Image Isn't Everything

The people at Getty Images have their pick of literally millions of pictures. Perhaps their tastes run to a photo of a tongue-wagging, slam-dunking Michael Jordan from their company's Allsport collection. Perhaps they prefer a classic image from the famous Hulton Getty archive.

But one can only guess at what those tastes might be, because within its new headquarters, which it moved into six months ago, the walls are completely bare. Sure, it's ironic: The world's largest stock-photography company has no photos on display. But it's also understandable. The people here have been busy.

Since the company moved last September to an office park just outside Seattle, Getty Images has acquired its two largest competitors, has nearly doubled its staff (from 1,400 people to 2,600 people), and has added 10 million images to its collection (bringing the final count to somewhere around 70 million images). That's just the latest growth spurt for a company in fast transition -- from a business rooted in one of the oldest technologies (film) to a business rooted in digital technologies.

Indeed, Getty is at the forefront of Web-ifying and digitizing the $1.5 billion-plus stock-photography industry. It is racing to replace its paper catalogs and its celluloid film with Web sites and bits and bytes. For its customers (primarily design firms, advertising agencies, magazines, newspapers, broadcasters, and filmmakers), the process of digitization can't happen fast enough: In the last quarter of 1999, Getty generated $79.9 million in total revenue, with more than 30% of that figure coming from e-commerce. This year, its Web revenue alone may top $100 million.

Getty isn't just becoming more digital -- it's becoming more dominant. It has made 13 major acquisitions in the past five years and is in more than 50 countries now. And, although its acquisitions and investments have recently put Getty in the red, that situation is likely to change.

It's amazing what happens when growing Web revenues meet falling costs. The process of repeatedly copying a piece of film costs $238 per image. Digitizing a photo involves a fixed cost of about $45 -- and nothing to copy. But Web-based change is about much more than lowering costs. Getty has an opportunity to play in a market where the entire process can be nothing but Net. Shopping experiences, products themselves, customer service, even delivery systems -- all of those can be fully digital.

Taking advantage of that enormous opportunity requires enormous change, says Mark Getty, 39, the company's cofounder and chairman. (Yes, he is related to that Getty -- the late J. Paul, oil tycoon and business mogul. J. Paul was his grandfather.) As it reinvents its strategy, Getty is also reinventing its culture, its relationships with customers -- the very way that it does business. "You need to change analog-business rules to meet Web-deliverable rules -- not the other way around," Getty says. "The Web isn't an electronic storefront to do business in the old way. The Web is the business."

Jonathan Klein, 40, cofounder and CEO of Getty Images, believes that his employees are grasping the pace, style, and values that it takes to win on the Web. During a recent "town-hall" meeting, Getty celebrated its integration of the Image Bank, formerly one of its largest competitors. As employees paid tribute to various team members, some rather striking numbers surfaced: In the space of about 90 days, Getty had relocated the Image Bank headquarters to Seattle, had launched an Image Bank Web site with 50,000 newly scanned images, and had integrated 3,000 Image Bank images into one of Getty's Web sites.

That kind of speed, says Klein, shows a Web culture at work: "We've realized that we can be digital in the way that we serve our customers and deliver our product, without losing focus on the artistry of photography. There was a fear that once we digitized things, our reverence for photography would be diluted. But there's creativity in both spheres. The people who help create great images are no more creative than the tech folks who create great functionality around our sites."

Weaving a Web Culture

Would you like a snapshot of a business rooted in the old economy? For decades, this is how stock photography was sold: A customer would riffle through pages and pages of expensively produced color catalogs, looking for the perfect image for a project. If that method didn't work, then the designer would pay a fee to an image company, where a research assistant would sort through thousands of file drawers to help find that perfect photo.

Finally, after lots more phone calls (and perhaps after repeating the process with a different stock agency), a FedEx package would arrive, containing the art that the designer had chosen -- a square of film that would have to be digitized and eventually returned to the stock agency. The process took days, if not weeks. And there was rarely much help available for designers who were working late into the night or rushing to meet a tight deadline.