Many Marketing Agencies are missing a vital ingredient...

OK, for the last week or so I have been making calls to marketing agencies. The reason is to establish some potential connections for work and to hand pick some for a very specific working relationship. This specific working relationship would be ongoing and I won't beat about the bush, I need to know that we will get on, insomuch as you can judge at the beginning of any relationship.

On one of these calls I may have come across as a bit rude! The conversation was very short but it immediately told me that I was unlikely to align well with the firm. If I have made a mistake, so be it, but that's life and that's how things sometimes work. The simple thing was that on asking for the MD's name, or someone I could speak with, I was told they didn't give names out!  To be fair, their website attested to this in that anonymous, stock photography sort of way. No profile photos, no names.Call me old fashioned but asking for someone's name, rank and number, just to have an introductory chat hardly seems inappropriate and the thing is, this was a marketing agency!

There's more! Having looked around a bit more attentively than usual I am shocked at the blandness of some marketing agencies. Now I am well aware of the risks with throwing stones in a glasshouse and I'll take on the chin any criticism lobbed at me but... They. Are. Marketing Agencies.

They're reason for being is to have skills and creativity in name awareness, social media, advertising, branding, the whole PR, personal business image wizardry magic wand make you look fantastic and brilliant sort of thing.People complain constantly about the HIgh Street becoming a cloned, homogeneous, facsimile of every other High Street and I am beginning to wonder if the problem is with the Marketing Agencies behind the curtains.I have found agencies who purport to build your social media channels and only have 60 followers on twitter and 40 likes on Facebook.

I have looked at loads of Marketing Agency websites that all look the same, seriously, they do, same template style website, same functionality, similar colours, similar logos all stating as fact that they are all different from the competition. Blah, Blah, Blah.

Right, so here I get to the nub of what is really bugging me. I have been reading Marketing Agency blurb and blogs and guidance articles and 'the 10 best things to do if' and more often than not photography is sidelined or not even mentioned.We live in an age where the visual image is King. Don't deny it, everywhere you go photos are in your face. Billboards (ha ha, wait for it!), magazines, papers, newsfeeds, websites, blogs everything carries photos which means they mean business.

Photos crack the nut, they get your message across, they punch hard and often low, straight to your gut, your heart and sometimes to your head.Photos build identity yet marketing gurus, agencies, bloggers, social media wizards still rely heavily on stock photos which hide identity. Stock has its part to play and can be very useful but on the whole it is crap at building a brand. Not the quality of the imagery available or the skills behind their creation but that they are not authentic and honest and genuine and real.

The way a business or an individual can really build a brand is to be authentic and to make a connection with the client or customer.A while ago I wanted to put my name out there locally. Just name awareness. I did this.Say what you will it was noticed, it was fun, people were talking about it, I got recognised, it brought in work and 18 months or so later people still bring it up in conversation.The feedback was that people would have expected me to showcase photos I had made; which is funny because I did! I shot the photos on self timer.

So, my almost rant of a blog today is why oh why can't the marketing industry really get to grips with some real and in your face personal and business authentic photo branding? In too many cases I have found a marketing agency's website, seen that they design and build websites for clients and followed the link, to find a nice looking website, either filled with stock or crappy or bland photos of the team, the business, the products and services.

I mostly work for businesses direct and am passionate about getting them to see the real benefit in investing in authentic and genuine and real photos of themselves and their work.I am passionate about making them look good, making what they do look good. I want to develop photo narratives which tell their story and speak to their clients and customers.

So my journey to finding marketing agencies for a special relationship is ongoing. People can be picky when it comes to me, absolutely fine because I'm being picky. I want some fresh thinkers.Who out there wants to talk?