Jeff,
Great post. It reminded me of Joel’s first tip on writing functional specs. Be funny.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000033.html
Here is an excerpt.
So everybody agrees that happy talk and stock photos are eveil. But what would you advice to mentioned Jason Cohen when he was writing his “About Us” page?
communication is designed to convey an idea. corporate communication is designed to obfuscate - plain and simple.
here’s the summary on my resume - I’m a developer.
Yes on the words, but stock photos have their purposes that other approaches might not: are you paying your employees enough for the promotional use of their image? If they’re professional models, and the photos are licensed by people who’s business is the licensing of artwork, you can be reasonably confident that the answer is yes. The expectations of that financial transaction are well known in advance. Are you exploiting or harassing your in-house headset hottie if you put their picture on the site? Headset heartbreak! Stock photos protect you and your employees from poorly thought out potential disasters.
Also: Do it in-house with in-house faces, and what happens when Key Employee 2008 becomes Took Top Customer to Competition 2009 (or Messy Fired For Cause 2009): do you cram through a site rebuild, or forget about that page deep in your site and confuse other customers, especially if key employee is known through trade shows or the like? What happens if Call Center Peon 2008 makes it on America’s Got Talent or the FBI’s Most Wanted?
I’ll go for founders and partners or principal executives, or whole-team group pictures.
At last, we have an explanation for the “failcat” and “robot captcha” images on StackOverflow.
Also, I kind of expected your headset hottie link to point to the ad they were talking about here:
http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/13165/who-is-the-hot-lady-in-the-ads-for-issuetrak-on-sf
Actually, having the corporate mumbo jumbo and stock images can actually be much more pleasurable to what comes when a corporate tries to get down with the kids - My ISP (Be* Broadband) turned their reasonably good site (if a little OTT with pink) into something that was last considered cutting edge when the Spectrum 128k reigned…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/23/bethere_redesign_horror/
getting in the way of what though? What would you replace the photo with? When people are thinking about hiring your services they’re taking a chance, and they don’t need YOU to be “brave” and to be taking chances, THEY’LL do that stuff, they want you to be exactly what you advertise and nothing too “out there”. Or they’ll run
The headset hottie link triggered my virus scanner; either they or their ad network is trying to deliver a trojan via JS exploit.
I m not able to view the headset hotties…I m behind a corporate firewall…
+1 for DJ Jazzy Jazz. And who would’ve thought that the Fresh Prince’s best friend would ever be on the internet? All praise the mighty internet.
Yeah, but how do you convince your clients that they don’t want to put up another Headset Hottie?
This is one of the better posts you’ve put up here in a while.
Guess that’s why everyone looks so miserable on the StackOverflow about page,
http://stackoverflow.com/about
Seriously though, I do hate marketing with a passion. Spent enough time trying to persuade the marketing men that it would be useful to actually say what the product did, rather than going on about how it was state-of-the-art, powerful, ground-breaking, etc.
Having said that, I suspect successful corporations wouldn’t use pictures of smiling faces if it didn’t work. People do seem to be programed to respond positively to a smiling face, even if you know it isn’t real.
Here is a great hillarious page about what you just wrote:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=stock_photos
Number 7 “That one-handed, one-knee laptop bullshit is the preferred way to get real work done” just cracked me up.
It’s unclear to me why companies (and even some individuals) think they need happy talk, stock photos of multicultural computer users, or the occasional headset hottie.
Right on point, its almost boring when you come across sites that follow a fixed formula that they think always works. And the headset hotties site hasnt been updated since Feb 2009!
Would you have an example of what you consider to be ‘refreshing’ or ‘innovative’ design that is not ‘corporate’ but yet is still from a big company?
I appreciate keith’s comment:
“Are you exploiting or harassing your in-house headset hottie if you put their picture on the site? … Do it in-house with in-house faces, and what happens when Key Employee 2008 becomes Took Top Customer to Competition 2009 (or Messy Fired For Cause 2009)”
Perhaps paid actors is a better idea. But it still doesn’t have to be so damn generic.
Commentator CynicalTyler makes a good point.
I know such bland content makes my beautifully-programmed web application ho-hum. But, what can I do about it? Give me some ammo to use against the decisionmakers.
And, no, I don’t want to be my own rogue copywriter or photographer or brand consultant. I want to be a programmer.