Royalty Free Stock: A Cautionary Tale

It's no secret that traditional stock photographers (and presumably their agencies) are not fans of royalty free stock photos. These low cost images can be purchased for just about any use and then re-used royalty free. It often seems like no one is listening any more when the caution is raised that the licensed image will no longer be unique or special since it is likely to be found almost anywhere anyone else also wants to license it. Or of course they could have gone to the trouble of finding actual coal users and coal industry employees (there are certainly plenty) and done a photo shoot.

Well, the chickens came home to roost this week... for the Coal industry which apparently was too cheap to get some type of exclusive license for the images they used in their new "FACES of Coal" campaign. They were the laughingstock of the Daily Show when Jon Stewart showed the iStockPhoto website and revealed the images to essentially be random clip art. I'm sure they wish they'd spent the extra money for the real thing.

One of the FACES of Coal from the coal industry ad campaign

One of the FACES of coal shown on the original iStockPhoto site.

You can see the clip online at http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/#clip218009 or at http://www.thedailyshow.com/. It is about 6-1/2 minutes into the September 29th show.