How to be authentically fake

A few posts back, I mentioned a company called Projjex.  I poked fun at the team who appeared to be in this photo:

Fast forward to last week when Paul and Leila of Idee Inc, my favorite visual search company.  They were kind enough to let me check out their new product, TinEye. 

It's pretty neat and I wanted to give it a whirl. So, I put in the picture you see above (with my annotations) and (drum roll, can you guess what's coming up?) this picture is a stock photograph which can be purchase here.  Yeah, really.

The caption under this photo reads: "Group portrait of cultural creative business people cheering". 

But wait! There's more.  So now, I'm intrigued even more and decide to dig into the web site a bit more. 

We have this Projjex testimonial from Lawrence:

 

Sweet, eh? Happy customer in Philadelphia.  But, of course, ol Larry here gets around. He has a summer home in British Columbia, Canada.  How do I know? Simple, he is the poster boy for the Success Stories at BC Hydro.  See below:

And in an amazing coincidence, Larry was wearing the same shirt in BC as he was in Philly. Two words, Larry: Bold Detergent.

Lessons for you? Suck up to Leila and Paul. Check out the software they are building and run a check on the stock photography you are using; you never know who else is doing the same voodoo as you.

I'm sure there are a number of people out there with varying opinions on this stuff.  My own is fairly simple.  If I am looking to shoot a 'team shot', I'd use my own people.  And for testimonials? Certainly not Larry! Seems a bit, well, uncool to me.  Your mileage may vary.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Comments

[Aaron Fischer]

Its funny when two competitors end up using the same stock photography.

[Dan Dickinson]

When I read "Group portrait of cultural creative business people cheering" I spit half the food in my mouth onto my desk, and nearly choked on the other half.

[sunburntkamel]

Putting up fake testimonials is terrible. But you can have some fun with stock photos: http://blueprintds.com/about-us

[Brooks Moses]

Well, the testimonials could still easily be real -- just attached to stock headshots. Most customers who send unsolicited "we like your stuff" emails don't usually include promotional-ready portraits, after all!

[John Carson]

Or just be honest about it!

http://www.johnjamescarson.com/contact.html

[Account Deleted]

We are in the process of redoing our website and made the decision to use as little stock photography as possible - especially when representing our people or clients. Jeffrey Gitomer pushes video testimonials but we haven't gone that far. We are, however, putting our client's actual pictures on the website.

--COFFEY
http://www.imperativeinfo.com

[Anonymous]

The president of Projjex comes out as a crook with no morals. If he's using fake people to promote his product how good do you think his product is? People go out there and find something else this projjex thing is not worth it!!!

[Leisureguy]

The actual product looks quite good, and the use of stock photos in the marketing is unwise but irrelevant (and funny). I think Anonymous is taking a big leap.

[Alex Glassey, President of Projjex]

Thanks for pointing out a sensitive issue, Rick, and thanks to all those who took the time to respond.

We'd received some great feedback from our customers and naturally wanted to share it with the world. Of course, as Sunburntkamel pointed out above, our customers didn't send us their pictures. So we added some stock pictures to help personalize our site. Obviously this has created the wrong impression.

We're in the process of removing the offending pictures (except mine, which is authentic!). We apologize if we created the wrong impression. And thanks again for bringing this to our attention.

Alex

P.S. BTW, we're going to keep the "Group portrait of cultural creative business people cheering" image as it represents the spirit that we hope Projjex contributes to in all of our customers.