For Customers

The first 7,300 days

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According to my calendar, as of today, it’s been 7,300 days, (not that I’m counting). If you do the math and remember to account for leap years, that works out to a handful of days short of 20 years.

So how have the past 7,300 days been for you?

Seven thousand, three hundred days ago, a chap named Tim Berners-Lee showed off a working computer program called “WorldWideWeb”. The overall project he was working on was named “World Wide Web” which beat out his other name choices of “Information Mesh”, “Information Mine” and “Mine of Information”.

Note that the “official” 20-year anniversary was in March 2009. But that marks the day when Berners-Lee first submitted his proposal for the project:

Tim Berners-Lee holds a copy of his 1989 proposal titled, “Information Management: A Proposal” during an event to mark the 20th anniversary of his proposal to create the World Wide Web, at CERN labs in Geneva Switzerland on 13 March 2009. Berners-Lee stands next to the computer he used as the first web server. (Note: my caption. Handout photo contained no caption information.)

Photo credit: Maximilien Brice/ © 2009 Cern

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The Paradox of Price

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Okay, a little Monday afternoon math and no calculators are required.

Consumers want the most value for their money. Value can be defined by the benefits provided by a product or service, divided by the cost of that product or service:

Value = Benefits / Cost

This over-simplified equation shows that for a given set of benefits, as the cost decreases, the value to the customer increases. It might seem that maximum value would be reached if the cost is zero. But if you remember your grade school math, you cannot divide by zero.

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All that glitters is not gold

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Should you peruse some of the job “opportunities” for Toronto photographers on LinkedIn, you may see these glittery gems:

1. The job: Go to a few dozen used car lots each week and photograph cars for a publisher’s used car web site and print magazine.

Required: an “awareness of fumes, odor, gases, compounds or dusts related to the automotive industry.”

Not required: any photo experience.

Benefits: may get free parking at one of the publisher’s offices.

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Publicity photography minus the publicity

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A few nights ago, I was assigned to photograph celebrities arriving for a fundraiser at an exclusive home in Toronto. The event had set up an arrivals area in a small parking lot off the front driveway of the home, (did I mention it was a large house?). The red carpet was nice and wide, and the area was covered, lit and heated. Perfect, considering it was a cold, dark November night.

Canadian composer and producer David Foster arrives to host a fundraiser for his charity foundation in Toronto, Canada, 19 November 2010.

The three largest wire services in the world were there specifically to photograph the two main celebrities attending. The headlining entertainer for the event would also make for a usable news photo. Other photo agencies and TV were there as well.
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Why you should avoid cheap pictures

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In case you missed the memo: it’s a waste of your time and money for your business to use cheap stock photos. A company that chooses cheap pictures is fooling no one but themselves. Cheap photography can harm both your business image and your bottom line, (which means “cheap” actually costs too much).

Here’s some proof pudding:

A study using eye-tracking technology was released yesterday by Jakob Nielsen, titled “Photos as Web Content”. Important points to note:

• Bland stock images on web sites are completely ignored by users.

• Feel-good images that are purely decorative are mostly ignored.

• Stock photos of generic people are intentionally disregarded.

• Photos of real people, (as opposed to stock pictures of models), are viewed as important information.

• Pictures of key people at a business are very important. Business portraits are always a win for the company.

Conclusion of the study: “Invest in good photo shoots: a great photographer can add a fortune to your Web site’s business value.”

Do your business a favour and call your local corporate or commercial photographer today. A professional photographer is worth much more than what they cost.

 

More useless media handouts

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For his visit to Toronto, the Dalai Lama has come and gone. Some of his events were open to the media and some others were closed to the media but open to the public and their cameras. It also appears that some closed events weren’t really closed. Organizers just forgot to include them in the media itinerary.

The organizers released almost five dozen handout pictures all at once, covering all three days of the visit, at 11 PM on Sunday, the last day of the visit.
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The Four-letter F-word

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If you search the web for the most powerful words used in marketing, the most cited word, as you might guess, is the four-letter F-word, “free”. Certainly, the word free can get customer attention but is it really effective in making sales?

The F-word is so overused these days, that we almost automatically tune it out. We know that any e-mail which starts with “FREE” is spam and any web banner ad that yells “FREE!” is a waste of time. We also know that nothing is really free, there’s always a catch. Free will get attention, but it’s never taken seriously.
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