Higher prices make customers happy

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The key to helping your customers better enjoy your photographs is to raise your prices.

A 2007 USA study, with the catchy title of “Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness”, showed that marketing actions, such as changing the price of a product, can affect consumer enjoyment of that product.

The study used functional MRI to observe the brain activity of test subjects while they sampled differently-priced wines.

The subjects were told that five different wines were priced at $5, $10, $35, $45 and $90. But unknown to them, there were really only three different wines: the $5 and $45 wines were the same; the $10 and $90 wines were the same.
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Drink Up

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In the About Us page on this blog, I mentioned some of the ways my pictures have been used. I jokingly mentioned that my photos have never appeared on a coffee mug or mouse pad. Well, one of those has changed.

Often, a company has an employee lunchroom or staff lounge in the workplace. A not uncommon problem is that some employees leave behind dirty cups or other types of mess on a table or in the sink.

Enter behavioural psychology.

As a fun experiment, a small Toronto office has given each of its employees a free coffee mug with their business portrait on it. Their mug on a mug. The office will no longer buy disposable cups.

Since each person now has their own coffee mug with their face on it, the company hopes that the employees will be motivated to clean up after themselves. If someone leaves behind a dirty cup, everyone in the office will immediately know who the culprit is.

The company is wondering whether employees who clean their own coffee mug will also feel obligated to clean any of their other food messes in the lunchroom.

The employees may think they got a free coffee mug but they really got entered into a psychology experiment.

 

Identity Crisis

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A recent Black Star blog post by Jim Pickerell gives advice to photographers who are trying to licence their stock pictures. He’s been involved in the stock photo business for over 40 years.

Pickerell writes that since there’s such an oversupply of stock images, photographers need to get their pictures seen by photo buyers. He then goes on to list some numbers and statistics.

The interesting takeaway from this article is for any business that’s thinking about using stock pictures for its marketing instead of commissioning its own original corporate photography or business photography.
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No cheque in the mail

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From time to time, newer professional photographers ask what they should do when a client is late to pay. The answer is easy: remind the customer to pay.

Okay, maybe it’s not quite that simple although it can be.

When a client hasn’t paid within the time period set by the photographer, often the reason is that the client has lost or misplaced the invoice, or they’ve simply forgotten to pay it. (Yes, it would be nice if we could “forget” to pay our bills.)
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Photographically Speaking

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From A to Z, here are some lesser-known photography phrases:

Aggressive pixels – A picture shot extremely tight. For example: when all others are using a 70-200mm lens, the photographer using a 400mm lens is said to be shooting aggressive pixels.

American Idol Effect – A reference to photo sites like Flickr.

Autotard – A photographer who always uses their camera on the “Auto” setting.

Available darkness – Shooting in a dark location without flash.

Baby zoomer – A wide-angle zoom lens.

Bacon assignment – A job that pays much more than it’s worth.

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Work only half a day per year

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A year ago, I wrote a post about a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) survey which showed that Canada’s top CEOs earned the equivalent of the average annual Canadian income by 2:30 PM on January 3rd, (based on 2009 numbers).

The CCPA released this year’s survey results (based on 2010 numbers). Canada’s top CEOs now earn the equivalent of the average annual Canadian income even sooner.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ annual look at CEO compensation reveals that by 12:00 noon on January 3rd, the first official working day of the year, Canada’s Elite 100 CEOs (the 100 highest paid CEOs of companies listed in the TSX Index) will have already pocketed $44,366. It takes the Average Joe an entire year, working full-time, to earn that same amount.

This represents a 27% pay increase from the previous year. The average Canadian received a 1.1% increase.

The CCPA has a depressing pay clock here.

 

Annual Report photography

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Annual reports contain a mix of corporate photography, editorial photography and maybe a tiny amount of advertising photography. Other than to publish a company’s financial numbers, an annual report has to show what the company does, how it does what it does and show its accomplishments from the past fiscal year.

As we move into the traditional season for annual reports (i.e. late winter / early spring), here are some suggestions for annual report photography.
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