How do you measure a year?
Back in September 2015 Sterling Furniture refurbished their in house studio in preparation for the completion of their new sales website. This acted as the catalyst for the development of a set of new ‘Photography Brand Standards’. These new standards shifted the goalposts significantly from what had gone before. First and foremost all of the images supplied would need to be of 'above the line' print standard, allowing Sterling Furniture to make use of their full image library, not just on their site but across all of their proint and digital media.
New website functionality would make use of a 100% zoom feature on all product images increasing the need for detail and quality replacing the low resolution images that had gone before.
Increased numbers of rotational shots per product would build a clearer picture for customers for each item on the site.
Studio based lifestyles with minimum styling, group/range stills would highlight the collections and become stand alone advertising images.
6 Location shoots a year would be added to the rosta of requirements. The output from these shoots would become 'header' images on the website and also form the bases of all new print collateral. The location 'hero' images would be used in brochures, event invites, in store point of sale, editorial and advertising.
The introduction of models into images would help build a link with consumers and be utalised in advertising, social and marketing.
The production of the
Location based shoots have also led to an increase on value of product. These images take over twice as long as the average image to retouch, due to small but significant location based issues. For example, views out of windows, incorrect room colouring, or fixtures such as radiators being requested to be removed.
The shooting of Television Adverts in-house has also increased value to the service package currently offered to Sterling.
This Value Statement will show the deliverables/assets sent over the 19 month period between September 2015 and April 2017.
Sterling Furniture have stores throughout Scotland in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Glasgow, Inverness and Uddingston
10,000 PRODUCT & DETAIL IMAGES
Over the past 19 months Sterling Furniture have received over 10,000 product
and detail images, shot in the new studio configuration.
800 GROUP & LIFESTYLE IMAGES
Over the 19 months we have shot and retouched 800 Group and Lifestyle
Images from the studio. Creating Promotional, Advertising, PR and Press
Imagery for everything from point of sale to high end print ads.
500+ LOCATION IMAGES
4 location shoots have led to delivery of:
379 final location images
167 behind the scenes shots
22 behind the scenes videos for social media.
TV AD DELIVERABLES
Over and above the 1.5 hours of footage requested for this first in-house production,
HCp orchestrated and delivered 1 hour of extra footage now being
used for the second run of TV adverts. Assets produced from this shoot also
included 103 product images and 166 model images.
51 WEEKS OF EDIT TIME
The complete suite of images delivered over this 19 month period
accumulated a total edit time of:
122,753 minutes
is 2046 hours
that is, 256 days
which is, a full 51 working weeks
The introduction of the new photographic standards in September 2015 has
impacted greatly on the edit required. Going from almost no edit to the
above.
Images now have to meet a new set of standards.
All stills need to be able to be viewed at a high resolution, this allows website
user to zoom to a 100% detail level.
Each and every studio image needs a full retouch. This is in sharp contrast to
the small tweeks of colour correct and sharpen that the previous standard
required.
Founded in 1974, Sterling Furniture based its approach on the out-of-town retail developments that had been successful at that time in the United States. A converted mill in Tillicoultry, became the unlikely home of Scotland's largest furniture retail development. Although a lot has changed since the opening of that first store, the need to maintain relevance and market share has not. Sterling Furniture like many companies of its size and larger have a wide variety of needs when it comes to visual media. The main challenge is to keep costs at a level that is manageable and still prove the tens of thousands of images and hours of video that are required.
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