At a test shoot for Juicy Couture in August.
The Added Value of an Audience
A cinemagraph commissioned by Juicy Couture.
It's not just Beck's and Burg's photography and cinemagraphs that make them appealing to brands. The two have also amassed a large built-in audience -- a series of six cinemagraphs they did featuring model Coca Rocha in Oscar de la Renta gowns merited around 55,000 notes and more than 2,000,000 impressions, Tumblr fashion director Rich Tong revealed at a conference in Paris earlier this month. That exposure makes the duo a valuable distribution force.
Take a recent campaign Beck and Burg did for fashion brand Juicy Couture. They were commissioned to create a series of cinemagraphs using Juicy Couture products, some of which appeared as banner ads across a range of fashion sites, and some of which -- like the one above -- appeared solely on their own Tumblr, racking upwards of 15,000 notes (reblogs and likes) apiece.
"The great thing about Jamie and Kevin is that they're not just artists, but they also have a distribution portal," says Robinovitz. "Why would you just hire a photographer when you can hire a photographer who has a place to share photos… [and] a hungry audience?"
Robinovitz's question was rhetorical, of course, but also a good one to pose.
In a recent interview, Scott Schuman, the photographer behind street style blog The Sartorialist, says that he earns somewhere between a quarter of a million and half a million dollars per year running ads on his blog, in addition to the assignments it has earned him. Will photographers who don't blog and market themselves online stand as much of a chance? And will blog coverage be written into assignment contracts?
Beck says that while she has not negotiated blog coverage into any of her contracts directly, it is discussed with brands during an assignment -- namely, she says, to figure out timing and what she's allowed to post. Brands don't control what goes on Tumblr, and she is careful to only accept assignments true to her aesthetic.