This is a bit of a bizarre story..but check it out. So a few weeks ago, at around 5pm on a Friday night I got an email from a woman inquiring about one of the photos on my website. This photo: snapped back in May on a trip up to CT for the weekend.
At the time I posted it here and made some wise-crack about the GW Bridge being a necessary evil on a weekend trip up to CT.
Apparently a "creative director" was surfing the internets and somehow came across the image. So this woman wanted to know the resolution and how much I would charge to release the rights as they wanted to use it in an ad campaign. A bit of a loaded question...
First, I checked out the woman's email address and found out that it was a legitimate media/marketing company based in NYC. So I wrote back and told her that it was taken with my smart-phone, thus the resolution wasn't that great, and I asked for a bit more information about how it was ultimately going to be used. Was she talking about a church bulletin or a national billboard? It kinda makes a difference.
She quickly wrote back and said she'd have to look into the resolution issue and couldn't really give me much more information on its final use. Hmmm.
On Saturday I got another note asking if I'd be able to re-shoot the image sometime the following week and she said that the image would be used throughout 2014. So I was getting bits and pieces.
I really wasn't sure how to respond at this point so I suggested we set up a time on Monday to chat on the phone so that we could work everything out. She got back to me right away again and said that she'd like to set up a call for Sunday since time was of the essence. I couldn't figure it out...if this image was to be used through 2014 why was there such a fire drill to get it resolved over the weekend? Just didn't make any sense.
In my head I did start to put a few things together. I knew that the Super Bowl in 2014 was at the new Meadowlands stadium, so maybe that's what this was all about? Seemed like a good guess, but it was just that, a guess.
I stood by on Sunday waiting to hear about a conference call with this woman and their creative director. It never came. Seemed odd since just the day before she was all about getting this done asap. I did spend some time on Sunday calling a few other photographers I know to try and get some insight on how to price the release rights, but again, I still didn't know the extent of how they wanted to use the image. I also tried to figure out when I could get up to NYC in the next week to re-shoot the image.
On Monday, mid-morning, I still hadn't heard anything so I sent her a quick note asking about the status of a call and where things stood. She then got back to me saying that they decided to go a different direction and wanted to use some GGI graphics instead of a photo. Perhaps they'd work with me on another project in the future. That was it...and essentially the end of the story. I still didn't have a full picture of what they wanted or what the final product was for.
Fast forward to today. I opened up Yahoo and in the news section I spotted a little nugget about a new logo for the 2014 Super Bowl host committee. This has to be what they were asking me to work on and why they wanted that image. No doubt. I'm still not sure how my photo would have translated into a logo...how many photos have you seen as a logo? None.
But how about the end result...just horrible. I get the idea of hyping up the bad weather possibility issue with the snowflake, but other than that the rest of the logo is a bust. The green color has no place in a scheme that is set up to evoke a winter feel and they've got NY and NJ flip flopped from reality in terms of their actual geographic location.
Hopefully this is just a temporary logo for the "host committee", whoever and whatever that is, and they design a new logo for the actual game itself.
Even though she kept you waiting and guessing what "this project" was all about, hopefully she'll keep her word and keep you in mind for a future project. Maybe she'll even pass your name along to other marketing companies! Wouldn't be a bad side-job.
Posted by: MarilynL | September 28, 2011 at 01:03 PM