Expected Value

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Do you have a spare $800,000?

If yes, then HTT Technologies has a nice automobile just for you.

HTT (High-Tech Toys), in Quebec, has designed its 750-hp Pléthore LC750 supercar for a very exclusive audience. HTT has been quoted as saying that its target customer is the billionaire auto enthusiast. (The 390-km/hr Pléthore LC750 is cheap when compared to the 415-km/hr Bugatti Veyron Super Sport which is $2.5M).

If the price tag isn’t exclusive enough, the company says it will build only 99 cars. Exclusive design, exclusive price, exclusive production.
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Marketing Professional Photography

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When marketing its products or services, a business is usually told to focus on selling the benefits of those products or services. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. But this isn’t entirely accurate.

Human nature is such that people are motivated by the need for risk aversion. People will act more to avoid a loss than to gain a benefit. We fear loss more than we desire a benefit. This is known as the Prospect Theory.

From the New York Times:

…most of us find losses roughly twice as painful as we find gains pleasurable.

A professional photographer seeking new clients should frame their marketing more around loss avoidance and minimizing risk rather than just pointing out potential benefits. New clients are usually concerned with avoiding risk since they’ve never worked with that photographer before, (i.e. “Can we trust this photographer do the job properly?”).

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Budgeting for Success

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Many photographers fail to understand that a client’s budget determines their work. In an ideal world, it would be the other way around. But sadly, the ideal world and the real world don’t often intersect.

Don’t confuse “work” with “effort” or “creativity”. The latter two should be independent of the client’s budget. Whether the budget is $1,000 or $10,000, the photographer has to put forth the same effort and creativity.
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Pricing Editorial Photography

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When it comes to pricing their work, photographers need all the help they can get. fotoQuote and Blinkbid are two common software tools used.

An overlooked tool for editorial photographers is Editorial Photography Estimator. The free version is still available but not the commercial version which included data for advertising photography. A new edition of the commercial version was supposed to have been released in 2011.

It’s important to remember that the Editorial Photography Estimator (EPE) is from 2001 and its numbers are out-of-date. However, the underlying concepts are still valid. Editorial fees, for both assignment and stock, are based upon the circulation of the publication and that publication’s ad rates.
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Importance of Marketing Collateral

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The key to enhancing business image and winning consumer trust is through the use of marketing collateral.

Marketing collateral refers to the various forms of communication a business publishes on its own. By contrast, paid placements, such as advertising, are not a form of marketing collateral. Advertising is part of the sales process whereas marketing collateral supports the sales process.

Advertising often fails because consumers simply don’t trust ads. Claims made in an ad are not always backed up by any information. Customers are skeptical because they know advertising is only concerned with taking their money.
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How to insult a photographer

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One of the more popular ways to insult a photographer is to look at their pictures and say, “Nice pictures! You must have a good camera.”

Here are a few gentle ways to insult a fellow photographer:

  • He’s a few pictures short of a slideshow.
  • She’s obviously not working with a full frame.
  • His zoom doesn’t extend all the way.
  • Her flash isn’t firing on full power.
  • Her shutter speed is a bit slow.
  • His aperture isn’t exactly wide open.
  • She’s dragging her shutter.
  • He’s been spending way too much time in the darkroom.
  • He’s working with a shallow depth of field.
  • She’s not exactly high definition.
  • “Low resolution” is his middle name.
  • His lens cap is on.
  • Her memory card is empty.
  • She’s not exactly the sharpest lens in the bag.
  • He’s not exactly the fastest lens in the bag.
  • His camera is clicking but nothing gets recorded.
  • Her camera is firing but her film isn’t advancing.
  • He’s a couple stops short of a good exposure.
  • The carousel is in place but the projector isn’t turned on.

 

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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