UNDERSTANDING THE HIERARCHY OF IMPACT FOR IMAGES, PRESENTATION, AND PROMOTION

UNDERSTANDING THE HIERARCHY OF IMPACT FOR IMAGES, PRESENTATION, AND PROMOTION

Did you ever purchase an iPod, or iPhone?
Have you ever gotten business or postcards from Moo?
How about a Razor from Harry’s?

If you have, you understand the power of an excellent presentation. The way it looks and feels.

The iPod packaging won more awards than can be counted. The design, the paper, the printing, the feel of the packaging was simply delicious.

Moo sends their cards in wonderful little boxes that are a treasure in themselves. They include great little graphical cards and an outstanding tactile experience that makes you want to hit ‘reorder’ right away.

Harry’s packaging is a treat to behold. It looks like it was packed by Harry himself and with thoughtful little notes, items, and a paper/ink combination that makes it pure joy to unbox.

The quality of the packaging gives you a great feeling about the merchandise inside.

Even before you get to the merchandise you ordered.

This is the power of the Hierarchy of Impact.

They could have stuck the stuff in a manila envelope and stamped it gone.

But they know the power of an hierarchy of impact.

Doing everything a little bit better, and adding ‘layers’ of better over and over until it is simply unique and special.

And it works in photography as well.

Whether it is a portfolio, website, or image, this hierarchy must be considered to add more punch and engagement to everything you do.

One of my sayings that the P52 members hear a lot is “show me something I haven’t seen before”.

That makes an image with impact.

Maybe it isn’t a great image – yet – but you are at least trying to get off the boring Instawagon.

And with a little work, who knows – it could turn out really awesome.

But that only happens when you think about impact as layers that you add.

There’s stuff everyone does, and there’s stuff that only a few do, and there is stuff that only a very small percentage of photographers do…

And you know their names.

They are the ones shooting the big ads, and gorgeous editorials we all dream of shooting.

Here’s what they don’t do; they don’t take boringass, lame, ‘mailed it in’ photographs.

They push themselves to make something special, different, striking, mindblowing, incredible, and with as many layers to separate their work from the ‘wannabee’s’ as they can possibly find.

Let’s take a simple self-assigned shot for a portfolio.

You have decided to shoot a glass of beer next to a bottle, and make it look cold.

The layers of impact are thusly applied:

Layer One (stuff everyone does)
Regular beer glass and bottle of Budweiser sitting on plexiglass with Glycerine/water spray for “cold”.
Yawn. Fine to test it, but seriously dudes and dudette’s, is this image going to make anyone want to dial you up?

Layer Two (stuff only some do)
Regular beer glass and bottle of Budweiser sitting on Plexiglass with Glycerine/water spray for “cold” and a blue kicker light adding some atmosphere.
Seen it before – a million times.

Layer Three (stuff that is harder to do)
Fancy beer glass, a bottle of Budweiser sitting on plexiglass cubes at different levels. Glycerine/water spray as well as diaper gels for ice. Kicker light, and backlight for the glass that throws a cool shadow. Also, the bottle is lit separately to bring out the label’s metallic ink.

Layer Four (stuff people occasionally do)
Very fancy beer stein and a bottle of imported and difficult to find beer. The cold techniques of diaper gels and glycerine are applied to both the bottle and the glass, with the beer pouring into the glass creating a splash in the head that seems to be creating a wave of foam over the bottle. Additional lights in very small grids are aimed strategically around the beer to give it an ‘otherworldly’ look. A very unique post-processing approach.

Layer Five (really rare)
Very fancy beer stein and a bottle of imported and difficult to find beer. The cold techniques of diaper gels and glycerine are applied to both the bottle and the glass, with the beer pouring into the glass creating a splash in the head that seems to be creating a wave of foam over the bottle. Additional lights in very small grids are aimed strategically around the beer to give it an ‘otherworldly’ look. The stein is balanced to look as though it is tipping over. Post-processing is used to keep color pallet consistent with the rest of the portfolio.

Layer Six (OMG)
Very fancy beer stein and a bottle of imported and difficult to find beer. The cold techniques of diaper gels and glycerine are applied to both the bottle and the glass, with the beer pouring into the glass creating a splash in the head that seems to be creating a wave of foam over the bottle. Additional lights in very small grids are aimed strategically around the beer to give it an ‘otherworldly’ look. The stein is balanced to look as though it is tipping over.
The set below is designed to look as though the beer bottle and glass are floating in a raging river, and are 10 stories high. The landscape is blended into the beer and glass in a way that creates a totally new landscape.

Layer Seven (the pinnacle of impact)
Here’s where you add that one tiny last layer that makes the shot “over the top” and incredibly powerful. Whaddaya gonna do now, Ace?

And hey, you may never get to all seven layers of the hierarchy.

That’s cool.

As long as you are somewhere above layer two you are making images that are not your ‘standard fare’ – and striving for three, four, and five should be considered whenever you are planning to push that button.

Landscapes?

Are you in the best spot?
Would climbing a tree be a better angle?
Could you get something more unusual if you brought the camera down to earth level?
Would it be a better shot if you got up at 4 AM and drove for two hours to get it at sunrise?
Is this the lens that says something unique?
Is this the lens that makes the photograph the best it can be?
Are you “in the moment” or simply snapping a snap?
What – if anything – do you want the image to say to those who view it?

There are a lot more questions, but I think you get the drift here.

This is what the Hierarchy of Impact looks like:

Let’s take this approach with marketing.

Email – Level One. 
Everybody does email. (Note that I still think you should do it, but keep in mind that a boring old email with an attached image is NOT going to move the needle.

Designed Email – Level Two.
Building a neatly designed email that shows off your image takes a bit longer. And anything that takes a bit longer cuts the numbers of players. A lot.

Designed Email with Interactive Capabilities – Level Three.
Deep linking, forms, transactional tools… all are harder to do, and therefor fewer photographers are using them.

At this point, you are definitely above the norms.

Direct Mail Piece – Level Four
Just the fact that you had to design, produce, print, and mail the direct mail piece puts you head and shoulders over a vast number of photographers who are focused on doing it the ‘easy’ way, or just purchased some gawdawful “how to get rich on Instagram” bullshit.

Custom Direct Mail Piece – Level Five
Creating something special for a single client (or a very small batch) and making it personal is way above Level Four. This is getting into rarified air here and only a small group of photographers will take the time to do something like this. The impact level is very high.

Short-run Magazine edited as a group of stories – Level Six
Seriously – this stuff gets noticed. It does. You are now producing long-form art and sending something that costs a lot more than an email attachment. Way up into the rarified air of a very small set of professionals working hard to make their work stand out.

Getting to level six is hard, it is costly, it is time-consuming, it is heartbreaking sometimes… but it shows a level of commitment not found in the occasionally dashed-off email.

And that is what gives it impact.

I will leave Level Seven for your imagination. 

What will you do to create an image, a presentation, a portfolio, or a marketing campaign that has a higher than regular impact?

Whatever you do to make your stuff a little better, a little more striking, a little more unique, a little more your own… it starts to add up to a body of work, and a way of working that is more than just cool. It begins to make you unique.

For every 1000 photographers at the bottom of the pyramid in any given arena, there may only be a handful at the top. Whether you can get to the top or not is totally dependant on your desire to keep pushing beyond what is easy, expedient, and expected.

Remember, if the image you are about to take could be taken by ‘anyone with a camera’ it is not time for you to push the button. You MUST make something far more interesting to move the needle.

Use this graphic and the questions it represents on everything you do from website design to billing to portfolio to the images themselves.

It will make a huge difference.

(Cover Photo by Alan Hurt Jr. on Unsplash)