THE LINK
When Corbis made the move to cement its relationship with magazine publisher Condé Nast in July 2007, the union was celebrated as a marriage made in heaven.

Publishers, marketers and other creative professionals gain direct access to thousands of the most exciting images in fashion through the partnership to license off-the-runway fashion and the hottest celebrity imagery from the pages of Women’s Wear Daily (WWD), comprising premier fashion shows, parties and events worldwide.

“Corbis is committed to provide creative professionals with the leading entertainment imagery, which makes the Condé Nast WWD collection a perfect addition to our offering,” said Ross Sutherland, chief creative officer of Corbis.

“The Condé Nast WWD collection is known for its exclusive, unprecedented access and coverage of fashion industry events and virtually every catwalk worldwide. This partnership allows us to further enhance our entertainment image coverage. And most importantly, these are the best pictures, period.”

Without a doubt, Condé Nast’s glamorous, exclusive pictures bear the stamp of a behemoth in magazine publishing. WWD, otherwise known as the fashion bible, covers the fashion, beauty and entertainment industries. Its photographers access A-list fashion and entertainment events around the world to shoot exclusive photos from the red carpet, to the runway, to behind the scenes at Fashion Week—a rare glimpse of a world where major fashion shows and designers, such as Karl Lagerfeld, Giorgio Armani and Dolce & Gabbana, hold sway.

“Condé Nast and WWD are widely recognized as having some of the most stunning photography in the world,” said Edward Klaris, vice president of Editorial Assets & Rights at Condé Nast.

“Through our partnership with Corbis, we can now offer an exclusive look into the fashion world and share our unique images with creative professionals worldwide.”


Click on the thumbnails to view Corbis’ chief creative officer Ross Sutherland and a look into the world of fashion and celebrities in detail.


THE SERVICE-PROVIDER
Trite to say, a picture speaks a thousand words. The great lengths Corbis undertakes as the trusted resource for breathing life into creative work however, deserves more than a noteworthy mention.

The brand Corbis represents excellence in top quality photography, footage and rights services.

With only 18 years of establishment, Corbis’ relatively young age belies its unsurpassed, mammoth collection of more than 100 million images, a comprehensive footage library, the world’s most in-depth rights and clearances expertise, an award-winning media management solution plus microstock website SnapVillage.

Corbis has been instrumental in bringing the world’s broadest, deepest and most easily accessible and searchable collection of imagery, straddling contemporary creative, entertainment, iconic and historic photography—in addition to art and illustrations—to the creative practitioner’s fingertips. Value-centric insight from the company’s trend-spotting global Creative Intelligence group adds hundreds of fresh images every year, according to emerging international visual and cultural trends.

Corbis closes the creative loop—the Seattle-based image specialist has offices in more than 15 countries in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America at the service of leading print, interactive and broadcast advertising agencies, direct marketing agencies, corporations, small and medium sized businesses, publishers and media companies in more than 50 countries worldwide.


THE MULTI-TASKER
The massive Corbis Image Collection and Corbis Motion Collection, which maintains over 250,000 clips and 30,000 hours of footage, would not have been possible without Corbis Partners. By tapping on the expertise of more than 75 image and footage content partners—photojournalists, museums and cultural institutions including Andy Warhol Foundation, Ansel Adams, Douglas Kirkland, James White, The Smithsonian Institution, The National Gallery-London, The State Hermitage Museum, Christie’s Images, Playboy and the Bettman, Hulton-Deutsch, Sygma and Brett Weston collections—and representing by more than 29,000 photographers under Corbis Photographers, the resource slakes the thirst of creative professionals.

It doesn’t end there. In June 2007, Corbis made the official announcement a host of new image partners such as Etsa and Artkey have come onboard to furnish more than 20,000 new Rights Managed (RM) and Royalty-Free (RF) images covering travel, lifestyle, automotive, spirituality and Hispanic culture.


Click on the thumbnails to view images from new image partners in detail.

“These collections reinforce our commitment to provide creative people with the best pictures possible to help bring their ideas to life without compromise,” said Sutherland. “The collections are each fresh and distinctive and well above par for the course.”

But a huge library of extensive images is nothing to boast of without a highly efficient search competency that enables clients quickly and easily source, license and clear images for use.

Corbis has extended its brand to the vast variety of professional facilities that continues to serve the creative industry while staying relevant to its niche.

For one, its leadership in rights services is world-recognized.

Securing the right to use legally protected intellectual property such as images of famous personalities can be a troublesome roadblock to creative process.

The Corbis Rights & Music Clearances group extinguishes the challenges with professional, dedicated global teams of specialists to handle licensing of content, clearances and rights representation. It conducts more than 5,000 clearances annually.

Fostering firm relationships with third-party rights holders—including major studios, record companies, celebrities and publishers—gives Corbis an advantage in facilitating clearances quickly and securing the best possible licensing rates for every client. It has experience negotiating third-party clearances for celebrities or their estates; feature films and TV clips; athletes and sports leagues; copyrights, trademarks and logos; music and audio and properties and landmarks.

Corbis leverages on its industry experience and unrivaled contacts to reach the best deals, secure options in case of changing plans and provide warranties and indemnification for the rights Corbis clears on behalf of its clients.

As part of this service, Corbis Rights Representation represents rights-holders directly, including the Andy Warhol Foundation and some of the world’s most-recognized personalities, from Hollywood legends such as Steve McQueen and Mae West to well-known innovators like the Wright Brothers and Albert Einstein.


Click on the thumbnails to view the world-recognized personalities under Corbis Rights Representation in detail.

Such dedication is extended to television commercial advertising professionals too.

Corbis Rights Services has established the company as a reliable resource for finding and licensing content encompassing music, TV, film clips and footage. Aside from securing almost any third-party rights to trademarks, celebrity talent, music, TV footage and film clips, Corbis works with broadcast producers to find the perfect shots for their advertising campaigns from the Corbis Motion collection of more than 25,000 clips comprised of both contemporary and archival footage. Corbis also licenses photography and fine art for use in broadcast commercials and movies.

Among the many products and services the company provides is a leading hosted business solution for managing marketing content and digital media assets such as photography, logos and advertising & marketing collateral. In other words, let Corbis Media Management take care of your “To Do” lists. With a powerful set of customized tools, Corbis streamlines marketing operations to lower costs, shorten production times and boost impact, while giving companies complete control over their brand’s voice.

Customers around the world have employed this award-winning solution to energize business applications and drive revenue, and brand-driven organizations in the rapidly growing customer base include ABC-TV, Birkenstock, Exxon Mobil, Starbucks, Pfizer, Toyota, Marriott International, Universal Studios Hollywood and World Wildlife Fund.


THE FASHIONISTA
With an influential name like Condé Nast securely roped in, Corbis’ clout is set to soar through the roof.

Before the two powerhouses joined forces, Corbis began flexing its stylish muscles by drawing on the historical Condé Nast archives for a little over two years. The significant success that came out of the initial effort paved the way for additional collaborative opportunities.

Condé Nast is synonymous with fashion, just as Corbis with images. Then again, a successful partnership is more than that; it also depends on the value both parties can bring to the table. Condé Nast has built its brand into a world-recognized name and its images are breathtaking. On the other hand, no one understands how, and to whom, beautiful images need to be licensed better than Corbis, who also possesses a robust global distribution system.


Click on the thumbnails to view runway images, designers and celebrities in detail.

As it strengthens Corbis’ overall offering and adds images to a much-needed specialty segment, the name of Condé Nast continues to make huge strides all over the world, heightening their brand recognition and simultaneously, mounting Corbis statement that it offers the most famous, valuable and beautiful images in the world. Simply said, Corbis delivers WWD’s in-demand imagery to its distribution reach of creative professionals quickly and easily.

While this offer, extended to existing editorial clients, is expected to attract new ones, the coverage with a much sought-after partner keeps competitors on edge.


THE CELEBRITY
In the boost of star power, photography, fashion and celebrity go hand-in-hand. Print and online media professionals face a demand for celebrity images. In this respect, Corbis has another ace up their sleeve: Entertainment Story Packs were launched around the same time to assist these individuals whose creative work necessitates celebrity images on a given topic to illustrate and surround the story.

To spark creativity, Corbis has put together sets of entertainment images centered on trends both upcoming and seasonal, after sessions of creative brainstorming and careful research. In the Trench is one of Corbis’ potential story ideas. The Pack puts celebrities like Ellen Barkin, Katherine McPhee, Ewan McGregor and John Mayer in the classic trench coat.

After Lust, Caution and a string of blockbusters that made a successful crack at Hollywood, movie stars Zhang Ziyi and Tang Wei lead their famous colleagues like Tsui Hark, Simon Yam, Maggie Cheung, Gong Li, Zhang Yimou, Edison Chen, Hao Lei and Xin Han in Chinese Up-and-Comers.


Click on the thumbnails to view images from Chinese Up-and-Comers in detail.

Grand staircases add drama to phototaking. Corbis rounded up Morgan Fairchild, John Stamos, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ivana Trump and Alexis Bledel for Hollywood Stairs.

Forget frozen smiles and static poses. Corbis captures some of the private moments at the Academy Awards in Celebrity Candids at the Academy Awards.

New Story Packs are available on the Corbis website each month, while customers can easily access its archive of previous Packs.

In November 2007, 16 new high-profile photographers joined Corbis’ roster, contributing imagery to the Outline, OutlineLive, Outline@Home and Entertainment collections. Among the world-class photographers, each with a distinctive style of their own, Andrew McLeod has won acclaim for uncovering a new generation of Hollywood superstars. Paulo Sutch is highly sought-after in fashion for his portraits of celebrity women like Rihanna and Sienna Miller.

“It is very exciting to add these talented new photographers. We are determined to bring new depth, new photography and ever more style to Corbis’ celebrity photography collection,” said Sutherland.


Click on the thumbnails to view Corbis' celebrity photography in detail.

“The strength of Corbis is in featuring and promoting existing established talent as well as the development of new ones. We are honored to be representing them and helping to share their highly celebrated work that tells powerful and eye-catching and very fresh looking celebrity stories.”


THE REAFFIRMATION
“We’re bullish about the future of the stock photography industry and are seizing this opportunity during a period of market disruption to take bold steps toward capturing momentum,” revealed Gary Shenk, CEO of Corbis. “Our goal is to have the fastest growing, leading brands across the entire spectrum, from high-end commercial imagery to editorial, microstock and rights services.”

In November 2007, just months after it lifted the lid on partner Condé Nast, Corbis’ new acquisition reaffirmed its commitment to the image licensing market. Veer is known to be a discerning, design-driven source of visual elements—illustration, photography, type and footage that includes exclusives and world premieres—and its design-related products are used daily in advertising, print and web design, corporate communications and publishing.

Founded in 2002, the Calgary-based company has a staff strength of 170, with offices in New York, Berlin and Düsseldorf serving the creative fraternity through its award-winning website Veer.com and call center.

“Corbis is the perfect partner to help us accelerate our long term growth goals,” said Brad Zumwait, CEO of Veer. “Our companies both have an unmatched passion for the creative community, and by coming together, we bolster our ability to connect with creatives worldwide while innovating our business and providing products to our customers so they can do their best work.”


Click on the thumbnails to view Corbis’ CEO, Veer, and Veer’s CEO in detail.

The acquisition is a step forward in Corbis’ strategic market approach to establish a network of brands that will serve different types of customers and accelerate its growth in the commercial space.

Corbis will maintain Veer as an independent brand, with largely autonomous operations. Leveraging the Veer’s brand, which resonates with creative practitioners, and its industry-leading integrated brand marketing competencies, Corbis is set to conquer advertising and design in the North American market, and at the same time, it would add depth to Veer’s penetration in world markets by using its global infrastructure and direct sales expertise.

Though both companies maintain distinct customer propositions, cross-selling opportunities for Corbis’ Rights Services and Veer’s typeface collections will be maximized.

Looks like the creative professionals will end up the biggest winners in Corbis’ strategic moves to strengthen its brand’s foothold as the industry leader: Corbis’ Emerging Business division is an incubation for new businesses such as Corbis Mobile to leverage their media assets outside their core markets. SnapVillage, hailed as the next generation in microstock marketplace, combines the best of consumer photo-sharing websites and an online marketplace to create a fresh new experience in buying and selling of affordable, user-generated, royalty-free photography.

Coincidentally, Corbis is under the private ownership of none other than Bill Gates. Except for the fact that he founded the company in 1989, little else is known of his involvement.

Powered by the world’s prominent millionaire-technopreneur, expect to see nothing less than more innovative solutions in the future stock photography and photo-licensing industries under his aegis.



© 2003 - 2008 by TAXI Design Network. All rights reserved.