AchieveUnite had the privilege of sitting down with Josiane Faubert, founder and Managing Director of PICHA, a visual content provider that offers curated, modern African stories for brands to tell richer stories.
We selected PICHA to be highlighted in our Brands for Good series because of the work Josiane and PICHA are doing to make the voices, faces, and stories of modern Africa and black communities around the world available to brands to help change perceptions and elevate the diversity within their messages.
AU: How did you come up with the idea for PICHA?
Josiane: After working in international development in DC and loving it, we moved to London where I began working in market research. When I started to have kids I began to take on photography because I wanted to record my family and then decided to jump into that field of freelance photography.
Contacts started to reach out to me to find images of Africa. I directed them to stock photography sites but there wasn’t anything representative. At the time, there was a lot of international development-type photos, small African children in their underwear smiling and women carrying heavy stuff on their head. Very rural life. And I thought that there’s something to be done here because I’m originally from Gabon. And there is so much diversity there. Yes, you see people who live a rural life, but you also see modern people living as they do elsewhere.
A great anecdote that I have is when I was in New York I was exhibiting some photos and somebody came and said, “But you are saying that you’re showcasing African content, but this is clearly not Africa.” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s exactly why I’m doing it. The photo that you see is in Africa.” That was in South Africa in a high rise, and that was in Africa.
AU: What is your business model?
Josiane: We license images and work with brands and companies who have a goal to include diversity into their marketing and communications messages. We help them both through single licenses and membership subscriptions that they can acquire through the website. And we help them have true custom content that we can generate.
AU: What is your goal for PICHA?
Josiane: To change people’s perception. To allow marketers and people who communicate to have a selection of full of images that reflect Africa in a better way. When I started it, we were 100 hundred percent focusing on Africa. And then last year we realized that there are many links between black communities. So we decided to just become Afrocentric and try to cover all-black communities.
We are looking for contributors in the Caribbean and in Brazil. There’s a big Francophone African community in Europe that we also have covered. Obviously, here in the US we are covering African-Americans as well. There is a broad and wonderful diversity across cultures.
Everybody wants diversity images, but if you want to really make an impact on minority communities, it’s not just by showcasing a diverse image, but by making sure you are enabling economic opportunities for minorities as well.
AU: What is the long term impact PICHA has on the creative communities you work with?
Josiane: What makes us unique is our creatives are part of the communities they portray, which reinforces the economic opportunities within those communities.
Everybody wants diversity images, but if you want to really make an impact on minority communities, it’s not just by showcasing a diverse image, but by making sure you are enabling economic opportunities for minorities as well.
AU: How do you find your contributors across the globe? Do you still contribute images?
Josiane: I do still contribute, which I enjoy. We have contributors from South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, Gabon, France, the US. We even have some who are in Turkey. We continue to reach out to photographers we see on Instagram, etc. to sign up.
On the website, anybody can create an account. We don’t ask for a portfolio upfront, instead, we just ask them to agree to the terms and conditions and then right away they can start submitting because we know that we can review the images.
Our goal is to also help photographers grow. When they submit images we try our best to get back to them with feedback because, especially in Africa, stock photography is not very common. A lot of photographers will come with the background of shooting portraits, and they need to understand that we want images of people engaging in an activity. We don’t want them to look at a camera like posing.
So we have to go through that type of education. But I think it’s worth it because it helps them also understand all the legal aspects related to being a commercial photographer.
AU: We understand that one of the drivers for you is to provide economic support for your contributors. Please talk a little bit about that model and why it’s important for you to do that.
Josiane: We are a licensing platform. Our model is that contributors get paid when an image is licensed. And right now, we give them a 40 percent commission.
A lot of the very big platforms give about 20 percent, which is really low, especially when they have enterprise agreements, etc. It’s really working against creatives.
AU: Is there a particular part of the world you’re getting the most interest for use from your images?
Josiane: Until last year, we were really putting all our resources into Africa. Everybody loves it and they really see the need to have better representation. And obviously to make sure that the contributors have another economic outlet for their work.
And since last year when we switched to become Afrocentric, we started to do more marketing here in the states, and the reception has been great. And unfortunately, with everything that happened, we’ve seen even more interest in diversity content images, especially for global companies, companies who have offices here, in Europe, and in Africa.
I just hope that it’s really a long term investment for these companies to really make a change. I believe we really need to have these images out and that there needs to be a lot more representation in the images we see.
AU: How do you think PICHA is helping to change the narrative for people of color?
Josiane: That’s exactly what we’re doing by presenting a catalog of different types of images. We are trying to include more and more diversity. We are now working with a woman in South Africa who is educating us on how to shoot people with disabilities because we want to include that as well. We are going through that training with some of our contributors to really make sure that people with disabilities are being seen the way they want to be represented. We are aware of what’s lacking and we are trying to provide those also.
I completely understand that our images are meaningful, powerful. Currently, on our homepage, we’ve picked an image of a beautiful black woman because we wanted to really celebrate black women and their strength and everything they’ve done to collectively push people to vote and their strength, their resilience. There are so many stories that could be told to thank them and to emphasize and amplify their strength and their role in the society that we are living in.
We are also trying to give a lot more space also to the creatives. On our social media, we highlight a contributor once a month. We’re trying to really give them the space to amplify their voice and make sure that they are also recognized.
AU: Can you talk about your Visual Activist campaign?
Josiane: We’ve just put together the visual activist campaign to really emphasize the diversity of our communities and also to amplify the fact that representation really matters. We are not just one single story. We have many stories. On the PICHA website, you can go to the Visual Activists tab to see a visual representation of why contributors think representation matters. We’ve been able to have beautiful stories of people sharing their experiences. And it really shows the diversity within the black communities and we want to keep showing that.
We are always open to any collaborations, any other opportunities to have our voice heard.
Learn more about PICHA at https://pichastock.com/, and follow them on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.
What is AchieveUnite and Brands For Good?
AchieveUnite is a consulting and education company helping companies of all sizes generate maximum results from their channel and strategic alliance partner organizations.
As an organization built around deep expertise, we are at our core curious, active learners that constantly look for inspiration from other organizations doing great things. Our Brands for Good series came from our desire to share the impressive work we’ve seen organizations doing to build
impressive businesses while giving back good into the world.
We hope you enjoy their stories and best practice strategies as much as we do, and find some inspiration for your own personal and professional lives along the way.
