For Customers

A Small Discount

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At my favourite buffet restaurant, people under 12-years-old pay only half-price. Kids get the same quality of food and the same service but pay only half the price.

People under 12-years-old pay half-price for movie theatre admission. They sit in the same seats and watch the same movie but pay half the price.

At a hair salon, people under 12 years of age pay half-price for a haircut. They sit in the same stylist chair and get the same service but for half the price.

On Toronto public transit, people under 12 years of age pay one-quarter the price. They ride the same bus and travel to the same destination but pay a quarter of the price.

What’s going on here? Are the rest of us being over-charged?
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Enhancing corporate image

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While browsing through the corporate site of Canada’s largest newspaper chain, a few things stood out:

• The corporate site uses free WordPress blog software. On one hand, this makes the site look very current and easy to read. But at the same time, it screams “we’re using a free WordPress blog” because it looks exactly like a, uh, WordPress blog. (Or maybe that’s the point?)

• The site has no pictures of its directors, just text.

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Colourful Year

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Are you feeling stressed? Does your spirit need to be lifted? Do you need a healthy glow? Then have we got the cure for you: a big dose of Honeysuckle 18-2120.
The colourful folks at Pantone have declared that this is the colour for 2011. Please adjust your life accordingly.

 

Best ways to waste your marketing budget

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Here are some of the best ways for a business to waste its marketing efforts. These have been proven to produce poor results and push customers away. If your business has too much money and you need to waste some of it, these tips should help you accomplish that goal:

• Send out press releases without any pictures. This is the best way to let editors know that your press release isn’t really important and you don’t want attention.

• Use stock photography. Nothing says “we don’t care” more than the use of cheap, stock pictures. Custom photography won’t waste money since it provides useful information to customers.

• Make sure your About Us or Contact Us web page doesn’t have any pictures of your key employees. Why risk gaining credibility and trust with your customers when you can be another impersonal business?

• Use only low-resolution pictures on your web site. Large pictures have the problem of attracting and holding customer attention which can encourage them to open their wallets. Going small is a great way to waste your web efforts.

 

Dear Occupant

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Today, I received a “Dear Photographer” e-mail which proclaimed that I’m being considered for “free” inclusion in the next edition of a prestigious “Who’s Who” book. Supposedly, I’m one of the top, most distinguished photographers in North America. Being included in this book will mark my high level of achievement.

Yeah, right.

For fun, I visited this company’s web site:
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Best public relations photography

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Public relations photography, or PR photography, is about producing editorial photography that puts the client in a favourable light and increases their name recognition.

PR photography must be editorial in nature simply because that’s the style demanded by publications which use public relations photography. Newspapers, magazines, trade magazines, news websites and other publishers of PR photography use only editorial photography and not, for example, advertising photography because it directly impacts the publication’s credibility.

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Ordinary miracle of photography

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Every photographer who has ever tray-processed prints in a darkroom knows the magic of watching a picture appear on a piece of photo paper. It doesn’t matter if it’s their first print or their 10,000th print, an image appearing in the developer tray never ceases to amaze.

With digital cameras, the magic of the photo process is gone. Digital photography is so commonplace, antiseptic and automatic that most people take it for granted. Push a button, look at the LCD screen.

The technology involved in turning light into electricity, then into bits of digital information stored on a memory card, and finally into an electronic image on a computer screen is no longer considered magical, if it ever was. Digital pictures are today’s normal, everyday routine.

But the miracle of photography itself has never changed.

The ability of photography to capture the right moment, tell a story, inspire hope, enhance emotion, send a message, influence a belief, change opinion or illustrate what words cannot, is still as strong as it ever was.

This is why smart businesses always use custom photography for their press releases, annual reports, web sites and other marketing collateral. These companies understand the ordinary miracle of photography.

 

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