Corbis has launched Creative Boutique, a new online service for advertising, marketing and media pros. The resource will showcase new imagery and provide an assortment of free content, including search tips, wallpapers and articles.Logistically, Creative Boutique is a new section of the Corbis Web site. The other sections showcase the company's product and service lines, including royalty-free images, the celebrity photo division Outline, Corbis Motion, rights clearance and media management, which is currently in the market for a new owner. All of these are online shops that promote new products and offer deals like a 25% discount on the purchase of two image CDs.
In contrast, the Creative Boutique mini-site is styled and positioned as an online magazine. It showcases new work, currently highlighting a surrealistic image of New Zealand calves by Selling Stock subscribers Momatiuk-Eastcott among others. More subtly than the online stores, the "Best of" section promotes Corbis' archival imagery, such as the Bettmann collection. Corbis-coined creative keywords like "sporno" (sports + porno = images of buff young athletes) and LOHAS (lifestyles of health and sustainability) are featured in a separate section that links into the site's search engine.
Creative Boutique follows on the heels of the launch of "I Am Buried." This September marketing campaign targets -- and promises to reward -- overworked advertising creatives but is meeting with criticism of the copyright-related fine print.
Though Creative Boutique vies for the attention of the same target audience, it tries a new approach. The addition of free content has proven to boost traffic, and the addition of constantly updated editorial content brings prequalified repeat traffic. Creative Boutique attempts to appeal to advertising and marketing creatives by offering them a new product: downloadable CREATIVE IQ trends reports.
The reports will be released monthly to cover emerging cultural trends and resulting visual needs projections. The proprietary research is conducted in-house, using Corbis' own statistics, commercial and editorial tear sheets, and demographic and psychographic information. The launch issue of Creative Boutique includes reports on the much-publicized phenomenon of global greening, generational re-connect of multigenerational families and millennial development, which depicts the new generation of kids.
Ross Sutherland, Corbis' chief creative officer, says the company's goal is to combine the best images with analysis of emerging trends, thus helping provide creatives with inspiration and spot-on pictures. As recently promised by CEO Gary Shenk, Corbis has renewed its focus on the core image business and is fervently pursuing the most lucrative segment of the customer market.