Just a quick one today, but an intriguing one.

Here’s the thing. There’s a website called Unsplash where marketers, bloggers, etc. can download free-to-use photos to use however you wish. So what brands do is:

• Create an Unsplash account
• Upload subtly-branded images
• Tag/optimize their images to show up in search

And then sit back and watch as their brand starts to show up all over the web.

Some Examples
Does that make sense? No? Well, let me give you some examples.

If you search for “point of sale” these would be some of your top results:

Look closely and you’ll see that almost all of those photos subtly feature the Square logo.

Or if we search for “electric bike”, all of the top results feature Harley Davidson’s latest model:

Unsplash users get a beautiful photo to use in their story or video and the brand gets some light, but nonetheless useful, visibility.

Ski?
But if we search for “ski resort”:

One identifiable photo (but not very high quality) and the others with okay quality but a generic frame.

Quality + Subtle Branding
If your resort takes photography seriously, I’d suggest you give this one a little thought.

• Search for a few resort-related keywords
• Decide if you have better photos than the results
• Weight whether you’d okay with making these free for anyone to use

Maybe there’s nothing there, but, then again, maybe there is. Resorts have amazing visuals and if there’s one thing Unsplash is lacking at times it’s quality for their millions of users who are looking for a nice visual to put in front of their followers, readers, or fans.

Food for thought.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.