Corbis testing waters with discount offer
Corbis has offered a select group of US and Canadian clients a special deep discount on all royalty-free purchases. The targeted customers will receive a 30% discount on an initial purchase, and then an increasing discount of ten additional percentage points on each subsequent purchase, up to the seventh purchase when the discount reaches 90%. That makes the average discount on all seven purchases, combined, 60%. The deal allows for a maximum of five images per purchase and covers all RF images in their archives, including those from third-party suppliers.
According to Karla Zimmerman, Corbis Director of Regional Marketing for the Americas, the company has aimed this marketing effort at a specific set of low-volume who haven’t made a purchase from Corbis in recent months and who the company wants to encourage to make their purchases on-line, rather than by phone. “The initial discount of 30% is designed to get these client’s attention and the graded increase in the discount is meant to keep the clients engaged,” Zimmerman says. She adds that the 60% average has no special significance, and her marketing team is eager to see how successful the offer is at keeping these clients coming back.
The move by Corbis comes just one month after Getty's launch of a controversial $49 price for 0.5MB files of images from all its collections – rights-managed, rights-ready, and royalty-free – and the creation of a low-priced brand of royalty-free imagery called Value Line, comprised of pre-2005 images culled from some of Getty's premium brands. Even in an environment where across-the-board discounting has become the norm and is accepted as a competitive necessity, however, the Corbis offer represents aggressive price cutting. When asked where she believes the RF market might settle given the heavy discounting, lowering of prices by Getty, the apparent over-supply on the market, the influence of micro-stock, Zimmerman responded, “Things have changed so much and so fast, it’s hard to say.” This writer believes she speaks for many of us.
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