Getty Images getting Clobbered

Getty Images, the world's biggiest supplier of pictures used in advertising and the guy who has been buying everyone up recently, reported second quarter profit and sales that rose less than analyst estimated.

They still made a hearty $218 million.

Getty announced that it was going to lay off as many as 100 employees. Cutcaster is sorry to hear that people are losing thir jobs but Cutcaster is ramping up and we welcome all resumes.

Getty's stock is currently down 15%. I guess the days of a $90 stock price are over for Getty no matter how hard they try to buy up the industry and control it.

UPDATE

Getty's stock is now down over 21%. Jonathon Klein put out a simple strategy for dealing with the disaster by saying, "My advice is simple - ignore it." I don't know if you can tell the people that lost their job or the investors who are losing money to just ignore it but the message he sent is definitely "simple." For a complete rundown of his letter which highlights the Getty business and where it currently stands, check out StockPhotoTalks write up.

The New Pitch in Advertising

Over the last few years, there has been a steady shift away from the ad channels most of us were used to i.e. TV and radio, print, and billboards- and towards digital media. As we have all read about and seen, there has been an explosion of new advertising companies popping up, competing for the same accounts as the established big boys.

So how are these new firms or their established competitors dealing with the changing landscape. What tricks and gimmicks are they resorting to?

Some are getting creative with their pitch and approach as well as shelling out big bucks to win accounts loyalty and business. The LA Times reports on this growing trend and shift in the advertising world.

Here is one example. When RPA heard that La-Z-Boy was looking for a new ad agency, executives at the company bought one of the company's recliners, trained a Web camera on it and took turns sitting in it, declaring that they wouldn't leave it empty until they got a meeting. They spent Super Bowl weekend in the gold-colored chenille chair and won the $35-million La-Z-Boy account. Not a bad gimmick.

Is the risk vs. the reward of spending big money and time going after these big accounts? What has been your experience?

Can user generated content be used in ad campaigns?

It wasn't long ago that no one had heard of User Generated Content (UGC). It hasn't taken long though for advertisers to realize they resonate with their target audience and are a great staging ground for a focus group study. Just in the past year or so UG commercials have sprinted onto the scene and created a stir throughout the advertising world. Advertisers from Dorritos to Dove to Malibu Caribbean Rum have held contests to find user-created videos to use as commercials. These types of commercials, and the buzz surrounding them from different media outlets that cover them and the people that talk about them, shows that the advertising world is embracing the advantages of viral marketing.

How does an advertising agency decide whether going in front of their brand with a clip from YouTube is a good idea and won't get them fired on the spot? How much convincing does it take a brand to trust the advertiser that it isn't as big a leap of faith as they think it is to use the content in a campaign? We saw what happened with Virgin Media and using CC Flickr photos. They did it the wrong way and are now paying for it in legal headaches and a botched campaign.

The pros and cons of a UGC campaign have been discussed at length all over the Internet and across boardrooms. It's our opinion that, using UGC in an advertising campaign can be very cost effective. In most cases, the creators are paid as if they are an actor and give up a lot of the rights to the video. That saves a brand a lot of money.

Why wouldn't the creators license the videos to the brand or advertiser to use? It seems like they are short-changing themselves the value of the clip. If you had a hit on YouTube and a major brand came to you and said they wanted to use it, what would you do?