Purpose

Who wants to shop at JC Penney?

Check out this coverage of the JC Penney financial situation by Planet Money – listen to the story HERE.

This isn’t a post about retail shopping, it is a post about discounts and identity.

Everyone knows that JC Penney is circling the drain.  Profits are down and they have a revolving door of CEO’s, none of whom are able to change the downward trend.  First they tried to get rid of discounts.  The problem with that was that their entire value proposition was built on discounts.  Their client base has been trained to look for advertised discounts. When they took the discounts away (even if the standard price was lower than the discount price) the loyal clients stayed away. They also couldn’t bring in a new clientele no matter how upscale they went with their rebranding and store design because they were known as a discount store.  Then they tried to redesign the stores to be more cosmopolitan and upscale, with nice seating areas and classier displays.  That just served to keep the core clients away without drawing in a new crop of customers.

So what can we learn from this with respect to discounts and identity?

I’m not saying that discounting doesn’t work.  With respect to photography something selling weddings you might see slight bumps by throwing a discount here and there because the clients are largely one-time purchasers.  But if you’re trying to attract loyal, repeat customers then a discount doesn’t tell people that you’re a great deal now, it just tells them that your full price is inflated.  It tells the market that the time to buy is when the discount is on.  Now if you’re a wedding photographer that works with chains of friends or gets a significant number of referrals from coordinators the discount method may be something you need to keep up – after all you conditioned them to buy only when the discount was available.  When your company’s value proposition is the discount you can’t get rid of it.

Bottom line is that discounts work in certain situations, but it is hard to develop a different value proposition once you lead with “now its cheaper!” – you just don’t have anywhere else to go.

The second thing to learn is that reinvention is hard, particularly on an identity basis.  Your business has an identity, and it caters to a specific identity.  It means something to work with your company (well, it should mean something if it doesn’t already).  You get to feel like a certain type of person by virtue of where you shop.  That is VERY difficult to change once established.  You can put a different filter on your images, you can try a different posing or shooting technique, but your business identity ought to stay relatively constant.  Changing that identity is incredibly difficult because it means throwing out the people who already believe in you and trying to convince a whole new set of people of your value.  If you don’t know what identity you’re perfect for now then the market is deciding it for you, which is a terrifying proposition.

- trr

 

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By |June 10th, 2013|Business, Entrepreneurship, Pricing, Purpose|0 Comments
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You want to tell a story?

Every photographer says that they just want to tell a story.  It didn’t occur to me until last week that this is a big problem.  Are we all just telling stories?  If that is the case then we’re all selling something pretty similar, no?

OK, we’ve got to figure this out because if we’re all just telling stories then we don’t have anything distinct to sell.  So if that’s what we’re going to do we’ve got to find some way of providing distinction to what our stories look like.  What kind of story do you tell?  What parts of the story do you leave out?  What perspective do you tell the story from?  What format does the story take?  How does it unfold?  And most importantly how does the client understand what your version of a story is like?

The way you tell a story ought to be distinct and discernable compared to how someone else tells a story.  Let me make an argument as to why you ought to explicitly say something about your method of storytelling instead of just letting (hoping?) that the work itself does the job.

Think about filmmakers.  Take one script and pick any 4 directors.  Speilberg, Tarantino, Fincher, Burton, whoever you like – each one is going to tell that story differently.  Each one is going to have a different tone.  Each one is going to hit different emotions.  Each movie is going to feel different, even in the subject matter is the same.

Filmmakers have an opportunity to build a filmography and reputation.  There are interviews on Letterman and special features on the home release and critical analyses that tell you what the tone is like.  There is a script and a musical score that does some of the heavy lifting.  Everyone knows what those filmmakers do and how it is going to feel to watch one of their movies.

We creative entrepreneurs rarely have that reach.  We don’t have that sort of cultural relevance.  We don’t get reviewed and interviewed.  The type of story we tell isn’t well-established and preceding us in the market.  So be willing to make some statements about it, because the client isn’t going to live with us, they are going to look for us when they need us.  We’ve got to be willing to do the heavy lifting for them.

Hardly any successful artist actually leaves the work itself to do all the communication, why should you?

- trr

 

 

By |May 20th, 2013|Branding, Purpose|5 Comments
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What goes in your portfolio?

Today I’ve got questions instead of answers.  How do you decide what goes in your portfolio?  Let’s assume that “best work” is too vague.

Is it your most beautiful work?  Is beauty your primary value?

Is it your most innovative work? Is doing something that has never been seen your primary value?  Can your market tell what is innovative and what is derivative?

Are your choices motivated by content?  Do you want to limit your scope to a particular type of content?

Does your portfolio show a deep and specific focus, or a broad spectrum of abilities?  Does it show everything you can do or the most important thing you can do?

Does your portfolio make a statement?  If so, is that statement distinct from the competition?

I’m interested – Tell me, how do you decide what makes the cut?

- trr

 

P.S. – We’ll be recording a podcast with Fer Juaristi soon – send your questions and we’ll mention you on the show.  - [email protected]

 

Hey everyone – anything you can do to help grow the blog is always appreciated.  So please share this content with everyone that you know.  Much appreciated.

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By |May 8th, 2013|Purpose|22 Comments
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An open letter to Apple…

An open letter to Apple.

I feel like the message I received this morning, ‘Apple wins 9 straight JD Power and Associate Awards’ is the beginning of the end.

I’m not sure when you started caring about what anybody else thinks, but it’s not attractive on you.

The world fell in love with you when you stopped caring about your competitors, when you stopped taking them seriously.  You even went so far as to belittle them in brilliant ad after brilliant ad.  But never, ever acted like they were a real threat to your brand.  The old Apple would have seen an award like that as just a blip on the screen, an “of course we won”, but not something to stop and brag about- you had more important work to do.

The last few email and ad campaigns I’ve seen from you have made me sad.  Because I realize that you aren’t who you used to be anymore.  You seem to have stopped innovating and started worrying.  You’re trying to convince us, when we didn’t need convincing- we already loved you.  But the more you ask us if we still think you’re pretty, the more we start to see your flaws, and the more your insecurity emerges.

We just want you to be badass and awesome and fearless to do things that we didn’t even know that we needed until we see how mind-blowingly awesome the possibilities could be.

I hope I’m wrong, and that you’ll soon recover from whatever self-doubt you’re currently wallowing in and that you’ll hurry up and go back to being what we need you to be.  I fear if you don’t, you’ll just melt away into the sea of technology sameness, treating yourself as one of many, and attempting to win battles instead of wars.

Please come back, Apple.  The world needs more bold creators who make amazing things that change the world, not things that are 10% better than what their competitor just made.

- Jamie

By |March 25th, 2013|Business, Purpose|0 Comments
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Why I Care About Business

2012 was the worst year of my life.  It wasn’t the worst year because bad things happened (they did) it was the worst year because the bad things got the best of me and overtook the good things in my focus.

I started the year working too much.  I was stressed because we had moved the year before and I really needed for 2012 to be the year we established ourselves in our new market.  I was OK with 2011 being a transitional year but I had to get serious and I thought I needed to be back up to full capacity in 2012 or I’d be in trouble.  So I pressed hard on the workshops.  I spent all my time trying to book more weddings (or stressing about it).  I was working all the time.

My mom moved to Atlanta at the end of 2011 and I thought it would be a great chance to be closer and spend more time together.  I’d resolved that as soon as I finished all the business stuff I needed to do in the first quarter of 2012 I’d hang out with my mom more.  Then in the middle of doing the last workshop of my busy period my mom had a stroke and passed away.

This isn’t a blog post about loss or sadness or regret, this is a post about what really matters in life.

It is easy to become engrossed with the idea that your job is your identity.  It is very popular to say that you are selling yourself, or that your business is all about you.  I hate that, because the market can’t have all of me.  I have a life I need to lead and I don’t want photography to take over.

I get it – photography is your life.  I guess it is OK if you feel that way.  But I can guarantee you that years down the road I’m going to regret not spending more time with my mom more than I’ll regret not booking more weddings or workshops.

The business side of things allows you to build boundaries.  It tells you how much you need to dedicate to working, and it tells you how much you need to do to execute on your value proposition.  Everything else can go.  The business is really the intermediary between your photography and your clients.  The business translates what you do to why it matters to clients.  If we define our value proposition and communicate it properly through our business, we always know when we are being successful, and where we can draw a line and step away to live our lives.

I hate money.  I don’t really like thinking about it or even spending it.  But I have to bring it in.  I have to budget how much time and energy I’m going to put into making that money.  I also need for my clients to be thrilled, both from a business standpoint and from a moral standpoint.  The “business” is what defines expectations and systems that makes all that satisfaction happen.

I have a confession to make.  I don’t love photography.  I do have an enormous amount of respect for the craft of photography.  What I love is my wife.  I love my friends.  And most of the time I love the effect that photography can have on my clients.  I care about business because it ensures that everything that needs to happen comes through.

- trr

 

By |March 18th, 2013|Business, Purpose, Uncategorized|14 Comments
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