Bob London argues that consulting firms should ditch stock photos of fake models and use real employees instead. Cross Country Consulting in Virginia did this and landed two consecutive years on the Inc. 5000 list. Authentic photos build trust with clients and help attract talent.
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Hey everybody, what do you see when you see a picture like this, a stock photograph? What do you see? You see shiny happy people, almost perfect looking. They're probably models. And they're somewhat kind of forced-looking diversity. And they have their hands on top of each other in a pose that most of us have probably never seen or participated in in real life. If we have, it was probably when we were 8 years old in sleepaway camp and there was a bonfire nearby. Why do services firms, however, insist on using images like these and other similar— similarly fake messaging and images when they're trying to communicate, no doubt, honesty, transparency, success, things like that? I'll tell you why. Because it's cheaper and quicker to use a picture like this than it is to use real people. That's a conversation that goes on all the time. So you're a consulting firm, you're working with a design you've got a design firm engaged and you want to get the site up, you know, in a reasonable period of time, you have a budget set, and the design firm says, "Well, we can find you some images for the website because it's important to have an image on every page of the website because images really engage people." Okay, well, you're— let's see, if you're a consulting firm, what do you want? You want— let's just look at photographs of consulting firms. So is this the image that's going to be really engaging? Some stranger? Talking to two other strangers across the table. Is this the one that's going to be engaging? Are these hipsters going to be engaging? How could these possibly represent a consulting firm when these people don't exist and work at that consulting firm? All these. So, but this is what you see on websites. This is exactly what you see people using, especially in services businesses where the people really are the product or service. Again, I go back to this one. This is one of the all-time favorites that I hope I never see again on a real live website. Let me talk about how to do it right and just give you an example. Cross Country Consulting is a Virginia-based national consulting firm that does financial advisory consulting, technology consulting, etc. These are the actual executives. I know her, I know her, I know most of the people in this video because I've worked with Cross Country Consulting. Even though I didn't have anything to do with the website, but I think they're embracing the spirit of reality. Reality is the new marketing. This is what vendors and prospective employees feel more comfortable with instead of this or these, because it shows that they are— this is a firm comprised of real people, and they also wanted to invest and take the time and effort and money to showcase the real people on the website. This is a consulting firm. Even if you take away that what would a prospective client think, look at prospective employees. I mean, these guys are in a war for talent. Picture yourself here, you know, pictures of real folks. There's a great video on another page that shows 3 or 4 employees talking, and this is not— I wouldn't say that this video of real people is the reason that Consult Cross Country has been successful, But they have been successful. They've got 2 consecutive years on the Inc. 5000 list, fastest-growing companies in the US, private, which is not as easy to do for a services firm as it would be a product firm, that kind of growth. So they've been successful, but I think it's the fact that they embrace the transparency, they embrace authenticity, and that's part of their business model to deliver, as they say, a better experience for clients and people. Well, how can you deliver a better experience while you're also showing images like this, which are— you immediately, as a reader, dismiss an image like this and you go, "Oh my God, okay, so this is just like every other firm that decided not to spend money to put up a real website with real people on it." So let's all sign a pledge not to use fake pictures like this on websites moving forward, especially when we're in services businesses. That's all for now.
