Latest / The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson / Elevating Visual Marketing with Scott Markowitz
Transcript
- 0:37Jennifer Johnson: Today we welcome back into the studio Scott Markowitz, and he is the owner of Reinvent Studio.
- 0:42Jennifer Johnson: Welcome back.
- 0:43Scott Markowitz: Hey, thank you, absolutely Great to be back.
- 0:46Jennifer Johnson: You know, the first time we were talking all about video and how video is so important for your business, but so is photography in everything that we do.
- 0:57Scott Markowitz: Yes, photography is everywhere nowadays.
- 1:00Scott Markowitz: And what do they say?
- 1:07Jennifer Johnson: A picture is worth a thousand words, but maybe it's worth more than that.
- 1:09Jennifer Johnson: It's like the Visa commercial.
- 1:10Jennifer Johnson: I like that, You're right, Because I can tell.
- 1:15Jennifer Johnson: I mean you're using it on social media.
- 1:18Jennifer Johnson: You're using it in print.
- 1:19Jennifer Johnson: If you're doing print, you're using it everywhere In-store signage or signage on your brochures, everywhere.
- 1:26Scott Markowitz: What is the first thing somebody does when they hear about your company?
- 1:31Scott Markowitz: They go to your website right, yes.
- 1:33Scott Markowitz: And so the photography that's on your website.
- 1:38Scott Markowitz: That really is the first clue that somebody has about the quality of your business.
- 1:43Scott Markowitz: So it's A, is the website fluid, is it designed well?
- 1:48Scott Markowitz: And B, are the photographs professional, are they beautiful and are they representative of the solution or the service or the skill that you're selling Right?
- 1:59Scott Markowitz: Service or the skill that you're selling Right?
- 2:00Scott Markowitz: If it's, if the, if the answer to any of those things, if the answer to any of those three things is no, then they're moving on Right.
- 2:08Scott Markowitz: Yeah, the pictures are priceless.
- 2:10Jennifer Johnson: And you know, what I also find is that there's a lot of authenticity.
- 2:14Jennifer Johnson: That has to happen there too, because if you use stock pictures and then they come and visit you at your office or you come and visit them and that doesn't match up like that image, then it's like I've already.
- 2:28Jennifer Johnson: There's my trust.
- 2:29Scott Markowitz: Right, so prolific, and so the chances that somebody else is using the same stock photography that you are is pretty high.
- 2:44Scott Markowitz: So the best answer to that is make your own stock photography.
- 2:50Jennifer Johnson: Because, honestly, if I see somebody's brochure or somebody's website, I remember a lot of the pictures.
- 2:57Jennifer Johnson: And then you go on someone else's and you're like, oh, they just went down a notch in my book because you called it in.
- 3:03Jennifer Johnson: Yeah Right, you basically just called in doing that.
- 3:08Jennifer Johnson: That you know your, your website.
- 3:10Jennifer Johnson: You didn't, you didn't put any effort into it.
- 3:12Scott Markowitz: You didn't put effort into it.
- 3:13Jennifer Johnson: I call it, calling it in.
- 3:15Scott Markowitz: You just phoned it in.
- 3:15Scott Markowitz: You phoned it in, you telegraphed it.
- 3:19Jennifer Johnson: But it's important that you get it right, because first impressions are everything.
- 3:25Scott Markowitz: Yeah, first impressions are everything, and photography is such a good opportunity for you to tell more about yourself than just the words on your website or just the caption in your social post.
- 3:39Jennifer Johnson: I know, in our video we talked about telling a story, but how can you?
- 3:42Jennifer Johnson: I feel like you can tell stories in pictures.
- 3:45Jennifer Johnson: I mean, how does that translate?
- 3:48Jennifer Johnson: Can you do that or not as much?
- 3:50Jennifer Johnson: Or is video still the better way to do that?
- 3:52Scott Markowitz: Not only can you do that, but you absolutely should do that.
- 3:54Scott Markowitz: Okay, yeah.
- 3:56Scott Markowitz: So let's think about somebody's wedding day.
- 3:59Scott Markowitz: When you get married and you hire a good photographer, they're going to tell the story of not just who was there, but they're going to tell the story about what happened.
- 4:10Scott Markowitz: And how do they do that?
- 4:11Scott Markowitz: They show a wide shot of the church that you got married at, they take a wide shot of the beach nearby, they take some shots of the trees and the surroundings and they get some big, wide shots with people occupying small portions of the frame to give you like a scale of how big the event is.
- 4:35Scott Markowitz: And then they start taking close-ups of the details.
- 4:38Scott Markowitz: They get close-ups of the ring, they get close-ups of the shoes.
- 4:40Scott Markowitz: They get close-ups of the ring, they get close-ups of the shoes, they get close-ups of, maybe, the cocktails being served, and then these details will flow into the shots of people arriving, and you have a variety of different distances of the subject to the camera and in an individualistic standpoint, these are just single pictures, but when you put them all together into an album, it does, of course, tell the story of your wedding, and so any business can take advantage of that same type of process.
- 5:16Scott Markowitz: You want to have a variety of different things over time that tell the story.
- 5:21Scott Markowitz: So you want some details about your business.
- 5:24Scott Markowitz: So you want some close-ups of your products, of your services, of people doing or performing the skills that your business is known for.
- 5:32Scott Markowitz: You also want to see some wide shots of, maybe the end results or just the surroundings.
- 5:40Scott Markowitz: Here in Southwest Florida I know businesses that belong to national chains but they are coming to reInvent Studio because they want to have something that's local, right example.
- 5:56Scott Markowitz: Or construction companies they want to see some shots of their building products in a Southwest Florida setting with palm trees and the beach, because the national materials that they're given to promote their business don't speak to their customers as well.
- 6:13Scott Markowitz: Yeah, so you definitely want to have all those components closeups, medium shots, smiling people, happy customers.
- 6:21Scott Markowitz: You know your representatives, your salespeople.
- 6:25Scott Markowitz: What do, what do they look like?
- 6:26Scott Markowitz: Maybe some candid shots of them preparing for a sales meeting, or some candid shots of them after they got a big sale and how excited they are.
- 6:34Scott Markowitz: And you know, because you want to not just portray yourself as the service provider, but you also want to portray yourself as a real breathing human being who gets excited about what you do and celebrates your wins.
- 6:51Scott Markowitz: Right, you know it's important.
- 6:53Jennifer Johnson: You know you had mentioned weddings.
- 6:55Jennifer Johnson: Okay so weddings.
- 6:56Jennifer Johnson: Looking back at your pictures, for us as humans it provokes the memories of those times, right, but when you're working in the business aspect, you're using your photos to tell an emotional story, because emotion sells.
- 7:15Scott Markowitz: Oh, jennifer, you totally hit on it, right yeah, I mean, selling is all about emotions.
- 7:21Scott Markowitz: People make their buying decisions through their emotions.
- 7:24Scott Markowitz: Mm-hmm, despite what they think they're making their decisions on, right, they're not even aware, right yeah?
- 7:32Scott Markowitz: So photography is a fantastic way to start tapping into that emotions, and it begins with the photographs you have on your website, obviously.
- 7:40Scott Markowitz: And so let's answer that question really quickly.
- 7:46Scott Markowitz: Like, how does a photograph that connects to somebody's emotions Right?
- 7:50Scott Markowitz: And the way that it does is that it connects to something that they want, okay, okay.
- 7:57Scott Markowitz: So let me explain that a little bit more the things that we want.
- 8:01Scott Markowitz: Let's say that we want to hire I'm just going to pick a service out of my like.
- 8:07Scott Markowitz: Let's say, you want to hire a maid service to clean up your house, a maid service to clean up your house.
- 8:16Scott Markowitz: Well, do you want to hire a maid service?
- 8:17Scott Markowitz: Because it's going to make you a person that has a clean house.
- 8:20Scott Markowitz: Well, on the surface, yes, but why do you want a clean house Right now, we're starting to get somewhere.
- 8:26Jennifer Johnson: I see where you're going with this.
- 8:28Scott Markowitz: Yeah.
- 8:28Scott Markowitz: So like you want a clean house, because maybe in my case, you want your wife to feel happy when she comes home from work that her house is clean.
- 8:36Scott Markowitz: Well, why do I want her to feel happy when she comes home from work?
- 8:39Scott Markowitz: Because then she's going to feel more comfortable and relaxed to talk to me.
- 8:45Scott Markowitz: And why do I want that?
- 8:46Scott Markowitz: Because I want to have a meaningful relationship with my wife.
- 8:50Scott Markowitz: And why do I want that?
- 8:50Scott Markowitz: Because I want to be loved, right?
- 8:57Scott Markowitz: Exactly, exactly so you hire a cleaning service.
- 8:58Scott Markowitz: So I hired a cleaning service so that I can experience a better loving relationship.
- 9:01Scott Markowitz: And you know, but that's not the first thing that comes to mind when I start.
- 9:06Jennifer Johnson: No, right, it's deeper.
- 9:08Scott Markowitz: Yeah, I mean, the first thing I think about is oh, I just need somebody to pick up this mess.
- 9:12Jennifer Johnson: And I think of wow, I picture a person sitting back with their you can see their feet in the picture on a chair at the beach, yeah Right.
- 9:24Scott Markowitz: There you go.
- 9:24Jennifer Johnson: Like I want that so that I can do that.
- 9:27Jennifer Johnson: There's the means to my end.
- 9:29Jennifer Johnson: Yeah, so let's the ends to my means, the means to my end.
- 9:31Jennifer Johnson: I don't know.
- 9:33Scott Markowitz: No, but exactly correct.
- 9:34Scott Markowitz: So let's put that together in a picture story.
- 9:36Scott Markowitz: So now we see a picture of of a happy maid service going through your home cleaning up your kitchen and your bathroom, and then next to that there's a picture of you at the beach with your wife wife and then next to that there's a picture of you you know, like you know, close to your wife, engaged in an embrace, Right, Right.
- 9:58Scott Markowitz: That tells the whole story and that connects you to the emotion that you want.
- 10:03Jennifer Johnson: We just did a whole ad campaign for some cleaning service out there.
- 10:06Jennifer Johnson: That is wonderful.
- 10:10Jennifer Johnson: That is wonderful.
- 10:11Jennifer Johnson: Is your closet overflowing?
- 10:14Jennifer Johnson: Or maybe your kids' closets are as well, or maybe you just want to redecorate your house.
- 10:17Jennifer Johnson: If you're wondering what to do with all that stuff that you've accumulated, bring it all to True Fashionistas, or even ship it to them for free.
- 10:24Jennifer Johnson: They'll sell your unwanted items for you and take away all the hassle by doing all the work, and all you have to do is sit back and collect your money.
- 10:31Jennifer Johnson: You can reach out to them online at truefashionistascom.
- 10:35Jennifer Johnson: Come into the store or check them out on Facebook or Instagram and that's truefashionistascom.
- 10:41Jennifer Johnson: Welcome back, friends.
- 10:43Jennifer Johnson: We are in studio with Scott Markowitz and he is with Reinvent Studio, and we're talking all today about photography and how important it is to tell a story, because stories sell product and services.
- 10:58Scott Markowitz: That's right, by connecting to people's emotions.
- 11:01Jennifer Johnson: The whole cleaning service we were just talking about.
- 11:04Jennifer Johnson: Yeah, I mean, that is so so, true.
- 11:07Jennifer Johnson: So I want to talk a little bit about AI.
- 11:10Jennifer Johnson: Yeah, because everybody's talking about AI everywhere.
- 11:14Jennifer Johnson: How can you use that coupled with photography, or how did those two fit in?
- 11:23Scott Markowitz: Well, there's probably a million ways that you can use AI.
- 11:27Jennifer Johnson: And by the time we air there'll be a million and a half.
- 11:29Scott Markowitz: There's going to be a million more.
- 11:31Jennifer Johnson: Yeah, you know.
- 11:32Scott Markowitz: Yeah, I mean right now there's generative tools.
- 11:36Scott Markowitz: By generative, I mean there's AI tools that will create imagery based on a text prompt that you provide.
- 11:44Jennifer Johnson: And I just heard about this and I went what Hold the phone?
- 11:47Jennifer Johnson: This is really weird.
- 11:49Scott Markowitz: I've not tried them, but yeah, and as of the time that you and I are talking right now, it's not a hundred percent perfect.
- 11:57Scott Markowitz: You know, the AI engines that are driving these imagery solutions don't always know how to recreate the human form, so, like you, will get some goofy results, like people with five fingers on one hand but seven fingers on the other hand.
- 12:14Scott Markowitz: Or you know people with missing a leg.
- 12:19Scott Markowitz: Yeah, I've seen images like with people with three legs and um, and the funny thing, the really frightening thing perhaps uh, or funny, depending on your point of view is that you can post those pictures with people with seven fingers and three legs and, for the most part, no one will even notice, because people are scrolling their feet so fast that they don't even see.
- 12:42Jennifer Johnson: But then wait a second.
- 12:43Jennifer Johnson: What's that?
- 12:45Scott Markowitz: Yeah, but so AI can definitely get you out of a pinch.
- 12:49Scott Markowitz: If you need to have some kind of imagery for your posting or for your blog, or whatever, you can definitely use an AI tool to do that, and, yeah, the thing that I think is more exciting, though, is to use AI to augment existing photographs.
- 13:05Jennifer Johnson: That's what I'm wondering about.
- 13:07Jennifer Johnson: Yes, Like put some makeup on me.
- 13:09Scott Markowitz: Yeah, can I look?
- 13:10Jennifer Johnson: taller.
- 13:12Scott Markowitz: Oh, absolutely.
- 13:12Scott Markowitz: So you can.
- 13:13Scott Markowitz: Yeah, you can use some of the tools like say, in Photoshop.
- 13:16Scott Markowitz: Photoshop and Adobe are some of the leading like authorities in this space and so, like if you have a adobe subscription to their creative cloud, you have access to their ai tools and you can absolutely, for example, take a picture that you have and make it maybe more resolute, maybe clearer you can, you can tell ai to uh to make the background larger.
- 13:44Scott Markowitz: So if you, if you need to repurpose a photograph that was taken for one specific use case and you have to try to conform it into a new use case, like maybe for a brochure or a sales package that you want to present, you could redefine what the parameters of that photograph are.
- 14:03Scott Markowitz: And, for example, if you have a headshot that was taken professionally but now you need something with more environment in it to put a sales copy on top of, you, can ask Photoshop to create or recreate the background.
- 14:21Jennifer Johnson: So could it take me from the office to the beach.
- 14:24Scott Markowitz: Yeah.
- 14:24Scott Markowitz: Like okay, just stick me here.
- 14:26Scott Markowitz: Yeah, you can definitely do that Now.
- 14:28Scott Markowitz: It may not be as quick and easy as you're imagining, right?
- 14:34Jennifer Johnson: I'm thinking oh, here, I want this backdrop.
- 14:37Scott Markowitz: Usually it does take a little bit of experimentation and sometimes you'll have to ask the AI to regenerate it several times before it gets a result that you're going to like.
- 14:48Jennifer Johnson: Not much unlike the written.
- 14:50Jennifer Johnson: You know, BARD, or chat GPT Correct With how you're doing copy.
- 14:56Jennifer Johnson: The same thing goes true with video or pictures, sorry.
- 15:00Scott Markowitz: That's correct.
- 15:00Scott Markowitz: That's correct and, just like chat, gpt, the more you put into the prompt, the more detail you put into the prompt and the more clever you are about how you describe what use those AI tools more and more as something that, as a business owner or a marketing professional, you can get more traction from or more efficient use of your time.
- 15:37Jennifer Johnson: How should we be using our photography that we paid somebody to do or we've done?
- 15:42Jennifer Johnson: How should we be using this?
- 15:44Jennifer Johnson: I mean, we talked about using it on the website, social media, right, and coming in here to this year, what are things that are maybe new, on the horizon as well?
- 15:59Jennifer Johnson: So purpose or use, and then tools, things that are new.
- 16:05Scott Markowitz: Yeah.
- 16:05Scott Markowitz: So let's go back a little bit and say that the best way to get the most miles out of your video and your photography is to be strategic about it.
- 16:15Scott Markowitz: So before you even start snapping pictures, you should have, maybe a list of things that you want to accomplish with your social media and with your marketing efforts, so that you want to accomplish with your social media and with your marketing efforts, so that you can better be equipped to go out and capture the images that will relate to those goals.
- 16:30Scott Markowitz: Here's a great example you could be using your camera to take pictures and make your own stock photographs.
- 16:39Scott Markowitz: You know, stock photography used to be something that was leveraged a lot and we just talked about it earlier that now it's kind of a stale thing because there's so much use of it that we become aware that it's stock now, and then you look lazy.
- 16:58Scott Markowitz: And then you look lazy and look like you phoned it in.
- 17:00Scott Markowitz: You phoned it in.
- 17:02Scott Markowitz: Right, you look like you phoned it in.
- 17:03Scott Markowitz: You phoned it in Right, so but but it's easy enough for you to pick up your phone and you can go and maybe take some pictures of a laptop in your office.
- 17:12Scott Markowitz: Now it's stock photography, but it's specific to your business.
- 17:15Scott Markowitz: Now you can take some stock photographs of plants that are in the front of your lobby.
- 17:19Scott Markowitz: You can take some stock photographs of your storefront out of focus and you can now put sales copy in front of it and the storefront's just a background.
- 17:31Jennifer Johnson: Because no one else is going to have that.
- 17:32Scott Markowitz: Nobody else is going to have it.
- 17:33Scott Markowitz: It's serving the purpose of what stock photography was originally meant for, which was to become Stock.
- 17:39Scott Markowitz: Photography was originally created to become the background for sales copy.
- 17:45Jennifer Johnson: Oh, how funny yeah.
- 17:46Scott Markowitz: And you know, to become just the bedrock in which sales copy was delivered so we can make our own, and that's, I think, a powerful way to think about photography and how you can start using it to accomplish your marketing goals.
- 18:00Scott Markowitz: To accomplish your marketing goals.
- 18:01Scott Markowitz: Besides that, like I said, we can take things that were shot already and we can start using AI tools to repurpose them and put them into different.
- 18:10Jennifer Johnson: That was a question I had, repurposing your content.
- 18:14Scott Markowitz: Yeah, so anytime you can repurpose your content, it's a great thing.
- 18:17Scott Markowitz: So if you had some Say you had somebody come in to take photographs of your work environment or some environmental portraits of you in your work environment, well, now you can use those and repurpose them for a blog post.
- 18:31Scott Markowitz: You can use that photograph and repurpose it for the heading of a LinkedIn post or a LinkedIn article Right post or a LinkedIn article Right.
- 18:47Scott Markowitz: You know, if you're, if you're creating some professional, industry specific content, you know that's a fantastic way to repurpose your, your photographs, to create more authority for you as an individual, not just your business.
- 18:57Scott Markowitz: So, yeah, I mean anywhere that you can post a photograph, you can reuse things that you've shot before.
- 19:05Jennifer Johnson: You know it's kind of interesting.
- 19:07Jennifer Johnson: So I'm a big proponent of Pinterest, okay, and I believe in repurposing a photo three times on Pinterest with three different headings.
- 19:16Jennifer Johnson: Oh, I like that and I'm telling you it has garnered really great success because Pinterest, it's going to the image.
- 19:26Scott Markowitz: It's going to the image it's going to recognize the image, but if you change the copy, it's going to look new.
- 19:33Scott Markowitz: Oh, I love that and that's so true.
- 19:36Scott Markowitz: Jennifer, that's such a great tip.
- 19:37Scott Markowitz: I love it.
- 19:37Scott Markowitz: And the same thing is true for your photographs and social media.
- 19:39Scott Markowitz: I mean, you know, you can take the same photograph and repost it today, three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now, right, and so you don't need to have a never ending new, you know, generation of photographs.
- 19:54Scott Markowitz: If you have like a really good, solid pool of photographs, you're going to get a lot of mileage, right.
- 20:00Jennifer Johnson: Because on social media after like three days it's so far down your feed you're not going to find it unless you go to that person's page.
- 20:08Scott Markowitz: Yeah.
- 20:09Jennifer Johnson: Right, so they're not going to be none the wiser.
- 20:10Jennifer Johnson: It's not going to really.
- 20:12Scott Markowitz: Yeah, so anytime you have a new offer or anytime you have a new product, reuse the same photographs, as long as it works with that sales message.
- 20:20Jennifer Johnson: But then I would imagine there's become some familiarity there where they're like oh yeah, I know that person you know.
- 20:29Jennifer Johnson: Then they connect more with their business.
- 20:30Jennifer Johnson: Maybe Is there a thing to that, or not there is.
- 20:32Jennifer Johnson: Like, if you keep using the same photo, they come to recognize that as your company.
- 20:39Scott Markowitz: Yeah.
- 20:40Scott Markowitz: So the caveat, jennifer, is that it has to be a beautiful photograph, as long as it's a really well-crafted photograph.
- 20:46Scott Markowitz: Here's what I suggest Use it over and over, vary the crop a little bit.
- 20:53Scott Markowitz: You know, crop in just slightly differently.
- 20:55Scott Markowitz: So, like people Good tip, yeah, people will recognize the familiarity of it and they'll create like a nice, a nice feeling for themselves associated with your brand, because anything familiar to us is a positive feeling.
- 21:10Scott Markowitz: So, like anytime that you can create a nostalgic notion in someone's mind, then they're going to have that positive association with you, right?
- 21:20Scott Markowitz: But if you just do something very simple, as as doing a different crop or changing the aspect ratio of a photograph, they might not remember that they saw that photograph, right, because our visual memories are actually very hyper-specific.
- 21:37Scott Markowitz: So even if you change something slightly, it might appear to somebody as new content.
- 21:41Scott Markowitz: Wow, that's interesting, love, that Fabulous.
- 21:42Jennifer Johnson: It might appear to somebody as new content.
- 21:43Jennifer Johnson: Wow, that's interesting.
- 21:44Jennifer Johnson: Love that Fabulous.
- 21:49Jennifer Johnson: Well, I have loved having you on talking about photography today, and then I just it's fascinating because I know that a picture does tell a thousand.
- 21:58Jennifer Johnson: What is that word, that thousand words?
- 22:01Scott Markowitz: Picture tells a thousand words.
- 22:03Jennifer Johnson: Very, very true.
- 22:04Jennifer Johnson: If our listeners would like to get ahold of you, Scott, how can they do so?
- 22:09Scott Markowitz: Yeah, I would encourage anybody to reach out to me.
- 22:11Scott Markowitz: There's a couple of great ways you can email me.
- 22:14Scott Markowitz: Okay, just Scott at Reinvent.
- 22:16Scott Markowitz: I'm sorry, scott at ReinventStudiocom is a fantastic way to get in touch with me.
- 22:21Scott Markowitz: I will respond to everybody's email.
- 22:23Scott Markowitz: And another great way is to reach out on X.
- 22:27Scott Markowitz: My handle is at teachvidscott.
- 22:31Jennifer Johnson: Fabulous.
- 22:32Jennifer Johnson: Thank you so much for coming on today.
- 22:34Scott Markowitz: Jennifer, thank you for inviting me.
- 22:35Scott Markowitz: This was really a lot of fun.