Case Study: One Shoot, A Whole Personal Brand — CT Consultancy

Client: Carly Tysoe, CT Consultancy Marketing: Priya Mulji, PM Marketing Photography: Steve Edwards Photography

When Carly Tysoe of CT Consultancy came to us for personal brand photography, the brief was simple: give her a bank of images that could carry her Instagram for months, not weeks. What’s happened since is a genuinely good example of a photographer, a marketer and a client all doing their bit properly — so we thought it deserved writing up.

The shoot

We captured a mix of poses, settings and expressions in one session — leaning against brick walls, seated with props, mid-laugh, mid-point, looking thoughtful. Nothing was shot “for” a specific post. That’s deliberate: the more range you build in on the day, the more flexible the library becomes afterwards. We’d used the sadly now closed Redtree Studio in Nottingham and then went for a walk and made the most of our surroundings. Carly changed her outfit a few times, which again helps to create teh impression that multiple shoots have been done.

The templates

This is where Priya and PM Marketing come in. Rather than treating each Instagram post as a one-off design, PM Marketing built a small set of branded templates — consistent colour palette (that terracotta, sage and cream combination), consistent fonts, consistent logo placement — and then slotted different images from the shoot into different templates depending on the message.

The result is a feed that instantly reads as CT Consultancy, whether the post is:

• A thought-leadership hook (“Want to transform how your managers think, act and perform?”)
• An educational quiz (accruals vs prepayments, aimed squarely at her audience of business owners)
• An event promo for a workshop or networking talk
• A follower shout-out to build community
• A straightforward announcement for an upcoming session

Same face, same brand, same handful of images — seven completely different jobs done.

Why it works

This is the bit worth stealing for any small business: the photography gave PM Marketing raw material with enough variety to avoid repetition, and the templates gave that photography structure and consistency it wouldn’t have had if each post had been designed from scratch. Neither piece works as well without the other. Good photos with no design system look scattered; good templates with no decent photos look like stock imagery with a name slapped on.

Carly’s feed is proof that you don’t need a new photoshoot every month — you need one good shoot, a marketer who understands how to stretch it, and the discipline to keep the branding consistent while the messaging changes underneath it.