'Image guardians' offer greater control across todayÂ’s expanded media landscape

'Image guardians' offer greater control across today’s expanded media landscape

One of the UK’s largest commercial photographic studios, which has expanded its offer with pre-media and creative production services, has reported a raft of major blue chip brand additions to its client list following the launch of a new London office.

Hangar Seven, based in South Manchester, which creates room set, location and cut out photography for leading retail brands like Sainsbury and DFS, has attracted Monarch and cosmetics group COTY to its pre-media division, as the agency said it is emerging as a new breed of creative production agency – the 'image guardians'.

Rapid growth confirms media asset demand

Privately owned, Hangar Seven was established in 2009 by a team of three entrepreneurs. It is now a £5-million turnover business employing more than 60 people across its two sites, which includes a 20,000-square-foot studio and office in Macclesfield, Cheshire, and a 10,000-square-foot technical production facility in London.

Nick Aldrich, development director at Hangar Seven, said: “With such a vast landscape to cover, pre-media has become increasingly important to client brands and by using a creative production agency like Hangar Seven, and decoupling the production from the agency that might have originated the overall idea, companies can save thousands of pounds whilst benefiting from a far superior end result. This is undoubtedly an attractive proposition to clients as marketing budgets continue to be slashed.

Aldrich continued: “As well as creating stunning photography, our London facility now includes state-of-the-art pre-media production resources, TV editing suite and a fully resourced digital photography studio, which allows us to originate and repurpose creative work to cater for the media landscape’s diverse advertising requirements and formats – be it for digital, TV, cinema, press or outdoor. We also co-ordinate and quality control the global delivery of adverts from one central point, while converting them into different languages, servicing more than 65 countries.

“Opening Hangar Seven London and widening our service range helps us to offer a significant ‘value add’ to our existing client base of major global retailers and brands, as well as extending our geographic reach.”

Expansion from photography business

Aldrich added: “The heightened importance of photography in the retail sector, fuelled by the emergence of new media channels for consumers to browse and purchase products, has opened up major opportunities for our core business, and for us to now expand our offer further.

“We have always been a far cry from the stereotypical ‘catalogue-reliant’ photographic studios of old, and have carved out a niche in the market place for clients looking for a photographic partner that understands trends and interiors, as well as commercial requirements. This attracted home interest brands like DFS, Sainsbury and Fired Earth, for whom we offer room set or location photography with trend led styling and propping; strategic planning, account management, and graphic design and artwork.

“Our CGI work – photorealistic image generation – has also boomed in recent months, as has the number of clients taking up our Asset Management Platforms service that provides secure access, management and distribution of images and assets across the globe.”

Concluding, Aldrich added: “Our size, industry leading internal processes and unrivalled industry experience means that we can meet client’s demands for high volume and fast turnaround, as well as the quality required. This makes us very hard to emulate – you can only offer this service if you have all of these elements in place. It’s a very exciting time for us.”