When I help put together brochures and web sites as part of my job, I try to go real easy on the generic clip art. When pictures are used, they should be indispensable to the story you’re trying to tell. If they’re just used to plug holes in the layout, they’re meaningless.
I’m not saying I always succeed. Sometimes time and resources are limited and you have to plug holes. But if the final product has a bunch of dumb, smiling people then you’ve got a problem.
Somewhere, some marketing bonehead said that “People relate to pictures of people.” So now, everywhere you look, there’s dumb, smiling people. If it’s a business-to-business thing, they wear suits. If it’s a consumer thing, they’re a bunch of casually dressed families. In either case, they often have nothing to do with the product or service. They’re just there.
Take this guy:
He could be happy about semiconductors. Or wave technology. Or that his doctor said “Mylanta.” What does it matter? He’s just a big grinning mook. But I bet that off-the-shelf photo is used in hundreds of web sites.
As bad as these photos are, I think I’ve found the single worst offender of all: Yahoo! mail.
On the sign in page for Yahoo! mail, you’re greeted with this alarming visage:
I don’t have to obsess about most other images I see because I just cruise past them and go on about my business. But as a user of Yahoo mail, I’m forced to see this woman several times a week.
After a while, it starts to get to you. It nags at your thoughts. During a meeting, you begin to wonder: Why does she need to keep in touch? Is she stranded on a rock in the Pacific? Why doesn’t she wash her hair? Is there enough collagen in the world to do what she did to her lips, or was it photoshopped? Futhermore, is she clinically insane? After all, it’s just dumb email. Nothing on God’s green earth should have the power to make someone grin like a baboon 24 hours, 7 days a week. And the most pressing question is, why doesn’t this stringy haired, big lipped freak not have a Gmail account like everyone else?
Speaking of which, Gmail does not have a ludicrous image on their sign in page, because those guys are smart enough to know how annoying a static picture can be to a returning visitor. Which is why I’ll be using their service in the future.
And as for everyone else still using all those generic photos for their marketing projects, I must tell you that people do not necessarily respond to pictures of people. For example, there’s a lot of people in the world that I like--friends and family. There’s a lot of people whom I’m indifferent to, like strangers. And there’s a lot of people I immediately dislike upon sight. Who fits into that category? Anyone in a picture who’s smiling/grinning/sitting around a conference table/shaking hands/jumping up and down/talking on a phone/pointing to a chart.
Well, except for the picture at the top of this page. Anything with a cape is always an exception to the rule.
Actually, I think that first guy is smiling because he’s slipping his right hand into his pants for a “morale booster”. Probably while putting in an order for denture adhesives, the pervert.
“Anything with a cape is always an exception to the rule.”
truer words were seldom spoken, friend gerg.
and on second examination of the dumb smiling guy photo, i concur with alan.
oh my god, i was just thinking about this very thing this morning. there is the most annoying woman on the msn web messenger page who i have to look at monday-friday. she is driving me BUGGY. can’t they at least change the image every once in awhile? get some new random person up there? mix it up a little?
I have Yahoo e-mail also. Their new campaign about yahoo personals using real people instead of models is a little troubling to me.
Also I’m strangely obsessed with the pictures of the perfect tanned asses all in a row that are used in the South Beach diet ad’s.
My favorite is the smiling-headcocked-douchebag-from-above (refresh page for several varieties).
I think that Yahoo chick is totally hot! Not that I ever look at her. But since you put the focus on her, I have to say that I like her smile, huge teeth and glossy lips.
I wonder if she’s on Yahoo personals.
Mostly I wonder what happened to the top of Yahoo! chick’s head. What was so heinous that they felt the need to crop right across her forehead? Does she have a gigantic zit or wart? A fivehead? Male pattern baldness??
It keeps me awake at night.
Yahoo! girl is my sister.
it’s taken me forty years to become reconciled to—nay, pleased with my own big lips and stringy hair. And you: in a moment of nonchalant dismissal, you send me careening back to square one ...
Capes can cause you to be sucked into jet engines, you know!
You know, Yahoo! girl probably thinks the two of you are dating. She just wants a little attention from you. You know--"Hi! Have a nice day? What are you doing? Want to take me out for coffee?” You’ll have to let her down real easy. Perhaps begin your speach with the definition of the word “stalker”.
i have actually posed for some of this type of stock photography. they want ‘real’ looking people, which is why it is always a little alarming to be called to this type of job (what am i, fat? are my teeth not white enought!?!?!). when i last did this, i was 27 years old and asked to blow bubbles and giggle with two little girls in my lap (my ‘daughters’) who were 6 and 8 years old (their stage mommies crouched just beyond the frame). as a ‘model’, you get a flat fee and are never sure where your face will show up. my friends have found themselves on the backs of buses for insurance adds as well as the home pages for MSN and Yahoo. disturbing for all involved.
Gmail rocks. That’s all I’m saying.
And yeah, I don’t know why they think we like these pictures. People that smile too much irritate me.
But capes are cool. Super Heroes rock as well.
Actually, that Yahoo! girl isn’t in a photo, it’s a live feed. Yeah. Makes you appreciate your own life a little more, doesn’t it?
Hah, jana, that reminds me of that Friends episode where Joey ended up on the poster for V.D.
I am now getting even more freaked out by the thought of Yahoo girl as “live” and/or wooing.
“why doesn’t this stringy haired, big lipped freak not have a Gmail account...”
Greg - DUDE! You used a DOUBLE-NEGATIVE!
Oh, the humanity!
Could be worse. Could be the Lockjaws.
Oh, look at that. The Yeti did the same idea, but better and funnier. I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.
I bet the Yahoo girl is one of those freaky composites - you know, where they take the best features of a bunch of different women and stick ‘em together on one face, that supposedly will be the most universally appealing.
Two thoughts:
I remember learning in a feminist art education class that ads which bisect a woman’s head send the message that women don’t have brains.
My grandparents called unsophisticated people yahoos. Guess that’s where the marketing dept got the idea.
Aw, Greg, but your acknowledgement of Defective Yeti smoothly incorporated a Fight Club reference, and that’s gotta be worth at least ten cool points.
the use of girls to entice boys is probably my favorite marketing strategy that never fails to work. i completely recognize it and generally try to resist any form of marketing, and yet, if a chick even acts interested in something, i’m like, hey, yahoo mail, that’s cool.
boobs add an exponential property with respect to this force.
She’s gone.
I just logged in on my Yahoo! mail and she’s nowhere to be found.
Thank you, Mr. Aplenty, for wielding your interweb power.
She’s still on mine. It’s possible they have a few different servers with different images, although I’ve never seen anyone but her. Or maybe the afterimage is just burned in my retina, like an organic cache.
I just learned, this past semester, that it’s images like those you’ve posted that encourage mass consumption of crap none of us need; therefore leading to the ultimate destruction of the environment and extinction of the human race.
I tell that smiling yahoo woman that every morning when I check my email.
She may be cute, but I’m not going to let her get away with destroying the planet.
On the Westlaw log in page, the people change from time to time. Sometimes there’s a lawyerly looking lady who some people say looks like me; other times there are super usual looking guys in suits and ties. Anyway, they’re pretty boring if you ask me. I relate to images of food. Photos of yummy things work for me. Try it with your next big communication project.
Yes, but even better is when you are on Yahoo Messenger, and you have the cam running, and underneath it says “Would you rather be looking at SOMEONE ELSE?”
EEK.
Does that grinning girl get royalties for the use of her picture? Did she sign a model release form?
Noting witty to add to the string, but I agree. I still have a bloody spot on my forehead—earned while trying to singlehandedly eradicate clipart from my companies marketing materials.
yahoo girl gone