Seasons change, and so should your brand photography! Aligning your visual content with the time of year will help your brand stay relevant and create a dynamic, engaging marketing narrative that speaks to your target demographic’s shifting experiences and needs. This is a demonstrated way to enhance your campaigns, driving engagement, conversions, and sales.
In this blog post, we dive into strategies to embrace seasonal photography effectively in 2024. For more ways to enhance your marketing, be sure to check out our other guides.
New year, new looks! 2024 brings fresh visual trends that should be incorporated into your seasonal photography for maximum results.
Brands are increasingly expected to tailor their marketing to address the specific experiences of their target audience. This is a great opportunity to make your brand relatable by speaking directly to your consumers’ needs. Even if this means the messaging isn’t an exact fit for everyone, your audience will appreciate and trust a brand that leans into the personal rather than a broad, one-size-fits-all approach.
Bold colors and high contrast are in vogue. Make this trend work for your brand by choosing a vibrant, stylish, and eye-catching palette for your imagery, as well as photographers and equipment well-suited to deliver this aesthetic. To bolster visual interest further, take advantage of another 2024 trend towards mixing vintage and modern techniques - nothing quite pops like those Kodachrome colors!
A longstanding trend towards diversity in marketing is likely to accelerate in 2024. Be sure to create marketing that allows people to view themselves in your brand. In order to build trust and relatability, this inclusivity should also be grounded in real experiences and not feel contrived or artificial; be sure to convey the realities specific to the diverse subjects you include.
With marketing expected to be more personal in 2024, it’s important to make sure your seasonal photography nails your audience’s specific needs and experiences. Before planning your shoots, make an effort to understand how your target audience’s behavior changes with the seasons. What activities do your consumers engage in during holidays? Who’s buying what, and for whom? Are they more inclined to spend time outdoors or indoors?
Tailor your market research to discover what stories your brand is well-suited to tell. This will help your photography stand out from the competition by being relatable, timely, and unique to your brand’s strengths.
The calendar is chock-full of opportunities for marketing, so pre-planning is vital for making sure your campaigns are impactful and consistent. Here are some timing tips to keep in mind.
With your marketing research in hand, identify key seasonal moments for your brand’s selling points. Align your campaigns accordingly with a content calendar that includes preparation, shoot days, post-production, and delivery. This will make sure your content channels the essence of each season at an efficient cadence and goes live at the moment when it will have the greatest impact.
A great time to create your content calendar is before the year begins so that you kick things off decisively, with all seasons and holidays accounted for.
How much time do you need to prepare? The answer is … as much as you can spare!
Schedule in ample time to develop your creative ideas, hire the right professionals and talent, secure your locations, and obtain any product needed for the shoot. While your pre-production needs will depend on the specifics of the project, we recommend starting pre-production at least one month before the shoot date.
With content often planned in one season and produced in another to be published weeks or months later, it’s easy to lose track of the impact weather might have on your production.
Take the likely conditions into account when planning your shooting days to ensure the world you’re capturing is appropriate to your story. Stay nimble and creative: if that 4th of July shoot needs to be shot in February, consider staging it indoors!
Between re-touching, VFX, and addressing creative notes, post-production often takes longer than anticipated. Plan ahead to head off any last-minute scrambles. If possible, try to streamline the conversation between decision-makers so that your post-production wizards can tackle their consolidated thoughts rather than piecemeal notes.
To make your marketing more relatable and memorable, your seasonal photography should do more than just showcase a product; it should tell a story that connects with your audience’s lived experiences and emotions. Create narratives that align with seasonal themes, whether it’s a comfy winter gathering or a springtime renewal of friendship, vows, or commitments.
Mold your approach to fit your market; for example, would a premium, aspirational portrait of a holiday resonate most with your audience, or might a relatable, authentic depiction be easier to connect with?
Feel free to get creative! Incorporate season-specific colors into your photography to evoke the perfect mood and atmosphere. Think bright and vibrant colors for summer, warm light for autumn, cozy and intimate hues for winter.
These are only guidelines, of course; to mark your brand as distinct and to keep pace with new trends, try modulating traditional approaches when it makes sense for your marketing. For example, “quiet luxury” is an aesthetic gaining momentum in 2024 and can dovetail beautifully with a winter story for the right brand.
With 67% of consumers saying the quality of a product image determines whether or not they make a purchase, it’s important to invest in high-quality photography.
Whether you’re going for a premium look or a more documentary-style realism, working with skilled photographers and production professionals will help capture what’s special about each season and meaningfully connect it to your brand. This is critical to telling your story most powerfully, as well as to convey a trustworthy company image.
Ensure your seasonal brand photography is adaptable across different marketing platforms. What works on one platform might need tweaking for another. For example, nearly 85% of Instagram’s user base is younger than 45, while Facebook is preferred by the 35-44 age group. Creating impactful content for each of these platforms requires understanding how their demographics relate to each season and its customs and holidays.
In addition, be sure to plan ahead with your creative team to make sure your visuals maintain a consistent brand image even as they adapt to the specifics of each platform.
When it comes to creating strong seasonal photography, it helps to have expertise on your side. Filmkraft has an experienced team ready to help your brand create marketing that’s impactful, memorable, and emotionally resonant. Whether you’re interested in product photography, lifestyle photography, or both, you’re covered with us. Reach out today to discuss how to make seasonal photography work for your brand.
