Photo credit: Getty Images.
Including stock photos in your online and print media promotional materials brings your products and services to life—whether you work within a corporation, as an independent consultant or volunteer on the Board of an organization. Even if you’re not designing the materials that represent your professional affiliation, you are a stakeholder.
Regardless of your intended audience(s), a range of current and potential customers consume your media choices; internally, employees, consultants, vendors and others consume those same choices. On a daily basis, your organization negotiates value with this variety of stakeholders—to win (ongoing) business or to engage internal stakeholders to identify with the brand they represent. The bottom line appeal of photographs used in promotional materials—particularly those that include people—is that stakeholders relate to and “buy” the message that they are being sold. As a representative of your organization, you are at the front receiving lines of how that brand is perceived.
Our recommendation: Evaluate your brand image by evaluating your stock images. And then, repeat the process on a regular basis: re-evaluate. While we do not wish to prescribe what images reflect your commitment to reflective workplace diversity and inclusion practices, we offer the following guidance as a resource as you proactively work better globally.
When people in your images look—more or less—alike…
Such images may very well reflect you, your colleagues and the people with whom you tend to associate. The idea is not to portray visual diversity that does not generally exist in your work environment, but to anticipate those internal and external stakeholders who may join your team, group or network in the future—and help them also identify with your brand. Whether or not visual diversity is a current reality in your work world, inviting an applied ethic of workplace inclusion can only be of benefit to relatively monocultural and intercultural workplaces alike.
When everybody looks particularly different from one another…
Some well-known advertisers have made a trademark of routinely using images of groups of people that look especially different from one another. In these ads, it’s common to picture one each of people who are supposed to represent different ethnic or racial groups— a blond-haired person, a dark-skinned individual, their “culturally ambiguous” companion, etc. When life doesn’t look like this for the audience(s) consuming your media, this “token” approach may be perceived as artificial. Indeed, providers of stock images have some improvement to make in offering “real life” images of visually diverse groups. In the meantime, we can do our part by responsibly selecting images that are relatable for our audience(s)—and perhaps a bit outside of the status quo.
When one person looks unlike the others…
This portrait of your workplace may be realistic. Though, it can become problematic when such an image is selected with the intention to portray diversity. Because diversity is not one color these images reflect more of an approach towards representation than diversity and inclusion.
The following is a partial checklist of media portals that you might (re)evaluate together with others int he workplace for the (unintended) messages these images deliver:
- Organization websites
- Holiday greeting cards
- (E)-Newsletters
- Brochures
- Video
- Also: The variety of voices used to narrate your audio advertisement, promotional video, etc.
Email the Editor with your feedback on our use of stock images.