
I have helped many business owners build websites, create LGBT marketing plans and put together simple print advertisements that are oftentimes in need of LGBT photography. It truly is slim pickings. I am not saying that no LGBT stock imagery exists but the stuff that is out there is often riddled with problems. Here are a couple of issues I have found with LGBT stock photography and then I’ll share a few examples of how to solve this problem in your business.



So when I was talking with this CDO, I outlined these problems to him and I was basically confirming to him what his gut was already saying. There are a few ways around this.


- You can use yourself or someone you know who is LGBT. It may sound a bit crazy or you may not want to put yourself out there but I’ll tell you what, it does the job inexpensively. I did this when I was the marketing manager in the trenches of preparing the LGBT outreach for the company I was working for. (If you don’t know how I made the business case for this, check out this blog post.) The company I was working for had many people who were homophobic jerks and I was the only person out of 90 or so who was LGBT. It was a rough environment for me for a lot of reasons but when I was preparing this campaign I didn’t like the stock photography available so I took a picture with my girlfriend at the time and we used that in our marketing materials. And it did the job because no one else was using it. I tried doing a Google search for the image but couldn’t find anything, which at this point is probably a good thing, 😉
- The next idea is that you could ask your customers or those who are loyal to your brand if they would be willing to share a picture with you that you could use in your marketing materials. Be specific on what type of image you are looking for and what the purpose and intention of this image will be. Clearly someone wouldn’t want to give you a fun family photo of themselves and come to find out you’ve cropped out the kids and are using their images to sell explosives or something extreme.
- The best way to protect yourself in either of these scenarios is getting a photo agreement together that outlines the particular usages of the photo and that you have the ability to use it in pre-determined places. It doesn’t have to be big fancy contract or agreement but needs to provide basic protections to both the business owner and the person providing their images to be used.
I hope you have found value you in this post and go forward and kick some serious but in whatever LGBT related marketing endeavors you take on. If you feel I have overlooked something please let me know. Also, if you have enjoyed this post I’d love for you to share with a friend! The more knowledge out there about options the better for the LGBT community as a whole.
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