Just like any other business, a photographer must continually brand themselves and be consistent in the way he delivers his brand to his clients and prospects alike.  We’re always trying to keep our name and work in front of our clients.  Of course, they live with our images for whole seasons, but you still don’t want them to forget about you, the person behind the images.  Branding must remain consistant from the prospecting phase through the shoot to delivery of the images to the invoice to the thank you letter that follows shortly after.  I’m always searching for new ways to continually promote my brand through all phases of production.

A couple years ago, I found a great way to show my clients I care about the images I’m delivering to them while reinforcing my brand image. What better way to keep your name in front of your clients than to deliver the images you created for them on a hard drive that is branded?

Pexagon's Store-It Colors personalized 2.5 inch USB Hard Drives

Pexagon Technology, Inc, a Guilford, Connecticut based company, has that product! Being the tech geek that I am, a couple years ago when I realized that Pexagon’s factory is just a few minutes from my home town, I called and begged for a tour of their operation.  Pexagon has a large factory that sits just off of Interstate 95 in a small little town on the Connecticut shoreline.  The company has many personalized tech orientated products including hard drives, thumb drives, smart phone cases, and even some more novelty items.  (I’ll share about more of their products that we use in other articles)

We used Pexagon’s Store-It Colors drives to deliver images to clients, especially when there’s gigs and gigs of data.  For example, many of our catalog jobs consist of 100 – 300 images; When delivering that many images in 2-3 different formats and color spaces it could easily top 50GB of data.  Transferring the data via the internet would take days (even with our 10MB Metro Ethernet connection) and burning CD’s or DVD’s would probably take as long as it would take to upload the data.

For years, we’ve been delivering final project images on hard drives, but these personalized hard drives fit the bill even more for six main reasons:

1) They’re cheap! (They are priced reasonably at no more than any other non-branded hard drive.)

2) They’re branded! (Your company logo and information is laser engraved onto the drive body. Your brand is permanently on these drives, clients will see my name over and over again.)

3) They’re built like tanks (I dropped one yesterday and it’s still working just fine.)

4) They’re USB 2.0. (They will work on every computer currently made. You don’t have to worry about the client having Firewire 400, Firewire 800 or some other standard on their computer.)

5) They’re pocket sized. (We ship them to clients in custom printed boxes, but it’s nice for the client to be able to pocket the drive as they’re running over to the ad agency or graphic designer.)

6) Did I mention they’re personalized.

The drives can also be customized on the back.

It’s not just the front that you can customize. While the fronts always stay the same with our logo and contact information, we also have the option of customizing each drive for a specific job or client.

We, generally, put the Project Number, Client Name, Season and a description of what’s on the job. In the picture at right, our internal job number was “2010-JSZ-007″, the client is “Jasz Couture”, the season is Spring 2011, and on the drive was their final images. The back information is limited to 3 lines of engraving and 12pt type, but it’s perfect for our needs.

As seen above, the drive comes with a dual USB cable (to allow you to draw power from two USB ports) and doesn’t require an additional power cable. It also comes packages with a bag to carry the drive in. For $3 extra, you can also pick up a black leather-like case for it.

The Specs:
Hard Disk Drive: 2.5 inch Hard Disk Drive
Capacity: up to 1TB
Interface: Hi-Speed USB 2.0 and 1.1
Factory Format: FAT32
Buffer: 8MB
Spindle Speed: 5,400 RPM
Performance: Up to 480Mb/second
Power: USB Bus Powered USB Bus Powered

The drives start at $89.99 for a 160GB drive and go to $179.00 for a 750GB. Since Pexagon loves our industry, photographers can also grab these drives at a discount ($67.49/160GB, $134.99/750GB) by going to www.photoflashdrive.com.  Pexagon’s main website is at www.pexagontech.com.

We also use several of Pexagon’s other products, but I need to have something to blog about another day.

We think these drives are just great because they not only deliver your images, but they continue to deliver your brand image over and over again.

• Scott

  This is a great idea! It's easy to forget about branding by assuming advertising/marketing is taking care of it; or some might confuse them as though they were one in the same. Great article.

• Pingback: An Update on “Branding: Delivering Your Image” | exposingFashion.com

• http://www.karljohnston.com Karl Johnston

  That's awesome, I didn't know that kind of service existed