Avoid This Common Mistake When Using Stock Media for Your Holiday Assets

The stock media market is becoming crucial for many entities, ranging from media outlets and corporations to influencers and creative agencies, as they push to present fresh and updated media to illustrate their content.

This is something that's even more relevant around holidays.

Many choose to adhere to tradition when approaching holiday-themed content, but that's something of a common mistake, especially if the goal is to make a lasting impression.

To Carmen Maftei from Dreamstime, a platform offering a catalog of stock media, diversity, and creativity can make all the difference, for both contributors and users. 

Who Is Carmen Maftei?

Carmen is a PR and Content Strategist at Dreamstime, with fifteen years of experience in the stock photography industry. Her work focuses on developing the company's brand narratives and marketing campaigns, utilizing her background in literature and foreign languages to enhance storytelling and visual content selection.

As big holidays come around, there’s a demand for visual assets to dress articles, sites, campaigns, videos, and many other forms of media content.

Stock media platforms, like Dreamstime, strive on these occasions

“Any major holiday presents itself with challenges and opportunities for any business. Holidays usually generate higher traffic and a need for related imagery, so it's crucial to prepare in advance to cater successfully to the heightened demands of your customers in terms of content quality, user experience, and prices.”

“You need to ensure your library is well-stocked with appealing and up-to-date visuals."

"The interest begins its peak at least two or three months before the actual holiday, especially for high-seller events such as Christmas, New Year, Easter, or Black Friday.”

The recent Valentine’s Day was no exception, with all sorts of romantic icons bombarding consumers left and right.

That’s to be expected, of course, and that’s why it’s important to diversify if you wish to stand out.

“Valentine’s Day is about love, couples, romance, dinners, candies, and flowers — but you do not want to remain stuck to classic symbols and representations of love.”

“Our best sellers for Valentine's Day revolve around traditional symbols like hearts, balloons, candies, and roses, recognized globally as emblems of love. Download trends show a preference for neutral, widely accepted symbols of affection, with heart-themed designs leading in popularity.”

“These designs are simple, with clean backgrounds and ample copy space for customization."

"The typical color scheme aligns with the holiday, mainly pastel, pink, and red. Compositions often feature pets, symbolizing innocent, unconditional love, which resonates well during Valentine's.”

“Visuals also include candlelit dinners, couples in affectionate poses, and modern representations of love, catering to a diverse audience seeking inclusive and contemporary imagery.”

“We encourage contributors to submit diverse content and explore a wide range of concepts, themes, and styles, from classic to modern and inclusive representations of love."

"Card templates and lovely V-day background collections cater to our diverse audience.”

It’s a synergy between contributors' creativity and users’ demand for innovative assets

That’s not whole the story though, as explained by Carmen.

“Customer feedback has always helped us identify the needs and preferences of our users when interacting with our site and service.”

“For instance, we replicated successful email campaigns or tried to use similar designs in subsequent themed pages when these were popular with our audience. Insights from our customers have helped us add, keep, or eliminate features, plans, icons, and even visuals.”

At the end of the day, everything comes down to data. Analyzing engagement metrics to tailor content effectively for holidays helps to acknowledge the nature of consumer preferences.

"Metrics are important to see what resonates most with our audience during a holiday."

"Last year’s metrics offer a helpful glimpse into what went right or wrong, but it's crucial to correlate this with today’s data because preferences can shift significantly from one year to the next.”

“We must be ready to address specific customer requests and needs."

"Like offering a dedicated request thread for custom and specific designs for Valentine’s Day or any other theme.”

“Knowing your audience is key in every marketing campaign, so your content should be aligned with your preferences and interests. If your community is really into red heart-shaped balloons, go for it. If they are up for a twist from the usual designs, dare to use a more abstract representation of love.”

Success in stock photography hinges on understanding and adapting to evolving market demands, especially during peak holiday seasons.

Collaborating with an advertising agency can also help your stock media choices not only look great but also effectively convey your brand’s message.

Still, it’s important to know when to go for a more traditional approach and when to bet on more creative assets to stand out.

As the stock media industry grows and more users get access to the same catalogs of assets, creativity and diversity will only become more crucial.