Avoid fake news about your company

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Thanks to recent events in the USA, the phrase “fake news” has become popular. Fake news, the intentional publication of hoaxes and disinformation, has existed for many decades. For example: while standing in a supermarket checkout lane, you’ve probably noticed all those crazy headlines on tabloid magazine covers: cures for cancer, alien invasions, Bigfoot sightings, the end of the world, and so on.

Sometimes fake news is used to sway opinion but mostly it’s used to make money.

Fake news isn’t used just to influence elections. It’s routinely used online to garner web clicks which in turn helps generate money through advertising. Sometimes this is outright fake news and other times it’s clickbait headlines to trick readers. Unfortunately many legitimate news outlets shoot themselves in the foot when they do the same thing:
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Violins and marketing photography

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When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you’re telling a story.

– Joshua Bell

You can replace the violin in that statement with a camera and it would still hold true.

A decade ago, The Washington Post did an unscientific social experiment where Joshua Bell, a well-known classical violinist, dressed in jeans, t-shirt and ball cap, performed incognito in a subway station. The newspaper wanted to see how many morning rush-hour commuters would stop to hear classical music being perfectly played.

On the morning of Friday January 12, 2007, Bell set up inside a Washington DC subway station and placed an open violin case on the ground for donations. The unannounced event was recorded by a hidden camera.

The Post was worried about huge mobs gathering and the possibility of needing police for crowd control. You can probably guess what happened.
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Point me in the wrong direction

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Thinking of starting a photography business?

Your first photography web site and your first business plan will fail. Guaranteed. You will have to make changes and try again. Then more failure and more changes, and more failure and more changes.

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you won’t get anywhere important. And you won’t know if you’ve arrived anywhere important until you know where’s not important.

You must have a good answer to each of these questions or else you’re in the wrong place:

1) What problem will your business solve?

If your answer is that people want photography then you’re wrong.

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Worth Every Cent

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When someone asks you to work for free, they want photography that’s good enough, pictures that are better than nothing, photos that are worth what they’re paying.

When someone hires you to work for pay, they want photography that’s good, pictures that are better than anything, photos that are worth what they’re paying.

 

 

 

What is corporate photography?

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“Corporate photography” is just a general name for photography used to help market a business. It isn’t just for big corporations. This type of photography can be used by any business, big or small, incorporated or not.

Corporate photography is not advertising photography. The latter type of photography is about selling a product or service. Corporate photography is for building and enhancing a company’s name or brand and it tends to be an editorial style of photography.

The most common type of corporate photography is business portraits and headshots. Photography of business conferences and events, office interiors and exteriors, and employees on the job are also common subject matter. Corporate photographers are also used to cover a company’s involvement with a community or charity event.
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Pre-invoices and Prepayments

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If you need a deposit or a prepayment before the photography takes place, you simply ask the customer for it. Easy, right?

With retail customers, this is a straightforward process. But with some corporate customers, it might require slightly more paperwork.

Some companies can’t, or won’t, issue a prepayment based only on a photographer’s estimate or quote. They may need an invoice. An invoice is a legal request for payment, a quote is not.

How do you invoice a customer for work that hasn’t been done?
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The Wronged Customer

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“The customer is always right” is a well-known saying. But contrary to popular belief, it’s neither a law nor regulation of any kind.

That phrase seems to have gotten its start at least 112 years ago as part of a customer service policy of Marshall Field & Company, a Chicago department store.

A 1905 US newspaper published an article about Marshall Field & Company in which it seemingly quoted what Marshall Field taught his employees, namely that the customer is always right.

A year later in 1906, Harry Selfridge, a department store executive who worked for Marshall Field, moved to London where he soon opened his Selfridges & Company department store. He, too, used the phrase “the customer is always right.”

Over the years, it seems a number of other businesses at one time or another adopted a similar policy.
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