After six years of connecting advertising agencies and brands with image creators ImageBrief has announced that they are closing down their marketing services. Effective March 1, 2018 when photographers who have subscribed to the service login the only page available to them is the one where they may download information about their licenses. No other website pages are operational. No new “Briefs” will be offered.
The announcement to photographers included the following:
We're proud of the products and apps we built, but even more so, we're grateful for the community that enabled them to grow. More than 70,000 creators earned millions of dollars collaborating with 12,500+ global agencies and brands in 169 countries.
There has never been a better time for creators to thrive. Demand for content has increased, and the tools to create world-class creative are more accessible than ever.
Our talented team of engineers, designers, developers, and curators have worked tirelessly to make ImageBrief a success in a competitive and rapidly evolving landscape, and our immediate priority is to help you transition to other services to support your business.
In the coming days, our team will be in contact with you directly with detailed information about your specific account, license history, and services. Over the next week, we recommend logging into ImageBrief to download and retain your license history and related assets. Further details can be found in the FAQ's below.
We want to thank you for your participation and loyalty, and look forward to working with you in the coming weeks to ensure a smooth transition.
Rumors of financial difficulties started in 2016. Contributors say that at about that time it became harder to get answers to questions from the owners and it appeared that the staff was cut in half. Payments started to get delayed. It often took several reminders to get paid.
In the past year the quality and breadth of briefs seemed to decline. Often the briefs appeared to be fishing expeditions by companies looking for free comps that they could use in-house while building branding materials for other projects. Requests for lifestyle pictures seldom seemed to result in sales. Briefs were frequently closed with no sale and no explanation.
Many photographers complained that they spent a lot of time responding to briefs, but never made a sale. At that point they would give up. The rare very specific briefs that very few photographers were able to respond to, tended to be the ones that resulted in sales. But there weren’t enough of them to keep the 70,000 participating creators happy. The vast majority of creators found that the time spent studying briefs and submitting images for consideration didn’t generate enough revenue to justify continued participation.
The system probably worked best for photographers who had large collections of released images and could easily upload already shot images that fit a particular brief.
Contributors have been told that for the next seven days, they will be able download their licenses and associated schedules by going to www.imagebrief.com. Contributors are legally obliged to continue to adhere to all terms and agreements relative to their licensed images.
Over the next 90 days, the ImageBrief’s finance team will continue to manage accounts on behalf of contributors for images recently licensed. Contributors will be contacted directly regarding the specific status of outstanding payments and paid within 30 days of receipt of the client's payment.
ImageRights Services
Contributors who arranged to have their images synced to ImageRights will retain their ImageRights account, but they will need to reset their password to be able to login to ImageRights directly. Head to the login page at
www.imagerights.com/login and select the 'Forgot Password' link.