rant

Wrong Number

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The good thing about Bell, the Canadian phone company, is that it serves as the perfect example of what not to do in business.

It appears that Bell has quietly dropped two of its fake fees, (sadly, it hasn’t dropped all of them). Through one of its sister companies, Bell actually referred to its fake fees as a “made-up fee”.

Bell is currently in the midst of class action lawsuits regarding its System Access fee (aka “government licensing fee”) and its 9-1-1 fee. Both of these cell phone fees were just recently cancelled, although in some areas, the fees may still linger for some unknown reason. Just to be fair, the two other cell carriers are also involved in the same lawsuits.

Why wouldn’t a business tell its customers that it has eliminated some fees and has thereby lowered prices? Read on.

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Royal Pain

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I just finished three days of following Prince Charles and Camilla through Toronto and southern Ontario. The Royal couple are currently on an 11-day official visit to Canada.

My first thought is that this is a colossal waste of taxpayer money. I can’t imagine how many millions of dollars are being spent on this. Many events were not open to the general public and most media events were only for a handful of pre-selected media organizations.

However if you consider, or at least pretend, that this is a marketing or public relations event, then perhaps it might be money well-spent if it had been properly planned and executed. This applies to all marketing efforts and not just royal visits. The client, (in this particular case, the Canadian taxpayer), must get their money’s worth.

Why spend time and money promoting a product, service or brand when that effort is only half-assed or squandered? Why just go through the motions? Marketing success needs both media and public exposure. Otherwise it’s just a tree falling in the forest.
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Don’t be the Ass in Assignment

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Here are a few examples of self-proclaimed “professional” photographers in action. All of these happened over the past two weeks at various photo assignments.

• Them: My hard drive crashed! What should I do?
  Me: Do you have a backup?
  Them: No.

Over a week later, after this person lost the previous job’s photos and had to carry their iMac back to the store to get a new drive installed and then had to re-install all their software:

  Me: Do have a back up of your new hard drive?
  Them: No.

 

• Them: My camera battery died!
  Me: Don’t you carry a spare?
  Them: No, because I’ve never needed one before.
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Canada Dry rights grab

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Canada Dry Motts is currently running a photo contest (“Art of Refreshment Photo Contest”) which seems to be only about getting free pictures for their advertising and marketing. You’d think that after all these years, with all the negative publicity other similar contests have garnered, companies would have learned by now.

This contest trades on the names of some famous artists who did ads for the beverage product over the past 50 years. Funny it doesn’t mention if any of these artists worked for free.

Canada Dry Motts is claiming all rights, exclusively, for all eternity, for every single photo entered in this contest. Even if a photo doesn’t win, the photographer has lost all rights to their submitted photo forever. Does that say “rights grab” and “we need free pictures to build up our library”?
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Film Festival thoughts

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The 34th annual Toronto Film Festival has come to an end.

A few things got better, some things got worse and most stayed the same (i.e. bad). One might think that after 34 years, the event could get it right.

What got better

• The main red carpet area was greatly enhanced:

No more TV crews in the background.

The arrival area was lit with just enough light to shoot late-night arrivals without having a jet-black background. Plus, the light was even daylight balanced. In previous years, night events were very dark, lit only by the existing one or two orange street lights. I suspect the new lighting was meant for the event’s own TV needs and not for photographers.

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Ready for your close-up

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I photographed a week-long tennis tournament last week for the event organizers. The media relations folks were, as always, fantastic. They were friendly, helpful and always available. They answered every question, sorted out every problem, had all necessary tournament information available and arranged every interview. They even handed out free pizza and beer at the end of each day. On very hot days, they’ve been known to hand out ice cream!
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Illegal Motion

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Football has a penalty called “illegal motion” which applies when an offensive player is in forward motion before the ball is snapped.

Speaking of offensive, there is a contest currently being run by a Photoshop magazine (not affiliated with Adobe). The winner gets to pretend to be pro media photographer on the sidelines at a USA college football game. The contest is open only to amateurs.

The prize is “a dream sports assignment of a lifetime” and includes: the winner will be loaned the necessary gear (with which they probably have no experience using); they will go into the stadium’s media room to get a “big spread of all kinds of food”, a “full blown buffet”; they will “mingle with other media folks”; and finally, the winner gets a media pass to shoot on the sidelines.
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