How To Get The Photography Right For A Product Launch
Planning a successful product launch on social media, through PR, or using advertising requires photography to be a key part of the planning stage. There are several important steps to making sure you capture compelling images that effectively promote your product.
What Do You Want To Achieve With Your Product Launch?
Think about what a successful launch would look like and work backwards from there. Are you looking to educate audiences about features of your product, build an identity for your brand, drive quick sales, or generate attention on social media? The aims of the launch should inform the style and format of your photography and videos.
You should also consider where you want your content to appear. For PR launches, your style choices should fit the publications you'd like to feature in. The same applies for social media platforms and advertising formats. The more you can tailor your images and videos for your chosen platforms, the more successful your launch should be.
Look At All The Image Options Available
There’s lots of ways to produce photography for a product launch and not every approach will be right for your brand. It will heavily depend on the nature of your product, here’s some examples of what works well for certain retailers.
Clothing
Ghost mannequin photography is great for ecommerce sites, but model photography will be most effective for a strong launch. You could also be creative by using a flat lay style. This is great for showing a range of products, and there’s multiple layouts you could use – stacking, folding, layering, and hanging all work well for garments.
Homeware & furniture
Lifestyle photography does a wonderful job at helping customers to visualise your products in the real world – this is what we’d recommend for a homeware product launch. Depending on budget, you could go for a still life image or bring in models to complete the lifestyle feel.
Focus on your target customers, making conscious choices to appeal to them. It can be useful to hire stylists and collaborate on ideas to get the best results.
There are several ways you could produce these images. Using custom built room sets is the traditional way to do it, but you could use virtual production techniques, CGI or advanced post-production methods.
Technical products
Product videos are very effective at explaining technical details to your customers. 360 spins, annotated graphics, and even CGI demonstrations have great impact. Have a think about your product’s main selling points and how it would be best to demonstrate them.
Food and drink
Your creativity can run wild for a food and drink product launch. Branding will be your main consideration, and upholding this in the production of your images or video is important. Virtual production can help build digital backgrounds for images, or a room set can be worth it if you have the budget.
CGI can be great for a launch that has energy and impact, or lifestyle photography can create meal time settings that spark memories for your audience.
Think about uses for your product and have fun creating recipe videos, stylised images, or playful arrangements.
Who Is Your Ideal Customer, What Do They Like?
To make a strong impression with potential customers, you need to identify who your target audience are, and what appeals to them. Research your audience by taking part in a customer profiling exercise to learn their likes and dislikes.
It’s also worth looking at how your competitors are aiming to appeal to customers. Try to differentiate your branding and style from the competition - some brands have success by disrupting the market with content that contrasts with the norm, but be sure to align visuals with your branding at all times.
Tell A Story In Your Product Launch With Photography
Develop a concept and create a storyboard for the shoot. This includes deciding on the theme, style, and key shots you want to capture. A well-thought-out concept can make your images more engaging and cohesive.
Storytelling is crucial for uptake in a PR campaign and to create engagement on social media. Tie your launch into seasonality, trends, or events.
A well chosen background will bring a real-life feel to your story. Whether it’s a studio set, an outdoor setting, or a styled room, ensure the location enhances the product’s appeal.
Engage Professional Studios, Stylists And Post-production Specialists
To get coverage from your PR campaign, make an impression with advertising, and generate engagement on social media, involve professionals that will produce the quality needed.
By working with photography studios, videographers, stylists and post-production professionals, you can collaborate on ideas, storyboard content, and make stylistic choices that complement your product, such as props or graphics.
Consider Using Models In Your Product Launch
If your customers would benefit from seeing your product in use, you could hire models. This can help potential customers visualise your product in action.
Your images and videos will become more engaging for your audience with people in them. To reduce costs, you could ensure the models can't be identified by not showing their face – this saves on the usage licence fee. For some products, hand models do a great job at demonstrating uses and features, and come without the large price tag.
Don’t Neglect The Post-production Details
You must ensure your final images represent your product. This often requires post-production specialists to add the finishing touches. The work might include colour correction, retouching, and ensuring the photos meet your desired quality and style. You can use advanced techniques to add-in stylistic features at this stage such as backgrounds and artistic effects.
How To Create Content Specifically For Social Media
Use the images from your shoot to create engaging content for social media. Share behind-the-scenes shots, teasers, and the final images to build excitement and reach a wider audience. For a product launch, you could consider a teaser campaign that provides glimpses of your product to build anticipation. Make the most of your studio time by extracting all the content you can - this will help you sustain engagement on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook for longer periods of time.
Crucially, read up on the sizing formats for the different social media platforms to optimise your posts – social media is not one-size-fits-all for images.
How To Create Content Specifically For A PR Launch
Start with your storyline and build your images around this. Seasonality can be a great hook, particularly in the run up to events such as Christmas, Halloween, Valentines Day and so on.
You should also look at which publications you hope will feature your launch and aim to replicate their house style. The more tailored you can be, the more likely you are to receive PR coverage in your target publications.
You may want to engage PR professionals if you don’t have the capabilities in-house - you'll need to create accompanying copywriting and create a pitch to give to your target publications.
PR Shoot With B&M
We worked with major UK retailer B&M to help launch their autumn campaign.
With 291 final images across multiple product ranges, there's lots of inspiration for your next PR shoot.
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