At Stocksy, we’re always excited to connect and collaborate with our clients to learn how they ideate around stock media, think about the future, and leverage Stocksy to achieve their creative goals.
We were fortunate enough to sit down with one of our leading Tech clients Meta (formerly known as Facebook) and their Design Lead David Pham. Meta has been a collaborative client of Stocksy’s for 7 years since October 2015 – using Stocksy’s media for Meta’s progressive goals ever since. In his role, David focuses on visual storytelling for Meta’s Global Business Marketing team across multiple applications, including digital and traditional marketing, sales presentations, and brand systems.
They chatted about how stock media can be utilized for marketing goals, the importance of DEI and true representational work, the power and privilege of visual media, and how Meta is thinking about stock media within their global objectives.
About the Meta mission
David shared that he uses Stocksy to fulfill Meta’s Global Business Marketing team’s mission to make it easier to turn good ideas into great opportunities. “We believe in marketing that puts the people and communities we serve at the heart of everything we do. We’re passionate about the customers we serve, and deeply ambitious in the work we do to transform marketing for the world. When it comes to showing this visually, we have a responsibility to represent the people and the communities across the world in a very authentic and relatable way.”
Meta looks for stock images that celebrate moments of human connection among the global community of people they serve. These are moments of interaction between people that give a sense of presence — they’re vibrant, full of light and/or movement. Images that make “you feel as though you are in that moment, like a story that is unfolding. We want images that use depth and dimension to create a sense of immersion (like a surfer riding through a wave) or play with the framing to really pull you into the photo with an intimate crop (friends celebrating a birthday in a backyard BBQ).”
Connecting with Meta’s global audience through diverse media
Serving a multitude of global target audiences, Meta needs to create content that appeals to every geographic region as well as different business types – from global brands to mom-and-pop businesses. When they are working with campaigns in APAC, North America, South America, and EMEA, David’s team is reflective of that region – always asking if that feels right. “Stocksy definitely embodies that – what I like seeing is the variety and the different ways businesses are reflected – not stereotypical representations of businesses. Nice variety of businesses that sometimes we don’t even think about. We love when we can type something in and get inspired by the businesses you see.”
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Representation in stock media
Like many of the clients we serve, Meta has come to Stocksy as they see representation as a vital part of their Marketing strategy. Stocksy believes in representing the world as it is and has made it part of its company mission and content policy to provide anti-cliche, non-stereotypical representations of all communities.
We chatted about recent video games and movies in the market and how younger generations seeing themselves in those characters are so important. David explained that the mission at Meta is deeply intertwined with true representation, citing: “Our mission at Meta is bringing people and communities closer together. If we want to achieve this, we must highlight underrepresented groups of people in our visuals and that our visuals represent the communities we serve. Not only will this help people feel seen and heard, but the exposure will also reduce underlying prejudices.” This aligns very closely with Stocksy’s strict content policy which is founded on an ongoing system of checks and balances to ensure that we are making considered decisions about content that may be viewed as offensive or problematic.
Saving time, saving the environment and providing inspiration
When talking to David we asked him why he uses stock media at all. Why with Meta’s resources would you not turn to internal photo shoots or outsource custom editorial? David replied that “Stock media helps Meta scale our marketing communications across different experiences in a cost and time efficient manner. We use them on our web pages, ad campaigns, and in presentations. They’re a critical component of our design system.” He also cited sustainability and carbon neutrality concerns with the amount of individualized photo shoots that are happening. Photo and video shoots are huge resource endeavors and have a measurable environmental impact. Scaling through stock media is a sustainable marketing solution.
“I think that finding the right image and finding the appropriate images is just as important as making the design, the logo, the brand, as strong as it can be. As a Designer, I believe both are equal in weight.”
But it’s not just about getting the right media for David. It’s also about the enjoyment of the curation and image selection process: “Stocksy’s collection is ahead of the curve compared to other stock houses. We spend less time looking for the right photos, we actually enjoyed going through your curated collections, and the photos felt authentic and real. It was like looking at frames of a documentary film. I’m surprised how often I come across photos that bring to life representation that you might not have thought of before.”
Why Stocksy?
We were curious to hear why Meta has spent over 7 years with Stocksy. David said that it boiled down to Stocksy’s focus on quality and time saving for their team – “We are spending less time loading pages after pages to find the right image and yet at the same time finding ourselves discovering images that are sparking inspiration.”
He also mentioned access to our Creative Research team – which is a unique value add to our clients of Stocksy. “I’m a big fan of the Creative Research Team. When we were creating brand guidelines around photography, we shared it with the Stocksy team to help us create galleries that aligned to our brand, removing the need to create bespoke photoshoots. I gave 5 images to the research team for what I would like and within a week had a whole gallery. The shareable link made it easy for our team to access the curated collection.”
