that company that our team can later contact. It is important that we have the most up-to-date information for companies that routinely hire photographers and the most appropriate contacts for each client company. Throughout March, I have gone through a few records where there have been acquisitions and mergers. Those take the most time to update since a merger triggers a lot of changes within a company and the staff. The biggest challenge this month for me was figuring out whether the brand is relevant to us and whether we should keep it in our database based on the employee count. Since we want to have an average of 100 companies in each industry, naturally, we want the largest 100 companies (by employee count). The relevance of a company also varies based on the industry, since some industries tend to use more photography than others.
In March, I was responsible for updating records for Client Companies that we consider to be “brands,” and reached out to 61 brands and 74 people. And after that, I moved on to updating records for the personnel that work at companies that are considered to be “publications.” Through this process, I updated 36 publication records that hadn’t been reviewed for a few years — it’s important to evaluate the company first because the client might have changed directions or stopped production and is not worth keeping in the database. Similarly, many staff members at these publications may have moved on to other jobs, so I also updated 100 personnel records that are connected to the publications that we have in our database. Lastly, this month, I can say that I sent 63 outreach emails, and I actually got one reply, from a freelancer, who needed a photographer for non-profit projects. Based on her location I recommended photographer Barry Schwartz, and in a strange turn of events, she actually knows him well.
The month, the director of Photography for Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, and Popular Science Magazine responded to an email I sent him promoting one of our member photographers. He noted he’d been using Wonderful Machine’s website “for many years” and was unaware of any new changes to our website. I put him in touch with our Connect Team, and they informed him of the premium data available for clients and provided him with a login for a Free Trial Premium User Account.
I recently changed over to the Membership team, but for most of March, I was working on OOO Replies and Categories (regions). The Category list I was working on was Automotive: Car Companies. I am happy to say that, when I started the list, it only had a few companies, but now it has over a hundred. What I found most interesting was that there are so many automotive brands, but so few parent companies. At times it was tricky figuring out who owned what, Polaris is owned by Volvo, who’s owned by Geely, a large Chinese automotive company. Overall I found the work interesting and challenging.
March was a busy month! I didn’t have any direct connections, so to speak, but I did have four people respond that they would be keeping my information for future reference. Another individual responded with the specific requirements to submit for their magazine (which is always good intel to have).
I also went through our Wunderman Thompson client profiles and sorted out duplicates and obsolete records (comparing them to what their website listed as current locations). I then verified the contacts that we had in our database with LinkedIn to make sure they were still working there (if they weren’t, I updated those records to reflect the current employees). Once those contacts were updated, I proceeded to email as many as I could to promote our member photographers that they might be interested in.
As a final note for March, a Film and Photo Lead/Creative Producer responded to an email I sent and wanted to know if we could help him find a photographer and filmmaker in South Sudan. I looped in our producer, Bryan Sheffield into the conversation to get more details and see what we could do for him.
The third month of the year was primarily focused on working on companies within the Visitor’s Bureau and Tourism Office “category.” Starting with less than a hundred pieces of data, this certain category has now increased to 360 records that included relevant tourism offices’ documentation from all US states and Canadian states. Not only that, tourism offices of state capitals and other municipalities are also available – giving us an abundant collection that will greatly benefit Wonderful Machine stakeholders who are interested in the Tourism or Hospitality industry. Aside from well-known and bigger entities like the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism and Visit New Jersey, smaller ones like Visit Berkeley, Visit Gilroy, and Discover Santa Clara, along with many more records are also up.
This month, the producers at Wonderful Machine were working with clients all across the country. As a part of an ongoing project, we are continuing work with a large well-known plumbing products manufacturer based in Wisconsin to document their Design Week trade show experience in Milan. After that, I connected with a full-service agency based in Chicago, to discuss a project for a notable light-beer brand. We produced a photo shoot for the sneaker brand New Balance with Miami-based photographer Mary Beth Koeth and as a final mention, I gave a production capabilities presentation to IHG Hotles & Resorts.
We bid on several projects this month including:
In March, Craig and I had a call with an American drug wholesale company in the Greater Philadelphia region regarding additional licensing needed for a project we had photographed in January. That same week, Andrew and I had a call with the photography department at a private art school in Georgia to discuss possible ways to collaborate, including Wonderful Machine staff visiting their campus for lectures surrounding the business of photography.
While I didn’t make it down to Georgia this month, I did travel to Falls Church, VA to speak at that NPPA Northern Short Course in Photojournalism, to give a presentation on “Commercial Licensing: Pricing & Negotiating.” I also worked on a multi-day environmental portraiture shoot for a well-known American automobile brand with one of our member photographers. And to wrap up the month, I produced a photo shoot for a large global PR & Communications firm headquartered in New York City with a member photographer.
Some of the current projects we are bidding on with clients include a two-day photo production for a global healthcare brand and a multi-day photo production for a university.
Early on in March, Craig and I had a video call with the Creative Services Manager at an American food distributor and grocery store retailer headquartered in Michigan to share our capabilities and learn more about their photo and video needs. She said that she has good coverage for video in the areas they work in, but stressed that there was a void in their coverage for photographers, particularly for people/lifestyle work. They have a need in their HQ area of Grand Rapids and parts of the Midwest areas of the US for local subjects, farmers, producers, growers, etc. She was excited about Wonderful Machine’s platform, and the fact that we could serve as a single vendor/point of contact, and felt there might be an opportunity with us to fill some of the gaps in their creative needs. She said that she’d likely send some of the teams with upcoming photo needs our way. She referenced working with us on an upcoming project in Omaha.
Bryan and I also had a video call with the Director of Publications and Editorial Operations at a notable Swiss-based international organization focused on wildlife and environmental preservation to present our production capabilities, photographer search, stock requests, and how we work with clients on production support. They explained that a large part of their needs was the ability to help their local offices to find and organize production resources in remote areas, and the need for attention to cultural sensitivity in the communities they produce projects in. Their team appreciated the ability of Wonderful Machine to help take some weight off of the shoulders of local offices and act as a one-stop shop for creatives, production crew, and production support. They also appreciated our ability to source these things in any corner of the globe, as they often work in a large variety of areas where it may be otherwise difficult to find these resources.
Some honorable mentions for March were from member photographer Jay Fram, who dropped a line to let us know of a recent referral from Wonderful Machine for a project with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. And a member photographer reached out for help with an estimate for a portraiture project with a Texas-based restaurant chain of sports bars — the client (a digital/social agency in Dallas) had found him on Wonderful Machine.
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!