00:00 I'm Alan Capel, I'm the Chief Commercial Officer at Smartframe.
00:04 My first boss really that had an impact on me was a guy called Tony Stone.
00:12 Tony Stone was an extraordinary guy in that he was very visionary, but he was very clear.
00:19 There was a lot of clarity when he spoke about the vision of the business and where he wanted to take the business.
00:25 And I think that's something that I've certainly learned from.
00:29 The big thing I think I learned from him was being in the image industry, he really emphasised the value in an image.
00:38 Now that might sound obvious, but if you base all your judgements on your personal preferences, that's not going to work, certainly not in business.
00:45 So Tony was brilliant at understanding the commercial value of an image alongside the aesthetic value.
00:51 Put those two things together, you've got a very powerful combination.
00:54 And I think that's the key thing that I learned from him, is that you've got to have an eye on both sides.
01:00 So understanding which images are going to make you money, frankly, and which of those are going to be fantastic and beautiful to look at.
01:06 Often the two things beautifully come together, but sometimes the most successful pictures aren't necessarily the stunning ones.
01:15 Those lessons that I learned from Tony about really investing in understanding which of your images are most valuable,
01:24 is something that we've put into an analytics package now.
01:27 You've got a lot of data that you can use to understand which are the most valuable images,
01:31 which images are going to resonate with which audiences, which is super important for publishers, super important for advertisers.
01:38 But also for content creators, you can then feed so much back now to photographers and picture agencies,
01:44 as to, you shoot this stuff, you're going to be successful.
01:48 There's a football game going on, you want to catch the best moments,
01:52 but there might be just a clash between two players where it wasn't a massively significant moment in the game,
02:01 but the interaction between the two players is so fascinating that it makes for that picture that will be on the back page of the newspaper or on the front page of that website.
02:11 I became a manager of people very quickly.
02:17 I came into a job and within a couple of weeks the two people who were above me in the team left and I was suddenly running the team.
02:25 And I suddenly discovered that it wasn't now just all about me,
02:28 it was about I had to think about other people and ultimately, you know, you don't lead on your own, you're leading a team.
02:34 For me, leadership is about collaboration, it's about motivation.
02:38 A lot of it is about people, understanding people, motivating people, making sure everybody's aligned, making sure everybody's with you.
02:45 I learned a lot over the years from a lot of people about when to be quiet and listen and hear the ideas of others
02:53 and when to also employ people where you feel personally you might have a gap.
02:58 Currently, the image world is in a really interesting position.
03:06 You've got AI coming in, there's a lot of fear around authenticity and making sure that images are protected.
03:14 2.5 billion images are stolen every single day.
03:18 So there's a lot of challenges for people trying to make revenue from images commercially.
03:25 What we're trying to do with SmartFrame is offer a new route in.
03:30 Yes, you could see us as disruptors, but I think the key thing is really we're going to be supplying a solution for content creators,
03:43 for publishers and for advertisers.
03:46 And really, has there been a solution previously that really equally helped all three?
