Last month, our Client Outreach team — consisting of Dominic Bracco, Denise Florendo, Gina Martin, Laura Wontor, Suzanne Lindsay, Andrew Souders, Ashley Vaught, Julie Clement, 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.
We added 254 new companies and 286 new people to our database in September — whom we have been contacting to promote our roster. Additionally, we updated 1205 companies, 1793 people, and sent out over 350 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.
A new member of the Client Outreach Team, Dominic started in a role we call “Oldest in WP.” This entails finding companies whose profiles are the “oldest” and having them updated by Wonderful Machine. By doing so, Dominic ensures all contact information, such as websites and social media links, is kept up-to-date. A few notable clients Dominic recently updated include the Philadelphia 76ers, Simms Fishing Products, the Italian high fashion icon Moschino, and Moody Nolan Architects, who has offices all around the U.S.
Denise had been handling our Out-of-Office Replies, but is now updating companies based on their LinkedIn industries. This included adding Autoliv, an industry leader in mobility safety solutions with 14,264 employees, as well as Gestamp, a manufacturer of automotive components for safer and cleaner mobility with 12,348 employees. Denise also added a handful of companies under Architecture & Planning, including Perkins Eastman, AEDAS, AREP, and SSOE Group.
Taking over the Out-of-Office Replies role, Gina is now checking on the status of existing individuals from our client database of brands, publications, and agencies. When updating a person’s data record, Gina is also updating the company and other clients who may be attached to that company. In turn, she’s doing a lot of cleaning up, which she described as “very satisfying to make our information as accurate as possible.”
Laura has been experimenting with new ways to connect with our clients. She discovered that Microsoft’s Principal Creative Director clicked on the links included in an email promoting one of our member photographers nine times! It seems that something resonated for him, and we are hopeful that it has to do with new links (including more images).
Laura started hyperlinking any photographer’s promo photos (linking back to their website) and she noticed an increase in clicks since doing this in addition to the hyperlinked text. It seems that people are more inclined to click on the promo photo than the text — which has resulted in a noticeable uptick in website traffic for our photographers. Hopefully these changes in our outreach process will lead to many similar successes in the future.
Suzanne liked Laura’s idea about including a linked image and started to include that in her emails. Her role is the same as last month, which involves updating clients who work at various ad agencies around the globe. One thing she finds interesting about her research is being able to follow a client’s timeline of work and how some clients seem to be able to flow seamlessly between positions, moving across the country or even the world as they transition between agencies and brands. The most enjoyable part of her role continues to be the match-making process.
Andrew had a call with a Senior Producer/Photographer at Vista Outdoors to present our production capabilities and learn about his business and needs. This producer was looking to alter their in-house approach and ramp things up by exploring new resources, like what Wonderful Machine offers. They were mainly looking for help with pre-production (outlines, storyboards, direction, shot lists, crew sourcing, etc.) and help with post-production for video work. We’ll create an estimate for an upcoming project, so he can present it to the clients as an option for additional production resources, and have a discussion about where we can be most helpful. Additionally, one of our member photographers was given an assignment for the New York Post. They found him on Wonderful Machine.
Ashley manages Publication Client Outreach, so he sends out emails to people associated with publications in our database. Generally, these are photo editors, but since the size of the publications varies, they may also be designers or editors-in-chief. He was very active sending emails over the course of September but received no responses, unfortunately. Some people may use the old pen-and-paper routine, so he keeps vigil at the “mailbox” daily (even on Sundays). In his own words, he “shall not give up hope.”
Julie recently switched to the Parent Companies role. There she updates each parent company’s record and then I attempt to find a list of their subsidiaries. She first searches to see which subsidiaries we already have records for that might not already be linked to the parent company, and takes care of linking those to all appropriate clients. Then she will parse through the subsidiaries that we don’t have, and evaluate them for addition to both our database and website. Julie also makes sure each company is linked to at least one Client Person.
Bryan had a call with the Managing Director at Lazy Snail Design, a firm with offices in Denmark and Greece about advising on their agreements and negotiating usage for design projects in the US and abroad. They also expressed interest in working with Wonderful Machine to get more guidance on residuals and expanding licensing from clients. They’d like to focus more on the creative, and receive help handling the background work. Bryan also had a call with the Senior Visual Producer at Kern, a SoCal based agency with offices also in Dallas and NYC. The client was interested in our photographer/director search capabilities as well as our experience as an art production house. More meetings are being planned for the future to discuss how we can assist with their upcoming projects around the country.
Craig negotiated a licensing extension with Petco for 11 stock images from 7 photographers. And he connected with O’Reilly Auto Parts to discuss and bid on a project to capture lifestyle images of customers within their stores, as well as connecting with Blue Chip and Hungry Root to discuss future projects. Additionally, we coordinated a project with LG to capture video of an event featuring musician John Legend, bid on a project with the Zimmerman Agency for South Padre Island Tourism, and are working with AmerisourceBergen to coordinate a series of global headshot projects, along with a large lifestyle shoot in Barcelona.
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!