Survey Says!
Every year we poll the creative buyers to better understand the trends and direction of our industry. The results from this year’s survey give us reason for optimism and point to a continuing need for commercial artists to put themselves out there in a variety of print, online, and social forums. This year we reached out to 9,000 buyers between April 12 and April 22 and got results from buyers at every major advertising company, lots of boutique firms, most major publishers, and many of the largest in-house agencies.
Things look up. More buyers see work increasing…35% versus 31% last year. Only 10% of the respondents see the number of jobs decreasing.
It’s important for assignment artists to understand how buyers find talent and how vital it is for artists to reach out to buyers in a variety of forums: 94% said they use online sources and consider it their most important tool, but note, 93% said they use print. Only 67% ever rely on direct mail. These results reinforce what we have been saying for years. Advertising in source books like Workbook remains a critical part of your marketing success, but it has to be combined with an overall strategy that includes a beautiful online presence and a social strategy to drive people to your website.
We have been hearing that more and more buyers are hiring the same commercial artist for both still and motion related to a campaign. We added a new question this year to find out how often this happens and to establish a baseline so that we can track it going forward. There’s clearly an advantage to providing both still and motion services, but the results were not overwhelming in one direction or the other. It appears that while many art buyers hire the same artist, there are also plenty more that don’t. About 44% percent said either never or not often, 32% said sometimes, and only 18% said they hire the same artist often or more.
We found it surprising that while most buyers seem to know what they want and where to find it, 36% of buyers searching for illustrators and 22% of those seeking photographers reported that they have trouble sometimes, often, or most of the time. We are working to make it easier for them by putting great talent on display in ways that are easy to access.