One of the services I provide to building product manufacturers is assistance in building a portfolio of photographs of their products and projects in which the products are used. The photos are often the bedrock upon which sales, promotion, and advertising campaigns are built. My clients generally recognize the utility of photos, but do not understand that a portfolio becomes an asset that adds to the value of their companies.
Ceilings Plus provides a case in point. The company was a leading producer of innovative ceiling products until it was purchased by USG in 2017. I followed the acquisition carefully as I had been responsible for Ceilings Plus’s marketing (as a consultant and then as in-house marketing director} for nearly 20 years until shortly before the purchase.
USG has gradually swallowed up the Ceilings Plus brand. For the first year after the purchase, Ceilings Plus continued promotion under its own name as a brand of USG. Then it became USG’s Ceilume product line. Now, just three years after the change in ownership, USG’s most recent full line catalog mentions Ceilings only in some of the fine print but not at in headlines or sales copy.
This type of multistage brand transition is not unusual. In the automotive industry, for example, Datsun became Datsun by Nissan, then Nissan Datsun, and finally Nissan.
Yet the photographs used to support the brand have not changes as rapidly as has the brand. Of the 94 project photographs shown In USG’s Ceilings Plus Projects Gallery, 63 of them are images that I had obtained for Ceilings Plus during my tenure. The catalog has a greater percentage of new photos, but still depends heavily on photos from as long as 20 years ago.
This demonstrates that a portfolio of photographs is an important part of the assets of a building product manufacturer. The valuation of Ceilings Plus certainly included technical knowhow, a talented team, and production facilities. Yet it also was buying the credibility of having an impressive portfolio to inspire designer and demonstrate that the firm could deliver.
Seeing how quickly USG is abandoning the Ceilings Plus brand identity, one wonders if the enduring photographic assets might be more value than the goodwill attached to the brand name.