The goal was to get creative and art directors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland to access the pictures from Getty Images more often. Rather than using the image archive only to search for pictures, they should let it inspire them to new ideas. For this reason, a solution was sought that would offer more than just sending an image catalogue.

Every creative and art director knows that good ideas “die” each day (a German expression). Now there is an honourable, proper resting place for them: the idea graveyard.

In a condolence letter, Getty Images expressed its heartfelt sympathy for the departed ideas. The recipients could give their ideas fitting burials with the provided cemetery and place it on their desktop as a memorial ground. With consoling and hopeful words, the recipients were directed to the new Getty Images online catalogue, where they could be inspired to new ideas. For the subsequent online funeral at www.ideenfriedhof.com, the dead idea could be described with images and words and mourners could be invited by e-card.

5,500 mailings were sent. After the first week, more than 14,500 people had visited ideenfriedhof.com, and after four weeks, 3,100 e-cards had been sent. The Idea Graveyard was presented and discussed for weeks in national and international weblogs as well as industry publications, which lead to a long-lasting high clickrate at ideenfriedhof.com. Images sales from gettyimages.de increased by 11% over those of the previous year and were much higher than expected. With the direct and indirect results of the campaign, Getty Images lastingly strengthened its position as the leading creative image archive.