ImageCrowd seeks to address the lack of Asian photos in stock photography

Singapore – ImageCrowd, a multilingual platform, aims to crowdsource Asian photography by connecting buyers to Asian photographers in their native language.

ImageCrowd essentially is a marketplace that connects photographers in Asia with international buyers. Through ImageCrowd, buyers can make specific requests and ImageCrowd will crowdsource matching photos. Photographers, be they professional or amateur can submit their photographs for the buyers’ consideration. Any unbought photos will be collated into a stock photography database.

Overcoming language and copyright issues

Acquiring a common database of images from Asia, to date, has been inhibited by two key issues. The first is that local photographers do not speak English or languages other than their native language; whilst the buyers typically speak English in addition to their native language. The other issue is that of licencing. Local image users rarely respect the photographer’s copyrights, which has resulted in a reluctance by photographers to work as stock photographers, which contributes to the lack of quality local photos in Asia.

Danny Wilson, co-founder and the CTO for ImageCrowd says, “ImageCrowd seeks to overcome these issues with a language matrix and licencing agreements that are imbedded in the software and processes. In fact, our innovative approach to the language matrix design has been recognised by a grant for innovation, which awarded us funds to further develop the technology.”

The idea for the matrix came from Jiang Ting, co-founder of ImageCrowd and who also founded Bridge86, a multilingual advertising and marketing agency that specialises in copy writing and translation for APAC markets. Jiang helms marketing for ImageCrowd. She comments,

“The matrix overcomes language barriers by automatically mapping keywords and tags associated with the images, which means that we can present accurately tagged content to the reader in their native language. The photos are therefore accessible to any buyer, irrespective of their native language.”

The market for Photos

The market for photos is huge and growing. Xerox says that coloured visuals increase people's willingness to read a piece of content by 80%.

Gijs Waverijn, CEO of ImageCrowd says, “Our research tells us that in 2016 content creators are prioritizing creating more engaging content, especially visual content.[1] Visual assets, including photos, are core to how a brand story is communicated. If supported by relevant images, the content is read, whereas without relevant images, the same content is not read.[2]”

ImageCrowd’s entry to the market is timely. “The latest trend to programmatic and targeted visual campaigns increase the demand for images more than tenfold. Content driven marketing is rapidly rising, which requires fast, authentic (not staged) and raw photos from real life,” comments Waverijn.

“ImageCrowd is ready for buyers. We firmly believe in the photographers that we have on board, along with our own understanding of marketing and content generation, which gives us the edge over international competitors in this region.”

Jiang underscores his point, “By inherently understanding the needs of clients and we can better communicate those needs effectively to photographs, ensuring a great outcome for the buyers.”

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Caption: The ImageCrowd team
From left to right: Ou Shiwei, Gijs Waverijn, Jiang Ting, Danny Wilson

[1]39% of marketers believe that more of their budget should be allocated to the acquisition or creation of compelling visual assets (CMO Council); 73% of content creators plan to prioritize creating more engaging content in 2016, and 55% plan to prioritize creating visual content (Content Marketing Institute)

[2]65% of senior marketing executives believe that visual assets (photos, video, illustrations and infographics) are core to how their brand story is communicated (CMO Council); Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images (Kissmetrics)