Yasmin Suteja reckons that, in 2022, we all live in an attention economy.
“And, honestly, I don’t think people pay much attention,” she says. “First impressions are extremely important and it literally [decides] whether they engage with the whole project at all.”
Suteja is a photographer, a director, an influencer and the owner of creative studio Culture Machine, so she knows the power of a first impression. Working with clients such Swarovski, Paco Rabanne and Reebok, she has to find immediacy and audience engagement on the battleground of social media, mostly wielding short-form video and still imagery.
So, how does she do it?
Understanding modern audiences
Suteja’s visual style as a photographer is bright and playful, blending vibrant colour palettes with strong artistic direction on set. Creating a positive impression with commercial work means more than just aesthetics, though – it’s understanding how a youth audience thinks.
“What I love about Gen Z is they’re so across the whole language of advertising and marketing,” Suteja says. “They were born into a world where everything’s being sold to them and they’re hyper-aware of that. They’re also going to be the first to call you out if you’re trying to sell them something and it doesn’t resonate with them or it feels inauthentic.”
Creating authentic first impressions
It’s that sense of authenticity that really puts Suteja over the top with audiences, and there are a few ways it’s realised. The first centres on the images’ subjects – the models and actors – and what they represent.
“Within the fashion world, there’s been lots of discussion around diversity and inclusivity, and I think that the youth have been a major force that has pushed for that,” says Suteja. “Opening up spaces, telling new stories, and creating visibility and representation, but in a way that is authentic and true to people.”
The other way Suteja creates an authentic first impression is much more personal, and it’s particularly important in her influencer-related work.
“I think it’s a bit of a paradox sometimes, particularly when it comes to asking celebrities and influencers to be authentic,” says Suteja. “It’s like, how authentic can you be when your whole job is presenting a very polished version of your life with the end goal of selling people a product?”
Suteja has found that projecting an image of authenticity often comes down to giving the audience a view of something genuinely personal, like a Swarovski shoot for Mother’s Day which featured Suteja and her mum.
“That probably got the most traction out of anything I’ve done recently, and it was because people were engaging with me as a person – this part of my life which is very important to me,” she says.
Picking the right medium for the message
Working across a spectrum of media forms requires Suteja to understand some important differences.
“The way I approach things a lot of the time is really thinking about the medium and the audience and how they’re approaching things on that platform,” Suteja says. “When you’re on Instagram, you’re not there to watch a one-hour feature film, you’re there to scroll and be easily entertained. In that space it’s quick, attention-grabbing, fast, bright, colourful, get to the point.”
In that sense, content doesn’t necessarily translate between media and platforms, so impressions have to be curated accordingly. “You can’t just repurpose a 4K film that we shot predominantly for screens in-store, post that on Tiktok and hope it’ll go viral. It won’t.”
Regardless of the format, Suteja says that to create immediate, appealing content, it’s worth asking yourself a few questions beforehand.
“One is, ‘Who am I?’” she says. “It’s a very difficult question to answer regardless of how old you are and how long you’ve been doing it. Two: ‘Why am I doing it?’ This is such an important thing that I have to ask myself all the time – ‘Why am I doing this?’ And the third component of it is, ‘How do I want to make people feel? What is the point of me making this?’”
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