3 tips for sharing travel work with ad creatives

If you have a personal project gallery on your website, are you guilty of having a list of place names?

• CUBA
• TOKYO
• ALASKA

It sounds so exotic and farawayish…but actually- does it?

Nope.

To advertising creatives, it’s like landing on yet another amateur travel bloggers site. And that is at best boring, and at worst terrifying.

Before you know it…poof! They’ve scurried onto the next website leaving a smattering of desert dust in their wake, without so much as opening the project.

Why?

Because people in the ad world, are always hopping on and off flights to far flung places to oversee photoshoots and TV spots. They are often very well travelled and I personally know some who roll their eyes at getting on yet another plane to another destination for the next job.

This is always dependent on where they’re based (and why you should always try to understand your specific target audience), but in general, here are 3 super important things you should know about making and sharing ‘travel’ personal projects:

1. Unless you’re literally an editorial travel photographer don’t use the word ‘travel’ as a category name, especially in the ad world.
2. Title all personal projects in a way which entices them to click into the gallery, but doesn’t give away what it’s about. NO place names! (Unless it doesn’t look like a place name)
3. Plan beforehand and find something that resonates with you personally about the place. Then create a project around that. OK so it’s Alaska, but what do you want to say about Alaska?

Thanks to photographer Nick Paulsen for this perfect moment captured in Hanoi, Vietnam.