Stock Images and Your Brand: Benefits, Dangers and Best Practices

I was sitting in a dentist’s office. Waiting. Then waiting a little longer. And just when I thought the waiting was over, it wasn’t.

Desperate for distraction, I began leafing through a magazine. A few pages in was a MetLife ad featuring a woman with a child on her shoulders, paired with the headline, “You carry the future on your shoulders.” It was pretty forgettable, as ads go.

So why do I remember it so clearly?

Because a few pages later in the same magazine — page 73 to be precise — was a Verizon Wireless ad with the headline, “We know there’s a lot riding on you.” It featured a woman carrying a child on her shoulders. The same woman and child. (If my dentist is reading this, I’ve just outed myself as a magazine vandal.)

All I could think was that neither ad stood a chance at connecting with a mom’s heroic efforts. From the outside, it seemed like a case of bad luck, laziness or copying.

Not sure that’s the takeaway either brand was going for.

Five Benefits of Stock Images

What gives? 

Why do huge, well-known brands that “know better” — those that plan their campaigns and guard their presence — resort to stock image usage? 

For the same reasons we make boxed mac and cheese for dinner after a long work week:

1. Speed. No photo shoot. No logistics. No planning. No middle men. 
2. Low cost. Most stock imagery is affordably priced. 
3. Availability. Quick turnarounds for tight deadlines. Stock images are there at 3 p.m., 3 a.m. and on holidays. They never take vacation or get the flu. 
4. Convenience. You really only need an internet connection and a credit card, and neither of those has to actually be yours (kidding).
5. Complete and utter overwhelm. Very few marketers would describe their work environment as “Zen.” If they’re forced to choose between a mini mental breakdown and selling their soul to a stock image site for a pittance, they’ll pick the latter — and sleep well at night.

We understand. But mankind cannot live on boxed mac and cheese alone, especially if they want to build a brand that’s healthy, thriving and producing positive, memorable relationships. 

Besides, there are at least 10 concrete reasons why stock images can easily undermine your brand goals. 

The 10 Greatest Dangers to a Brand Using Stock Images

Compelling brands are built on trust, strategic positioning, perceived value, and uniqueness. Stock image use can erode these by: 

1. Boring and insulting your audience. Most people can spot a stock image at a glance. Making your audience’s eyes glaze over or weirding them out with unnatural/unrealistic stock is off-putting, verging on condescending.
2. Being forgettable. Stock images are known for their predictability and embodied clichés. When has “generic” inspired anybody? 
3. Destroying trust and credibility. The use of stock images often unintentionally conveys a lack of care, a demand for attention without the effort to be worthy of attention. A brand’s claims of authenticity won’t hold up to contradictory evidence, leading to progressive trust attrition. 
4. Violating copyright license/usage stipulations (often unintentionally). There are several types of copyright licenses, all with specific usage/attribution restrictions. If you aren’t careful to read, understand and abide by them, the fact that you paid for a license is irrelevant. 
5. Reinforcing a lack of diversity. Stock images often reinforce a homogenous, stereotyped reality by virtue of a lack of diverse representation. Even worse, they often display the inverse: an overt and unrealistic representation of diversity, which comes across as pandering. If the images you use aren’t authentic to your organization, you’re not just calling attention to disingenuousness; you’re creating hypocrisy.
6. Settling for what “works” (that doesn’t actually work). How often do you give up after scrolling through 37 pages of stock images and just pluck a “good enough” option for use? Effective marketing and superficial implementation are mutually exclusive. 
7. Damaging your perceived value. Marketing is the craft of perception. Perception is reality. If your marketing looks cheap and indistinguishable from your competition, your only means of differentiation is price. Enter the bane of a business’ existence: endless cost discussions. 
8. Wasting time. The time you save by avoiding a custom photo shoot/digital image is often offset by sorting through endless pages on stock image sites. After all, instead of creating exactly what you need, you’re trying to find something created for generic appeal that might work (read the word “might” in a high-pitched voice). 
9. Handicapping sales. Alienating people in any or all the ways listed herein is bound to affect your conversion rates. You can’t actively undermine your brand goals and still achieve them. You can’t de-legitimize your business and expect others to respect it enough to stick around.
10. Promoting your competition. If you and your competitors are using the same visuals, you’re tacitly promoting them. Oof.

It might seem like I’m demonizing stock images, but black-and-white marketing prescriptions, as in life, lack nuance and flexibility. There is a time and a place for using stock. 

In our experience, there are four scenarios when using stock instead of custom photography/imagery is probably a good option.

Four Scenarios When Using Stock Images Is Probably the Best Option

Not every situation, budget, timeline or creative resource is perfect. (I’m just as stunned as you are.) When you’re working with less-than-ideal circumstances, you’ll need to make concessions. 

Using stock is probably the best option if you’re dealing with:

1. Value vs. venue. If you only need a support image for an event location and you’d have to hitchhike to get to it, save your resources for the primary image. (The “zero serial killers” option is also always better.)
2. Seasonality vs. deadlines. If you need to feature a certain time of a year in a certain place and the deadline won’t allow delay (e.g., you need cherry blossoms in the dregs of autumn), then it makes sense to rely on quality stock. 
3. Minor, supporting images. If you’re finishing out a piece of collateral or populating a webpage, using a stock image is less risky than when featured as the main campaign image or on a booth wall. 
4. Lack of funds. If you have an overall Ramen-noodle-sized budget, then there’s no argument. Desperate times calls for desperate memes.

Images should complement your content and add value for your audience. Using stock images for the sole sake of filling white space is like creating content just for the sake of content: worse than useless.

Your time and reputation are too valuable to waste on flippant marketing.

Which brings us to the need for strategic use of stock images. Even when they’re a better option, you’ll still need an intentional approach to make them effective for your purposes and your audience.

8 Ways to Use Stock Images Effectively

If you find yourself without custom photography/design options or in one of the scenarios I’ve listed, here are some simple but effective tips to make the most of your stock images, and two rebellious alternatives:

1. Don’t ever use an unedited stock image as your main image. If you do, you’re likely to see it somewhere else — maybe even in a competitor’s ad.
2. Alter stock images as much as possible so they present as new, unique images specific to your company or campaign. Make them your own. 
3. Create a composite image from several images for a brand-new image that best conveys your message. 
4. Use less popular/less widely known stock image sites. You’ll be more likely to find unique images (and potentially pay less, helpful for le petite budgets).
5. Use more specific queries. Generic searches are bound to return generic results (e.g., “banana” versus “dancing banana wearing high heels and a tube top during Carnival”).
6. Use less obvious or predictable images. Try to break out of the stereotypes we’re all used to seeing. To stand out, you have to do something differently (see “dancing banana” above).
7. Perform a Google image search. This will tell you (or at least give you a gauge of) how many other sites/publications/pieces of content are using the same image. Heads up: The number will probably hurt. 
8. Don’t use any images. What?! Really. If the stock you’re reviewing just isn’t cutting it, consider allowing punchier copy and dramatic design to amplify your message. It’s easy to add an image out of habit, but it should reinforce the purpose of your content or it’s a nuisance.

These may help in a pinch, but none are viable long term. Especially for established brands. 

Using Stock Images: The Most Important Consideration

Stock images are often forgettable, but the negative effects of using them are often memorable and longstanding. Still, there’s too much nuance to marketing (and life) to proclaim: “Never use stock images.” 

In general, the issue could really be boiled down to a single question:

How can you create, differentiate and protect your brand using something that’s never truly yours?

I’m sure you already know the answer.