Leadership Team Headshots Consistency

Visitors to your business website are generally visiting to research your products and/or services, or to learn more about your business – who leads the company, its philosophy, commitment, and what differentiates you from your competitors. The bios and images of your leadership team provide insight into your brand - who you are, what your values are, how mature/stable a company you are, the culture, and so on. They create in initial and often lasting impression.

Yet for many companies, the headshots of their leadership are not optimal – they’re inconsistent, taken at different venues with different backgrounds, the lighting is not optimized, the overall color balance (temperature/tint) is inconsistent, the crop may be different, and so on. The impression those images create is one of disunity, lack of quality/consistency, and often times dated. Not exactly the message you want to be conveying about your business or its leadership.

Consistency is key to any branding strategy – you want to deliver a consistent look, messaging, and values in order to create a clear picture in the viewers’ minds of who you are as a business. Consistency in branding creates greater awareness, recognition, trust, and ultimately can have a positive impact on your bottom line. Consistency in headshots is key to sending the message that you are one company – that the leadership team is together, aligned, and “on the same page”.  It also says that you care about your overall corporate image/brand, that quality is important, and that you are willing to invest the time and expense to make it optimal.

Your executive team headshots represent the leadership of the company, and are an integral part of the “About” section of many business websites. Potential customers, investors, partners, and employee candidates visit this page to get a better understanding of the company values, the strength/background of its leaders.

For businesses that offer professional services, the leadership team often plays an even more important function. They may be the people clients will be working with directly, or indirectly. They set the tone of the company; they are a very important element of the brand. The executive team page is the place visitors often go to in order to see who those principals are. A unified look to the images of the team sends a more impactful, positive message of a team-oriented leadership that works together.

Below are examples of team images from two Boston-area business websites (different companies and industries). Think about your first impressions of each group of images. In the first group, the images could not have been more different – different backgrounds, lighting, color balance, camera angle. There is no consistency, and the images look old, and faded. There is a lack of quality and consistency. This can lead the viewer to wonder if these people actually work together or are even still there - which could lead the viewer to wonder if the rest of the website is current, etc. There is also no consistency or integration in the look of these images with the overall look and feel of the rest of the website, which in and of itself is not optimal.

Now, imagine you only saw one of these headshot images at time in separate articles or areas on your business website. You would have no visual clues that these people all work for the same company, or are in any way related. If you saw these individuals’ profiles on LinkedIn, they would have no visual connection to each other.

The second group of images shows far greater consistency in lighting, background, and color balance. The impression created is that these people are a team! The headshots look fresh and current, and of high quality – you can imagine them being in the same office. A consistent look such as this is more easily integrated into a websites overall look. Imagine seeing only 1 of these images at a time in the same separate pages or articles, or on their LinkedIn Profile pages. At some level you will see the consistency, and you’ll recognize the look/brand.

You’ve likely invested a fair amount of time and effort into developing your messaging, your brand, and your website. Be sure that your leadership team images support your overall branding and messaging, and be consistent with the impression you want to create.

To learn more about how to create great, consistent team headshots, download my ebook “Marketers Guide to High Quality Team Images”