For Customers

Memorable (part 2)

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In his 2011 book, Moonwalking with Einstein, science writer Joshua Foer describes how someone can increase their memory. He learned of a technique while covering a national memory competition. The following year, Foer won that same competition using this very technique.

To improve one’s memory, Foer learned that one has to associate an image with the information that needs to be remembered. The more memorable that image, the better the chance of remembering. It’s possible that Allan Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory (visual explanation here ;-) ) might help explain this.

Alexandra Horowitz, a PhD in cognitive science who teaches psychology at Barnard College in the US, wrote, “… a simple fact of human cognition: we naturally remember visual images. … The less banal, the better. Quotidian scenes are forgettable. What snags the cells of our brains are disgusting, bizarre and novel images.”
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Memorable (part 1)

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A university study recently published in Psychological Science concluded that taking pictures may impede one’s memory. The press release is here.

A brief summary of this study: one group of people were asked to take some general pictures during an art museum tour. The next day, these people had difficulty remembering exactly what they had seen. But a second group, who were asked to zoom in and photograph specific details of what they saw and to pay more attention to their photography, had better memory of what they had seen during their tour.

Sadly, the study uses the silly phrase “photo-taking impairment effect”. The researcher wrote, “In order to remember, we have to access and interact with the photos, rather than just amass them.”
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Marginally cheaper by the dozen

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You can tell that it’s getting close to the end of the year as companies rush to get work done or hurry to spend any remaining budget. In the past two weeks, I received nine inquiries for business portraits and each job had to be delivered and invoiced before December 31. The requests ranged from two to thirty business headshots.

One potential customer asked why I don’t offer a bigger volume discount for multiple business portraits. They wondered why the cost to shoot 30 business headshots didn’t drop to under $50 each.

Here’s why:
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Stop Time

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When considering a potential purchase, a customer will, where possible, compare the price of the product or service to other similar products or services. But when a customer has no reference points to help determine the worth of a purchase, they will usually fall back on two old standbys: price per weight and price per hour.

For example, a customer will often assume that a 5-lb. box of Product A should be cheaper than a 10-lb. box of Product B and that a two-hour service should cost less than a four-hour service.

Many companies don’t have a lot of experience hiring a corporate photographer. This means they may have difficulty determining an acceptable price for professional photography. Is a particular photo commission worth $500 or $5,000?

To gauge a photographer’s price, a customer will often resort to hourly wages. For example, if a photographer charges $1,000 to shoot some business portraits over the course of two hours, the customer might think, “That’s $500/hour! That’s much too expensive!”

The cost of photography should not depend on time spent but rather on value gained. Pricing photography by the hour is like pricing books by the number of pages or pricing paintings by the square inches of canvas.

When assessing a photographer’s price, instead of reducing it to dollars per hour, ask how important that photography is to your company’s marketing plans. If the marketing value can’t be expressed in dollars per hour then neither should the photography.

 

Cheap Future

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For customers who expect cheap or free:

I cannot always sympathize with that demand which we hear so frequently for cheap things. Things may be too cheap.

They are too cheap when the man who produces them upon the farm or the man or woman who produces them in the factory does not get out of them living wages with a margin for old age and for a dowry for the incidents that are to follow.

I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth or shapes it into a garment shall starve in the process.

– Benjamin Harrison, 23rd US President, August 1891.

 

You Don’t Say

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Customers say the darndest things:

None of the photographers we hired last year knew what we wanted.

None of the other photographers knew how to take pictures we like.

We’ve had such a hard time finding a photographer who knows the right price.

I know this is what we asked for but it isn’t what we want.

If our budget changes, we may not be able to pay you.

We need a portrait of our CEO done this afternoon and we’re willing to pay $75.

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Magic Act

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Some photographers charge more, other photographers charge less, and some photographers undercharge and effectively work for nothing. But I’ve never heard of a photographer who overcharges or gouges customers.

A fellow corporate photographer recently wondered what he should tell potential clients who point out that another photographer charges much less than he does. Perhaps this might help:

Photographers are not economic magicians. When a photographer charges less, it means the customer is getting less. There’s no way around it. Maybe it’s less quality, maybe less service, maybe less experience. But it’s always less. The customer has to decide if they’re willing to settle for less.

If the pictures are not important then it might be okay to take a chance with low-priced photography. But smart companies know to always avoid risk because cheap can sometimes be too expensive.

My photography business doesn’t settle for less, (which is why I buy only premium cameras, lenses, computers, software, etc.), and I refuse to offer less because my customers are important.

I want my customers to succeed in their business marketing and I want my pictures to play a part in that success. I don’t cut corners and give customers less because that would only undermine their business goals.

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