Big brands don’t care about your portfolio

Big brands don’t care about your portfolio. They don’t care until they see that you can bring them security and notoriety. 

Photographers and videographers (and all sorts of creative freelancers) spend tons of time tinkering with their portfolios, hoping that big brands will notice. What they don’t realize is that big brands are searching for something beyond just good work. 

Inside every brand, it’s someone’s job to hire creatives. If this is their job, then naturally, they want to do a good job. If they bring on a creative who drops the ball, that reflects poorly on them. So even if you’re creating mind-bending, groundbreaking work, if you can’t give big brands a sense of security and notoriety, they won’t fork over their budgets. They don’t love the idea of hiring solo creators because they don’t bring that sense of security. 

You can increase the security you bring to brands by building a team around you, or by connecting yourself to other creative studios and production companies. If a brand sees that there are other people scheduling calls, taking notes, making decks, and taking care of business, they’ll feel much better about hiring you. 

The next thing they’re looking for is notoriety. Think of the person inside the brand who is pitching a list of creative teams to their boss. If all of them make great work, but only one of them has worked with a famous brand or commands a large audience on social, then the choice is clear. They want to connect their brand to someone with notoriety. The line “She has worked with Taylor Swift,” goes 100 times further than anything else you could put in your portfolio. That idea sticks in the brains of people who grow businesses. 

You can increase your notoriety by connecting yourself to well-known brands and individuals. Which is a simple sentence for a difficult task. I’m not saying it’s easy—I’m saying it will undoubtedly set you apart. Whatever you can do to connect yourself to a famous brand, even if that’s working for free, will be worth it. Additionally, people are drawn to the success they desire. Most brands want larger audiences. If you have a large audience yourself, then you have something they want. You live large in their minds. 

Only after you’ve proven the security and notoriety you can bring will big brands care about your portfolio.