Few things have as much effect on brand as the images a company uses in advertising and marketing. Or for that matter the images used in the corporate annual report, the company newsletter, website, etc.

The advent of digital photography has made it possible to literally move mountains or take 10 years off the CEO with the push of a couple of buttons. As a photographer, I find the new digital tools fantastic. Nothing goes out of our shop without some degree of digital enhancement. But I have watched with alarm as company after company has succumbed to the darkside of Photoshop®.

Just because it’s possible to clean up an oil spill on the factory floor or take out an ex-boardmember via computer, does that make it ethically acceptable? Or is the technology to blame for making it so darn easy? The fallout from getting caught misusing photo manipulation has wrecked long-term havoc on brands previously thought bulletproof.

But just where is the ethical line on photo manipulation where corporate communications is concerned? IMHO the answer lies in the INTENT, not in the amount of alteration. For example, using the same photo - even a slight alteration may be unacceptable if the intended audience is expecting hard news, whereas turning the sky purple and adding UFOs is admissible if the intended viewers know it’s an ad photo.

David Murray’s blog has some interesting comments.

What say you?

Suzanne Salvo

Check this wonderful bit about the new West Virginia Tourism campaign:

Readers flipping through the newest edition of O, The Oprah Magazine might stumble upon an ad headline that reads, “Whatever you do, don’t come to West Virginia!”

If you’re a Mountaineer, don’t be offended.

The West Virginia Division of Tourism and Charles Ryan Associates are trying a new marketing technique.

The ads are meant to lure vacationers to the Mountain State.

Officials say standard travel ads, such as a picture of a mountainside and a message to “Visit West Virginia,” don’t really do the trick anymore. (Story.)

I love the creative approach, but cannot imagine how they got it executed. I’ve worked with more timid ad people - both in agencies and in the corporate groups that manage advertising - in the past few years than I can shake a stick at, and had I taken a concept like this one to the principal at the last agency I worked for the best I could have hoped for was an extended, exasperated whine about how I just don’t get it.

On the planet these folks live on, you can’t take any risk of acknowledging any kind of possible negative at all. Even if you know that your target audience spends hours a day bad-mouthing your client, the last thing you can do is acknowledge that reality. Right now my old boss would probably be advising the good folks at Menu Foods (and their clients at Iams, Nutro, Hills, etc.) to carry on as though nothing unusual had happened in the last couple of weeks

Of course, those of us with an informed acquaintance of how real audiences actually work know that the single dumbest thing corporate communications of any sort can do is to ignore what their audiences already know.

Pretend bad news doesn’t exist, and they’ll pretend you don’t exist.

Hats off to the West Virginia Division of Tourism and Charles Ryan Associates. They get it. Selling West Virginia isn’t the easiest job in the world, but I’m betting they get significantly better results than the folks over at The Conventional Timid and Terrified Group.

Here’s an idea for a low-budget branding program. Take a digital video camera to a soccer field and let it roll as an athlete plays around with a soccer ball. Upload the assiduously amateurish clip free on YouTube. Watch consumers by the millions view it and share it with friends. Of course, it helps if you’re Nike and have a ten-year endorsement contract with the best soccer player in the galaxy to feature in your videos. Nike’s spot of Ronaldinho repeatedly kicking a soccer ball with breathtaking precision at the crossbar so that it comes right back to him has been downloaded more than 3.5 million times. Video-sharing sites such as YouTube are taking off with an amazing 40 million watched videos daily. Most of the video clips are consumer generated. But, smart marketers like Nike are tapping into the craze with videos that have a raw unpolished feel. While Adidas is shelling out $200 million as the official sponsor of The Soccer World Cup in Germany, Nike is taking a viral approach that is destined to pay off.