Sustainable Harvest: Fresh Brewed Marketing
Picture perfect
Coffee is the second largest global business commodity after oil, meaning it’s not unusual for David to issue checks for half a million dollars. In this highly competitive market, it pays to stand out from the crowd. With this in mind, David has turned to iPhoto and other Apple software to develop and declare his point of difference in vivid colors.
“Coffee is hard to photograph, so there is quite a demand for our pictures,” David says from his eco-friendly office in Portland, Oregon. “You have to get out in the right fields at the right time, and even then, oftentimes it just doesn’t look right. But we have a repository of beautiful, high-quality, professional photographs in iPhoto, arranged into separate folders by country. They are gorgeous, have depth, and reveal amazing insights. Plus, it’s a system that’s so user-friendly, I don’t have to be a photographer to produce great-looking collateral.”
Small world, growing smaller
The company collects, organizes, and utilizes professional photography for a variety of uses: to provide updates on coffee harvests for their clients, market themselves with self-produced collateral, infuse an engaging and emotional element to presentations, and other promotional uses. Sustainable Harvest realizes that, in most every case, the impact their photography has is profound.
“I show iPhoto slideshows of our trips abroad with the coffee growers to our clients,” David relays, “such as Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Peet’s Coffee and Tea, and Allegro/Whole Foods. Some of the photos are really intense…across the world, someone is picking your coffee! It’s quite an eye-opener.”
Regularly, the company shares selections from its library of approximately 15,000 photos with its coffee roaster clientele. They can do this through photocasting, an iPhoto 6 feature that lets you publish photo albums that subscribers can then view directly in their iPhoto application or via a web browser. Of course, it’s easy to simply email photos directly from iPhoto as well. If their clients want to use a particular photograph, Sustainable Harvest puts them in touch with the photographer to deal with usage costs, with the proceeds funding coffee grower training. It’s the simple way to make David’s photographs work harder.
Imprint and impress
Besides functioning as an easy-to-search photo bank, iPhoto can also double as an off-site print shop. It gives businesses the flexibility to design photo books, calendars, and assorted collateral without paying exorbitant printer costs. This way, you only pay for what you need, not for boxes of unused materials gathering dust in the basement.
“I used iPhoto’s print book function to show potential publishers possible layouts for a Fair Trade Coffee book,” David says. “I grabbed photos, stuck them in a nice-looking template, and laid out an incredible looking book, including text and captions: all by myself in no time flat. Four days later, a stack of beautiful photo books were at my office. If you sell high-quality coffee, you’ve got to put forward a high-quality presentation. Every piece of collateral we produce has to be timely and look good as it represents the perceived value of our business.”
The challenges of an international commodities broker are many: anything can happen at any time, and often does. But the fluidity of multiple Apple apps in iLife and iWork — all designed to work seamlessly together — supported by hardware from the same manufacturer has given David and Sustainable Harvest the means to not only survive, but thrive.
“The technology and ease-of-use allow companies and individuals to build connections through stories, technology, and people — which is exactly why we are an all-Mac organization,” David shares. “With iPhoto, I always have a load of beautiful photos on my laptop, so I can show a slideshow anywhere, anytime. And you don’t have to be a professional photographer to do it! With iPhoto, I can tell stories that aren’t being told.”
Images by Kim Cook / kimcook.com
