Features
“We are not newcomers for the picture desks”
Horst Zsifkovits, Vice President Getty Images, spoke to Stefan Hartmann about his agency’s Editorial Division, about the company’s competitors and about what Getty does not intend to doStefan Hartmann: First of all, congratulations on your new position. The title sounds as though you will now be travelling around a lot. Have you already moved closer to the airport?
Horst Zsifkovits: As a former airline employee, I still like flying, even though it can be a bit more complicated at the moment.
Stefan Hartmann: Let’s talk about the most recent developments at Getty Images in the editorial sector, an area in which Getty seems to be particularly focused on. I’m thinking about the agency’s new offerings Photo Exchange Bank or Getty Exclusive or grants for young photojournalists. CEO Jonathan Klein gave a speech at the last World Press Photo awards in which he spoke about his role as a sponsor.
The agency is currently making just 12% of its global turnover in the news sector. In absolute figures this amounts to $25 million in the last quarter, which is hardly a paltry sum, but 80% of your revenues comes from stock material, so does this not mean that all your hard work is not producing the desired results?
Horst Zsifkovits: The Editorial Division has considerable potential for us and we’re developing our leading position in the editorial sector, including in the German-speaking countries. Let me mention a few important things we’ve achieved in the last few years.
Since the launch of our news services in July 2001, we’ve earned ourselves worldwide recognition as a leading supplier of news, sports and entertainment photography that has a unique style and shows things from unusual perspectives. The news services are growing all the time and have a great reputation in the publishing and communications fields.
Stefan Hartmann: Getty Images has bought up a lot of firms for this, both internationally and in Germany.
Horst Zsifkovits: When we took over the sports picture agencies Bongarts and Sportimage, for example, in 2004, we considerably strengthened our position on the German-speaking editorial market. We’re in an ideal position to offer our customers a complete range of imagery for editorial purposes.
The key to our success is also our ability to work long term with photographers who are among the best in the business and to provide them with state-of-the-art equipment and technology.
At the international level, we have a long-standing distribution agreement with the news and picture agency AFP, which is an important Getty Images partner.
Overall, it can be said that Getty Images has become firmly established as an important global player, with images that contrast sharply with those available from its competitors. Evidence of this is the fact that our news, sports and entertainment and creative images can be seen more and more often on the front pages of the world’s newspapers and magazines.
Stefan Hartmann: Traditional news agencies provide a complete text and picture service. How does Getty, which only supplies pictures, intend to compete with these long-established bastions without offering the text component?
Horst Zsifkovits: Getty Images is not another news service that aims to report on all events. Rather, we want to document the news and important current events from a unique perspective. That’s what we claim to be doing, and we attach considerable importance to pictures that really tell the story concerned.
Our team includes both Pulitzer Prize winners and winners of the World Press Photo awards. All our photographers are experienced specialists; they know the story behind a picture and are therefore able to capture the right moment. As Getty Images is only a picture agency, our photographers do not see themselves compelled to support the viewpoint of a journalistic text. On the contrary, they themselves decide what images they want tell or even promote a story with.
Stefan Hartmann: Reiner Merkel, the head of dpa’s picture services, recently said in an interview that "the German press picture market is already divided up and newcomers will find it hard to enter it". They can force their way in – and force others out – by spending a great deal of money and accepting all the risks involved. Do you want to do this? Is the Photo Exchange Bank a signal to mount an attack on the market leaders?
The Photo Exchange Bank is currently a German product. It provides local newspapers with the possibility of distributing their own news photos worldwide via our gettyimages.de platform.
Stefan Hartmann: What is your assessment of Getty Images’ strengths? What can Getty do that dpa or AP, for example, can’t?
Horst Zsifkovits: We’re opening up new prospects in a relatively old industry. Unlike traditional news agencies, which normally limit themselves to supplying images to support news in the form of text, Getty Images relies entirely on photographs to tell a story, and it offers a unique style and unusual perspective. Let me give you a few examples to illustrate this: at the last World Press Photo awards, which are the best-known international competition for photojournalists, eight Getty Images photographers won prizes, beating almost 4,500 professional photographers in a hard-fought contest.
"Exclusive by Getty Images" is an outstanding collection of highly unusual material not available anywhere else. With it, we’re offering a solution for picture editors who would like to provide their publications with a really special and exclusive image profile. The work in this collection originates from elite photographers, such as the internationally renowned Lorenzo Agius, the well-known photojournalist Tom Stoddart or the Pulitzer Prize winner David Turnley.
Stefan Hartmann: What about the other way round: what areas will Getty not be touching, at least in the short to medium term?
Horst Zsifkovits: Getty Images does not accept paparazzi-style photos, ie images shot with a telephoto lens. We rely on the long-standing relationship of trust that our photographers have built up between themselves and the celebrities they photograph.
Stefan Hartmann, VISUELL Web: www.gettyimages.de
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Related Stories:
Zsifkovits moves up the ladder at Getty Images (May 24, 2006)
George Sinclair expands Virtual Picture Desk to Europe (October 5, 2006)
Jupiter Images restructures worldwide creative team (January 20, 2006)
Posted in: Features, Stock Photo Companies
