Tourism Vancouver Is Using Me
** UPDATE – Feb 14, 2012**
I received an ermail within a few hours of this blog post going live from the company who developed the website and associated ad campaign. They offered a sincere apology which I accepted.
Tourism Vancouver, through their Culture in Vancouver website, have used my likeness in an advertising campaign without my permission. Actually, not only did they use my likeness, they also used my photo without crediting the photographer… which was also me, as I took the photo of myself using my iPhone.
In the screenshot below, you can clearly see that they have used my likeness in the campaign to “Win Free Canucks Tickets!”
The photo was taken during last year’s Canucks playoffs on May 7, 2011 by myself using my iPhone and this website which also uploads it to Flickr automatically. See the original photo below, titled “Crazy Canucks fan! Wait, that’s me”
I don’t mind people using my photos as long as they adhere to the creative commons license of my account and I certainly won’t give permission to use my likeness in ads, unless I get paid or receive credit. This is the attribution that I have on my ads, that Tourism Vancouver did not follow:
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
I am surprised that they used my photo without contacting me as I am fairly well known in social media and I am a Canucks season ticket holder and passionate fan. During last year’s run by the Canucks to the Stanley Cup I had my face painted for every game that I went to. However, I did it to show my support as a fan, not to end up in Tourism Vancouver’s ad campaign without credit or compensation.
Welcome to the future of advertising, Chris! Rooted in word of mouth and personal recommendation, I think that we will start to see this sort of image theft a lot more often (I looked at the concept here, in fact: http://interacter.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/sellingout/ – about 1/2way down).I suspect that the image was gathered by remote spider, which wouldn’t have read your attribution.But I agree, it’s pretty low and pretty shameful. Perhaps you need to be paid for your image? Let us know how it goes!
Wow, that is unbelievable. Curious what their response will be. Hard to believe that they could plead ignorance…
Hey Chris, I”m not surprised but that’s shameful. Hopefully Tourism Vancouver will cooperate and, of course, compensate you. Something similar happened to me last year and until I publicly outed the organizations, I was not able to find an adequate end. If you’re interested, you can read more at the following link. I’m happy to say that it did end favorably but it was quite a headache to go through. Good luck!http://johngoldsmithphotography.com/archives/491
So rather than just contacting Tourism Vancouver directly and asking them to remove your picture or highlighting the fact that they are using pictures that are protected you decide to publicly announce the indiscretion.The only conclusion one can draw is that you’re less worried about the fact that TVan has used the picture without permission and more concerned about embarrassing them.Too bad.
Actually germanasspro I had a couple of other options that could have been harsher but have chosen this route to help educate fellow marketers on what not to do. This wasn’t a case of simply mis-using a photo on a website and forgetting to credit the source, it was modifying and cropping the image to be used in an ad campaign.