Marco Photo Service

Industry News Fron The Indy Star

2011-04-12T09:02:00.001-04:00

Herff Jones sells photography division to Lifetouch
6:23 PM, Apr. 11, 2011 | 2Comments
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Lawrence Central

Indianapolis-based maker of class rings, yearbooks and graduation gear Herff Jones announced today it has agreed to sell its photography division to the photography service Lifetouch for an undisclosed amount.

Of the estimated 1,000 employees in the division, most will be offered jobs with Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Lifetouch, said Christine L. Bachmann, a Herff Jones vice president in human resources.

In all of its divisions, Herff Jones employs more than 3,000 people, including about 500 in Indianapolis, Bachmann said.

The Herff Jones photography facilities in Lewiston, Minn., and Charlotte, N.C., also are part of the sale agreement. Terms were not disclosed. The closing date is planned for May.

"This decision is driven by a strategic commitment to focus on other business interests," said Joe Slaughter, Herff Jones president, in a news release.

Slaughter said Herff Jones and Lifetouch are each employee-owned companies with similar core values.

Bloomington, Minn.-based Jostens, a Herff Jones competitor, sold its photography division to Lifetouch in 2006.

Lifetouch bills itself as the world's largest photography company, providing portrait studio services at many JCPenney and Target stores, and photography for church directories and school yearbooks.

Locally, the company may be better known through its subsidiary Prestige Portraits, said Edward Poe, a veteran yearbook adviser at Lawrence Central High School.

Article from the New York Times

2010-11-29T10:04:00.003-05:00

Interesting article from the NYT.

Posting below as text

No Boo-boos or Cowlicks? Only in School Pictures
By SARAH MASLIN NIR
Published: November 19, 2010

Oliver Tracy showed up for his first-grade portrait with a crisp white shirt tucked into navy slacks, a striped tie slightly too long for his tiny frame, and not a lock of his sun-streaked blond hair out of place.

But just above Oliver’s right cheek was a scab; he had tumbled while playing tag. His father, Jahn Tracy, had e-mailed the school, the Bay Ridge Preparatory School in Brooklyn, to see if Oliver could take the photo on another day, after the cut healed.

Mr. Tracy need not have worried. When the big envelope of photos arrived, Oliver’s blemish was nowhere in sight.

The practice of altering photos, long a standard in the world of glossy magazines and fashion shoots, has trickled down to the wholesome domain of the school portrait. Parents who once had only to choose how many wallet-size and 5-by-7 copies they wanted are now being offered options like erasing scars, moles, acne and braces, whitening teeth or turning a bad hair day into a good one.

School photography companies around the country have begun to offer the service on a widespread basis over the past half-dozen years, in response to parents’ requests and to developments in technology that made fixing the haircut a 5-year-old gave herself, or popping a tooth into a jack-o’-lantern smile, easy and inexpensive. And every year, the companies say, the number of requests grows.

Joseph Sell, the New York area manager for Lifetouch, which says it takes about 30 million student photos a year, estimates that 10 percent of the company’s photos of elementary school pupils are now altered or, in the industry parlance, retouched.

Another company, Highpoint Pictures, estimated the proportion at 2 to 5 percent.
The numbers go up after the seventh grade, Mr. Sell said. By senior year, sometimes half of a class requests retouching, he said. “The media and magazines have exposed our marketplace to people that are well groomed and well cared for,” Mr. Sell said.

Lifetouch offers several levels of retouching, which can include a $6 “basic” treatment for small changes like removing the glare from eyeglasses; a $10-to-$20 “premier,” in which the teeth will be whitened or a cowlick tamed; and intricate, and more expensive, custom changes, like adding a tie or making short sleeves long.

What else can be tweaked? “There’s really not much limit,” Mr. Sell said.

Mindy Cimmino of Wrentham, Mass., who owns an event-planning company, said she was initially aghast when she noticed a small check box on her children’s photo order forms asking whether she wanted retouching.

Then, two years ago, her daughter Delaina scratched her face the day before her third-grade portrait. Delaina was despondent about going to school that day. So Ms. Cimmino checked the box.

“My rationale was, this is not something that is part of her face,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I was changing my child.”

(The father of Oliver, the Brooklyn first grader, gave a similar explanation for choosing retouching. “It’s not like I’m making him thinner,” Mr. Tracy said.)

But Ms. Cimmino said she was stunned to learn that a parent of a classmate of Delaina’s had asked for the congenital strawberry mark on the child’s face to be wiped away.
“That’s your kid,” Ms. Cimmino said in an interview. “You really need to think about the message it gives your kids about accepting themselves.”

Glossing over lasting disfigurements might not be a bad thing, said Dr. Bradley S. Peterson, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

“There are kids who have some substantial socially stigmatizing features that they want to tone down,” Dr. Peterson said. Doing so in a photograph can build confidence, he said.
But parents who choose to edit also run the risk of “potentially validating the concerns that it is not O.K. to be that way,” Dr. Peterson said.

“In some ways,” he said, “even though they’re trying to help the child’s confidence, it could inadvertently undermine it.”

Some companies have quietly offered retouching for many years.

At the time of its founding in 1946, Irvin Simon Photographers, which took Oliver’s photograph, employed artisans who could paint out pimples on negatives with special inks, or even out skin tone with a faint film of paint sprayed onto prints themselves. In those days, the services were available by special request, and the process was painstaking and expensive, said Steve Miller, a co-president.

Six years ago, like many of its competitors, Irvin Simon Photographers upgraded to digital technology. Now, for about $7, it routinely cleans up pimples, rubs out grass stains or neatens hair, among other touch-ups.

Sometimes the work is more substantial. Marty Hyman, who has been photographing schoolchildren in the New York area for more than 30 years, said that if “if a kid doesn’t look good in the class picture, we will, when necessary, take his head — if it looks better in another picture — and swap it in.”

At the Spence School in Manhattan, Jake Ahern, a science teacher who schedules class photos, said that three years ago the school began offering elementary school students who missed picture day the option of being digitally inserted into the class photo.

Some photo company executives admit to reservations about some of the services they have provided. Last year, Highpoint shortened a girl’s hair at a parent’s behest. The company’s owner, Jason Brand, said he felt that such requests went much further than minor editing.
“I think you want to look back on the way you were, and not the way you wanted to be,” Mr. Brand said. “It’s not an honest thing to reflect back on.”

Mr. Miller said that Irvin Simon would do whatever parents wanted, but he added, “We like to think that all the kids are cute already.”

Dr. Peterson said parents should keep in mind that “what supports healthy growth of the child and capacity to love themselves is parental idealization, that this child is perfect, and the apple of one’s eye.”

So if a parent has a school photo tinkered with, Dr. Peterson said, “it can inadvertently send a message that ‘I perceive you as less than perfect and not ideal.’ ”

When it was his turn for a portrait in the gym at Bay Ridge Prep, Michael Terzuoli, a second grader, straightened his clip-on tie and brushed blond bangs out of his eyes, revealing a nickel-size birthmark on his forehead. He smiled for the picture, then ran off to play.

His mother, Tatiana, said she would let Michael decide if he wanted the mark edited out.
Asked what he would do if he saw his picture without his distinctive birthmark, Michael said, “I’d rip it up.”

Thoughtful Piece on the Value of School Pictures

2010-11-02T11:51:00.002-04:00

We're exploring a question this year. The question is, "What is the value of the school picture? And how well do we, as photographers & providers, listen to what our customers tell us about our product."

Below is a really thoughtful piece from a Mom in Maryland, Kym Byrnes, who epitomizes our customers. She's comfortable with digital, values the immediacy of the digital pictures she takes, and yet, sees the past the easy assertions -- School pictures are too expensive! -- to a more evenhanded opinion.

In the excerpts below, she addresses key themes such as:

Value and customer service...
"A friend of mine suggested that school pictures are a racket. She has three children in elementary school and was frustrated that the school photographers don't give a multiple child discount. She laughed that she doesn't even really want the school pictures, but feels obliged to take them."

The importance of choice, and control over purchasing decisions
"Pictures do come in handy to give grandparents and put in gifts... But those picture packages from school are not cheap, and in some cases I've been forced to make a decision without even seeing them! How do I know if I want one 8-by-10 or 36 wallet size photos if I don't even know if I will like the photo? "

The relevance of printed pictures to today's mom
"My sister has given me my nephew's school and sports photos over the years and, to be honest, I never really know what to do with them."

The effect of peer pressure and obligation
"Maybe, like my friend, I feel obligation to purchase class and sports photos because I don't want my kids to feel left out when their friends turn in their orders and get those envelopes to bring home. "

The appeal of non-photographic items
"I've never been interested in trinket items -- keychains and mugs and trading cards and other things that, to me, resemble promotional items businesses hand out at marketing events."

In am age where customers can just blast a company and bad-mouth a product through a quick Facebook post, Ms. Byrnes instead gives our industry a thoughtful critique. One we need to listen to and learn from.

School Picture Value Being Recognized

2010-10-15T10:56:00.000-04:00

Not a lot of verbiage to go on with this blog post, but the header says it all. When was the last time you heard someone talk about school pictures as being "cool"? How can we learn from this person's observation? A professional portrait, with professional quality posing and lighting, on cd-rom for mom to do with as she pleases. I guess that is cool. Now, we just need to communicate this to our customer.

Here's the link.

A Mom Sees the Value of School Pics

2010-10-11T10:44:00.000-04:00

Just in time!

Here's an example of a mom who recognized the value of the school pictures she received. She saw, and wrote about, how her kids were taken care of, assisted with grooming, and "look better in their photos than they did when they left the house."

Here's the link to her blog.

Now let's think about this... are we helping all of our customers look better than they did when they left the house?

Another Mom Clicks the Shutter on Her Own School Pictures

2010-10-07T10:39:00.000-04:00

Here's another example of a mom who has decided that school pictures are not worth the money.

http://thecheeryos.blogspot.com/2010/09/homemade-school-pictures.html

How Do We Communicate the Value of School Pictures?

2010-10-02T10:08:00.002-04:00

If you read this blog regularly, you know one of our areas of focus is how consumers view the value of school pictures. We constantly troll the internet for instances where school pictures or youth sports pictures are mentioned to see what is being said. A couple of things stand out over and over again.

1.) We (as photography companies) fail to communicate the value our service provides. We don't effectively help our customers understand the value of the school picture. The convenience of having a professional portrait made on-location during the school day, the time savings of not having to schedule an appointment at Wal-Mart or wherever to have a picture made, the contributions we make back to their school, the class pictures we provide as part of a package, the support we give to yearbook staffs, the online child safety programs, and on and on.

2.) As a result of the first point, Mom - our customer - does not see any reason to pay $40.00 for something she can get for less that half at Target. This is echoed over and over again in the blog and Facebook posts of moms who have either stopped purchasing school pictures altogether or feel outraged over the price : quality ratio we are providing.

These are not photography or technology problems. They're worse. They're customer perception problems. Our question to you is this:

What ways does your studio communicate the value of your pictures?

Five Part Series in Columbus Dispatch

2010-09-12T07:42:00.002-04:00

This series of articles about youth sports in the Columbus Dispatch ought to be required reading for all youth sports photographers. The series examines the toll that youth sports can take on student athletes. Does it have anything to do with photography -- no, not directly anyway. But the sixth part, where the OHSAA offers to provide regulatory oversight of youth leagues, could indirectly affect the fundraising component of what we do for a living. Check it out before it comes off the web.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/special_reports/stories/2010/youth_sports/index.html

Matt Keenan commentary: Narcissistic kids don’t need a photo shoot - KansasCity.com

2010-08-28T11:15:00.000-04:00

One man's take on the trend toward studio-setting senior portraits. Curmedgeon? Yes. All wrong? You decide.

Matt Keenan commentary: Narcissistic kids don’t need a photo shoot - KansasCity.com

Photography Students Produce Work Commenting on the Controversy Surrounding the Photography of Children

2010-08-04T15:20:00.002-04:00

Picked this up off Google today from the British Journal of Photography. Fascinating and witty commentary on how the attitudes toward adults photographing kids has changed over the years. Kudos to photography students, Anna Brooks and Samantha Harvey for seeing things in a way no one else has, and creating such eloquent and striking images.

Check out the article.

School Pictures Can Be Funny

2010-06-28T12:35:00.001-04:00

I can't think of what's better, the fact that these folks kept their school pictures or that Ellen had them featured on her show. Check it out for a few good laughs.

Ellen Degeneres Twitter

Are Youth Sports Pictures a Waste of Time?

2010-05-12T22:44:00.004-04:00

Here's another example of how all professional school and sports photographers run the risk of irrelevance every single day. When I read this article, I couldn't stop thinking of how this Mom is the very archetype of a great customer. Ms. Lefferts recognizes the value in professional school pictures as milestones in her kid's development, she purchases regularly, and she participates in a lot of youth-oriented activities. But, importantly, she is very aware of the disconnect between, "another set of stilted portraits sitting in our drawers when we have better shots of sliding into third, or faces dripping with chocolate ice cream after the game? Those are the ones that capture the moment and make you smile."

And what's really interesting here is this: Ms. Lefferts has come up with a solution to her problem. She figures the parents can just do it themselves. And frankly, especially if what she is receiving is as mediocre as she says, she probably can.

And that's our challenge. What are we doing that Ms. Leffert's cannot? How hard are we working to capture the essence -- or at least a glimpse -- of each child we photograph? How effectively are we expressing the value of the service we provide to both her family and the league?

I've copied the entire text of Ms. Leffert's article below.
From the Maplewood Patch, Maplewood, New Jersey.
By Brooke Lefferts.

I spent 30 chaotic minutes this week in the South Orange Middle School gym as my six-year-old had pictures taken for his baseball team. If you have ever been to a children's sports photography shoot, you know that they are as organized as a two-year-old's finger paint canvas. No one knows where to go—this one lost his hat—that one has only one sock—and only a third of the parents there have filled out their forms.
So, as I stood in line with the other frustrated adults, dripping with whiny, hungry children (it's usually called right in the middle of dinner time), I wondered why I bothered at all. I take pretty good pictures myself. I attend practically every game and take action shots of my kids swinging a bat, making a catch, or getting dirty in the dugout. My prints are a hundred times more captivating than a staged headshot with a fake background.
And how hard is it to gather the team together following a game to get a group shot? (OK, maybe it is a bit like wrangling sheep but you get the picture!)
Yet every year, I fork over at least $17 for four mediocre pictures of my kid in uniform. I have three kids who all play soccer, and two who play baseball, so that's five sets of unnecessary phony flashes at a minimum of $85—in just this year alone.
Why do we do it? It certainly isn't to have a professional shot of my kids to remember what they looked like at every adorable and awkward stage of development. That's what school pictures are for. Those cheesy mugs are a rite of passage. You want to be able to look back at yourself and remember who was in your class each year, and, of course, what trendy outfit you wore.
I still have my baby book filled with wallet-sized shots of me all dressed up, sporting a gap-toothed grin or poofy hairdo. (Oh, if you could only see the one from second grade with my large, pointy-collared plaid dress. Or later in a whale turtleneck and headband. Classic.)
In the past, we have purchased the sports packages so we could send the prints and trading cards to our out-of-town relatives. But when it's so much easier and more efficient to email pictures and/or share them on a photo site, snail mail seems like a colossal misuse of time.
So if taking the sports pix are not for nostalgic or family reasons, aren't they just another example of needless waste?
Do we really need another set of stilted portraits sitting in our drawers when we have better shots of sliding into third, or faces dripping with chocolate ice cream after the game? Those are the ones that capture the moment and make you smile.
We are down to the minimum—Package E—these days and we've learned to avoid the trading cards, mouse pads, and bobble heads. I would skip it altogether but my husband, who usually coaches, needs to be there to pose, so we often wind up getting sucked into a package through a combination of peer pressure and guilt.
We happily ordered the most decadent packages for our oldest son, won over by the newness and the sight of him in that adorable outfit and his miniature cleats. But now the excitement has worn off and the idea seems like a silly extravagance.
Maybe every team can start a sharing website at the beginning of the season. I would volunteer to take a team picture and email it to all the parents on the team. If every team could find one volunteer to do the same, we could use all that extra money towards something more valuable to the sport like fixing the fields, improving equipment, or contributing to a fund that covers the seasonal costs for those in the community who can't afford it.
Call me negative, but I think there are better ways to spend our money and time. So, we are going to shake things up like a Polaroid picture and just say no to sportography—next year.

Facebook Usage Tracked and Quantified

2010-04-18T07:10:00.000-04:00

This is interesting. I found this research on www.istrategylabs.com while doing a search on Facebook user statistics. They have been tracking the usage and growth of Facebook since 2007 using Facebook's own data. Where it applies to school photography is the growth rates among our core audience -- the 25-34 & 35-54 age groups. In 2010, these groups grew 127% and 328%, respectively and now represent over 50% of Facebook's total user base.

Check it out.

2007 - Ages 25-54 represent 17% of 20 million users.
2008 - Ages 25-54 represent 28% of 26 million users.
2009 - Ages 25-54 represent 42% of 42 million users.
2010 - Ages 25-54 represent 55% of 103 million users.

I don't know if anyone in our industry has exactly figured out how to create value for school picture consumers through Facebook or if it can even be done. But I'll bet the one who gets it right will win big.

What do you think? What strategies are you trying in your business?

JA

Fast Ways to Target the Right Schools

2010-04-17T07:26:00.000-04:00

When you're selling school pictures, it's easy to know what schools to target in your hometown. You already know which schools are good educationally, have great athletic programs, active PTO's, high state test scores, and so on.

That isn't so easy when taking your show on the road and selling in an area where you are not as familiar. Trying to filter the hundreds (or thousands) of schools down to the ones that make the most sense for your business can be a very daunting and expensive prospect.

Fortunately, there are some free web tools that can make the job a lot easier. These web sites all contain useful demographic data that will help school photographers find the right schools for their business.

Public School Review
Private School Review
Great Schools
National Center for Education Statistics

Happy hunting!

More Moms Lash Out at Speculation School Photography

2010-04-15T00:51:00.000-04:00

In case you were wondering, speculation school photography programs are not always viewed positively by parents. And those who are annoyed aren't afraid to make their opinions known. If you photograph using specualtion programs, you should read this article and the comments it sparked. If you don't, there's plenty of ammo here for you to use against your competition.

Can't We Be Better Than This?

2010-04-12T16:52:00.003-04:00

Caught this article on a Google Alert. It mentions school pictures in the context of the author's family and how photography was (or wasn't) part of their life. Another instance where we're shown how much room for improvement we have as an industry. Making it better doesn't require a PMA-commissioned task force, either. We just have to hire nice people, train them well, give them some time to take a good picture, and then deliver a solid value to our customers. Are we doing that?

Link to article, excerpted below.
Courtesy of the Columbia Daily Tribune, by Doug Pugh.

The only exceptions were the school pictures I was required to sit for each year from kindergarten through ninth grade. One day each year, we were all forced to stand in line and then sit in front of a pale brown screen as an old man blurted out annoying jokes before blinding us with a violent flash of light. Our parents were then encouraged to purchase, at varying prices, assorted packages of the resulting photograph, which were handed out to the class amid great clamor and eagerness several weeks later. While all of the other kids ripped into gigantic envelopes filled with hundreds of pictures of every shape and size imaginable, I was always left holding a miserable strip of paper containing three tiny photos roughly the size of sugar packets.

In hindsight, this was one of the few instances of my mother’s vehement frugality being entirely well-founded. For my birthday last year, she presented me with a framed collage of every single one of my old school pictures, which had somehow miraculously survived her voracious desire to throw things away over the years. When I was in elementary school, I was required to dress myself and comb my own hair every morning. Also, it appears I was not allowed to eat or sleep for months on end. The result was that none of my school pictures is identifiable in any way from any of the others, but instead a sad series of identical poses: my head tilted nearly sideways, a glum frown traversing my gaunt face, one eye open and one eye shut, tufts of hair and cowlicks shooting out in every direction.

School Picture Article Sparks Debate in Atlanta Journal - Constitution

2010-03-30T16:50:00.005-04:00

If you are a professional school photographer and use a picture program that presents schools and parents with a package of pre-printed pictures that must either be purchased or returned, you need to read the article below and the comments following very carefully. In fifteen years in this business, I have heard all manner of opinions on speculation photography and why it either works or does not work; but never the opinions of the actual consumer. And never, ever, have I heard so much honest, unvarnished, and brutal criticism of the practices of the school photo industry by our customers.

The comments are unbelievably valuable. In less than 24 hours the article generated 151 of them. Clearly, the author has touched a nerve. There seem to be three themes that emerge:

1.) Speculation photography is widely disliked by consumers. Commenters pointed out that they feel pressure, that they do not like the waste, and that it feels like an old and outdated way to do business.

2.) The consumer has little or no knowledge that retail prices are driven by the amount of commission given back to schools, or that there is even a fundraising component to school photography at all.

3.) Many consumers have little or no issue with making copies of the prints they are presented with on home scanners and then using them as they see fit.

Sometimes we, as an industry, need a wake up call. For speculation programs, maybe this is it.

The article is excerpted below, and linked to in its entirety below.

In the article below from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the author, Theresa Walsh Giarrusso asks some pointed questions within the context of her own experience as a mother with school pictures.

Dare to Send Back your Child's School Photo?
6:36 am March 30, 2010, by Theresa Walsh Giarrusso

The photography companies that take the school pictures have come up with the greatest marketing ploy ever to make you buy those photos. They send home the entire package, including plastic-coated key-ring photos, without you even ordering them.

No mother worth her salt is going to tell her child that he or she must return their own photo to school!

Or would she?

I told Walsh this morning that his spring photo wasn’t fantastic. I told him his hair needed to be cut and it was all in his eyes.

I didn’t say this to him, but he also has in the photo one big-boy front tooth next to a baby front tooth that looks a little crazy. His smile was forced and fake. Plus he was wearing a Halloween shirt in February.

I recognize that all of this is my own fault, except for the tooth and smile parts, because I didn’t pay attention to the spring photo date, but that doesn’t mean I have to pay $42 for five pages of bad photos. (I have plenty of beautiful photos of my son that we take at home.)

He put on fake tears at the breakfast table and told me I hurt his feelings.

I bought one page of the photos for $12 and sent the rest back.

If you don’t send them back in time you owe the full price for all five sheets of photos even though you didn’t ask for them.

My Secret Selling Sauce

2010-03-26T13:09:00.002-04:00

What's your secret sauce for your selling success? That's the question I hear from many of my colleagues in the photo business. What I have learned over the past two years in our ever changing, fast paced business we call the photo industry, is that our sales numbers have not increased due to any new form of technology, even including green screen. Our numbers have grown over 17 percent in 2009 alone from listening to our customer needs and creating mutual value for both us as well as our customer.

It's a 35 page integrity selling pocket guide that rides in my briefcase on every sales call...it's torn at the edges and falling apart at the seems as it has been removed from my briefcase before I call on every new prospect. there is not a secret sauce or magic potion...it's just integrity.

A Statement of Integrity Selling Values and Ethics:

1. Selling is an exchange of value.
2. Selling isn't something you do to someone it's something you do for and with someone.
3. Understanding people's wants or needs must always precede any attempt to sell.
4. Develop trust and rapport before any selling activity begins.
5. Selling techniques give way to selling principles.
6. Integrity and high ethics are accepted as the basis for long-term selling success.
7. A salesperson's ethics and values contribute more to sales success than do the techniques or strategies.
8. Selling pressure is never exerted by the salesperson. It's exerted only by the prospect when they perceive they want or need the item being sold.
9. Negotiation is never manipulation. It's always a strategy to work out problems...when prospects want to work out the problems.
10. Closing isn't just a victory for the salesperson. It's a victory for both the salesperson and the customer.

A statement of integrity value and ethics by: Ron Willingham for Integrity Training Systems.

TSS Signs Nationwide Deal with USA Football -- What's it Mean to Independent Sports Photgraphers?

2010-03-11T13:41:00.004-05:00

National sports photography franchiser TSS announced recently that they have signed a nationwide three year agreement with USA Football. Interested to know what independent photography studios do in their own communities to counteract the attempted rise of "national" youth sports photography companies....

What are the advantages of a company like TSS?
Why would a league choose them over a local independent?
What should labs be doing to make their independent photographers competitive with TSS?
How much do independents even pay attention to groups like TSS, GPA, and others?

Would love to see your comments below.

JA

Youth Sports Photographers Talk About Changing Business

2010-03-10T11:11:00.002-05:00

Fascinating thread on DPReview where sports photographers are talking about the changing nature of their business. Not offering any judgments here one way or another, but I do know a good lab that some of them might want to talk to! What's really informative and inspiring here is the way that some of these pros have adapted to the age of digitally savvy moms and dads to create value around what they know and do. It's easy to complain about how things are and pine for what they used to be, but it really is cool to see how some of these folks have changed their businesses to fit a changing world.

Two in Two Days!

2010-03-04T16:39:00.002-05:00

Another article -- this one by a Mom -- that examines what makes a traditional school picture appealing or just boring. One has to love the fact that this mom has such a great sense of humor about this, but we have to ask ourselves as professionals, "Is this how we want to be thought of by our customers?".

What can we do better on picture day and afterward. I get it -- we're hardly creating art here and we're not charging for art either -- but some of this stuff is just dumb. We can do better, don't you think?

Reprinted below...

Photos of my son Ack are priceless

Courtesy photo

Little Jack’s spring portrait last year came back with an expression that was something between come-hither and creepy.

Every time my son brings home school picture proofs, I recall a series of "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strips. In the comic, Calvin screams from the breakfast table that he needs Crisco for school.

"Shortening?" his mom says, handing him the tub. "Honestly, Calvin, I wish you'd remember these things the night before. Now hurry up and get ready."

Minutes later Calvin hands the shortening back to his mother, who leaps up, horrified. Her son's hair is slicked back into a hideous, gravity-defying spiral updo.

"Aw c'mon, Mom!" Calvin pleads. "It's class picture day!"

My 9-year-old hasn't tried Crisco, but his school pictures are priceless nonetheless. With Jack, it's all about the facial expression.

Last year's spring portrait may have set the standard. His expression was something between come-hither and creepy, a crooked half-smile that channeled Dennis Hopper. His hair, an overgrown bowl cut swept to one side by some well- meaning photo assistant, looked dirty and windblown. His jeans were at least three inches too short.

But the best part of the portrait was a bubble-letter word superimposed on the background. Jack's head was positioned precisely in front of the first letter of his name, resulting in a shocking but appropriate "ACK."

Which is exactly what I said when I saw the photo.

My daughter met me outside school that day, both proof packets in her hand.

"This," she said, handing me her portraits, "is what a good child does on Picture Day." Hannah's smile was serene, elegant, her black turtleneck smooth and lint-free.

"And this," she said, offering her brother's proofs, "is Jack."

Indeed it was. Ack.

By now I'm used to it. Jack's first school picture, a photo of his Montessori preschool class, featured my son front and center, his face squinched into a dreadful grimace.

His teacher met me at the door that day. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, handing over the envelope as if conducting a drug deal. "I guess the photographer didn't catch that."

We bought the photos anyway. We always do. I just wrote a check for this year's portraits, in which Jack sports a leather-and-arrowhead necklace he crafted at Cub Scouts. He snuck it to school to accessorize his understated gray sweater.

Like Calvin and Hobbes, I appreciate the truth and beauty of these pictures, which capture Jack's spirit, rough edges and humor.

"Hee hee hee! Look at this one! What an expression!" Hobbes giggles in one comic strip. "Hoo hoo hoo!"

"Yeah," Calvin says. "See how I got my one eye to roll back?"

That's my boy.

Reach Suzanne Perez Tobias at 316-268-6567 or stobias@wichitaeagle.com.

Article from the New York Times

2010-03-03T17:11:00.002-05:00

Interesting article from the NYT.

Posting below as text.

The Man Who Clicks With 7-Year-Olds

By JOANNE KAUFMAN

Published: March 3, 2010

THE name Marty Hyman may mean nothing to you. But if you, your children or grandchildren have gone to private schools in and around Manhattan over the last 30 years, chances are you’ve either smiled for Mr. Hyman or written him a check.

That’s because with an account list of 500 — including Dalton, Chapin, Hewitt, Riverdale, St. David’s, Grace Church and the 92nd Street Y, as well as public schools and camps in the metropolitan area — Mr. Hyman, 67, is practically the Irving Penn of the preschool and preteen set.

A few Fridays ago, there he was at the Windmill Montessori School in Brooklyn, taking candid pictures. Like an eager politician on a campaign swing, Mr. Hyman, known in certain circles as the picture man, made his way through Windmill’s two buildings seeking not votes, but smiles.

“I just saw you kids downstairs — you were eating yogurt,” he said, announcing himself to a group of 7- and 8-year-olds.

“We were doing yoga, not eating yogurt,” corrected Brendan, who laughed obligingly as Mr. Hyman peered through the viewfinder of his Canon digital SLR and snapped away.

“What a face — look at that face,” Mr. Hyman said, taking his grin-winning approach to 8-year-old Brian.

With his graying beard and bad back — a hazard of the profession — Mr. Hyman is something of a legend among school administrators. He was greeted by Liza Herzberg, Windmill’s director, like a favorite family member. But it might be more accurate to think of Mr. Hyman and others in his business as members of an endangered species.

About 5 to 10 years ago, class photos and individual student portraits were reflexive purchases for parents. Those 4-by-6 and 8-by-10 prints were the visual equivalents of the notches made on door frames to show how much Junior had grown since last year. Now, more parents are snapping their own digital pictures and declining the products of the pros. It’s a situation akin to the disappearance of the formal engagement and wedding portraits, courtesy of Bachrach, that were once a staple of newspaper society pages.

Mr. Hyman, who grew up in Brooklyn, began taking pictures as a teenager when his uncle gave him an old Voigtländer. Later on, after teaching junior high school for a decade, he wearied of the bureaucracy and turned his summer job photographing children at a Westchester day camp into a full-time job.

He has a couple of plush toys and shticks that have served him well. Way back when “Sesame Street” became popular, he and the 10 photographers on his staff started carrying around Cookie Monster dolls, then added a purple dinosaur when Barney was in its ascendancy. Those props, periodically replaced, still work well. “The character’s name should have an ‘e’ sound so the kids go into a smile when they say it,” Mr. Hyman said.

He also engages the children by insisting he can guess a name with just the clue of a first initial.

“You do that for a few minutes, and they’re your friends,” he said. “Of course, these days everyone is called Madison.”

The highest profit per shutter click in the school photography business is the high school senior picture, “but we just never got into it,” Mr. Hyman said.

“You don’t have to be a genius to be able to take a 16-year-old girl who’s eager to have her picture taken and tell her how to sit, tip her head a certain way and give a nice little smile,” he continued. “But when you got a 2 1/2-year-old, a 5-year-old, it’s a whole other set of skills. If you can do young kids, you can do any kids.”

Mr. Hyman’s main rival is Irvin Simon Photography, which is based in Elmont, N.Y., and has 1,000 accounts, according to Steve Miller, 39, whose father bought the company in 1980. These include New York Public Schools 3, 6, 87, 89, 158 and 234 as well as many summer camps, Mr. Miller said.

Highpoint Pictures, another competitor, has a broader geographic reach — its clients include the upper division of Horace Mann and independent schools as far away as Noble and Greenough in Dedham, Mass. Then, of course, there are those other pesky competitors: shutterbug parents.

“They take pictures of their kids on their camera phones,” Mr. Hyman said. “They take them on their digital cameras and print them on their printers or get them from Costco for 13 cents a copy. They’re not good, but they’re good enough. I lost at least one account at a school that farmed out the photography to a mother in the PTA.”

The statistics back him up. According to the Photo Marketing Association, 20.8 percent of all American households bought K-11 school portraits in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, spending an estimated $920 million. In 2007, it was more than a quarter of households spending $1.127 billion.

To hold on to certain clients, Mr. Hyman said, he has sometimes been compelled to provide free photo stickers for school ID cards and free head-shot images for school databases. At least once — at a parent’s request — he Photoshopped an absent child into the class picture.

“Other photographers have solicited our business, but I see no need to switch,” said Jan Barnett, an administrator at the Dalton School. “The children love him, the teachers love working with him, the product is beautiful. Rarely is there a blink in the pictures.”

Ms. Herzberg of Windmill Montessori agreed. “Marty takes amazing pictures,” she said. “You can tell who the kids are and what they’re about from the images.”

At Windmill Montessori, Mr. Hyman headed into a class where 4-year-old Elliot was busily cutting construction paper. “What are you making, cutie pie?” he asked as he snapped off a few shots and then worked the room. “Look at these great puppets!” he said with enthusiasm, adding, “Don’t look at the camera, just keep doing your work.”

Sophia, who is 4, posed by the pink cage holding the class hamster, Bella. “The hamster goes up and down every day,” she earnestly informed Mr. Hyman.

Mr. Hyman’s definition of candid photography was sometimes a bit fluid. “Sit down there and grab a book and make believe you’re reading,” he told Hannah, a 4-year-old with pigtails, who obediently took a book from a shelf and sat on a small rug. “Where’s your smile?” he asked teasingly. “Where’s that smile?”

“You’re so silly,” Hannah said.

He moved on to his last stop of the morning, Stepping Stones, a room of 2- and 3-year-olds.

“Who’s that guy?” Mr. Hyman asked 2 1/2-year-old Ryan, showing the boy an image of himself in the viewfinder.

Then: “I’ve got an idea,” he said. ”When I count to three, I want you all to say ‘Dinosaur!’ ”

Mr. Hyman is selling tradition and continuity in the form of a familiar tableau: three rows of children with gap-toothed frozen grins, teachers smiling in the back row. It’s a commodity that fluctuates in value. These days for Mr. Hyman, a respectable sale is $45 to $50.

“When kids are little, they’re the cutest things,” he said. “When they’ve been driving you crazy for a few years, you’re not going to do the $49.95 package. You buy the class picture for $10 and say ‘Get away from me.’ ”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 4, 2010, on page E6 of the New York edition.

Life Inside the Shoebox

2009-10-28T08:54:00.003-04:00

In our industry, we spend lots and lots of time talking to one another about how we modernize the school picture experience, how we make it cool (as if it really ever was), how it needs to be relevant to the lives of modern women and kids, blah, blah, blah. And I think if you look at buying trends from across the industry -- PMA is a great source for this kind of information, by the way -- there's clear evidence that we need to be aware of the school photography industry's distinct similarity to travel agencies and movie rental stores. Both have been completely blown up and re-invented by the rise of the internet.

Below is a really interesting counterpoint from Gillian Fassel of the San Antonio Current. Her column offers genuine insights you rarely hear from industry hack like me. It's linked to below, but I've also copied and pasted it into this post. Enjoy.

Gillian Fassel's article.

By Gillian Fassel

I recently read about a New York-based photo studio called Stomping Ground, which boldly claims to have “successfully reinvented the school portrait.” The portfolio on its website certainly delivers on that promise: No formal poses or cheesy backgrounds, the pictures crackle with energy, featuring exuberantly hip children, some in costume, striking a range of impish poses.

I love the photos — they remind me of the Mini Boden catalog or a fashion shoot from the now-defunct Cookie magazine — but I’m not sure I’m ready to give up on the old-school school-picture format. Still, I can’t help but feel I’m being fleeced every time I drop $40 on one of the smallest available packages. After I dutifully distribute the 5 x 7’s, 3 x 5’s, and wallets among grandparents, uncles, and aunts, I throw the rest in a box in a closet, where they shall rest, undisturbed, in their time capsule until … when? It’s hard to imagine my lively, lovely daughters ever wanting their school mug shots when so many wonderful candid photos have already been taken of them in their brief lifetimes. (Some might even say too many have been taken, as our iPhoto currently houses 38,222 images, and I haven’t even uploaded all the puddle-jumping shots from the past month’s heavy rains … )

According to Lifetouch, the company that handles our school’s pictures, these portraits are “treasured keepsakes” and “a time-honored way of reaching out to family and friends,” but in 2009 I’d say those arguments are pretty weak. When I was in school back in the Pre-Digital Age, students would exchange wallet photos after inscribing a heartfelt message (“2 good 2 b forgotten” — a primitive precursor to text-speak) on the back. Do kids even bother posting school portraits to their MySpace pages nowadays? And who, aside from technophobic grandparents, really needs wallet photos when we have phones?

Though we “reach out” primarily through email and photo-sharing sites, blogs and social-networking sites, a case can be made for the school picture as a rite of passage. Those iconic tributes to bad hair, inappropriate smirks, and odd fashion choices may be cheesy, but they’re part of our shared cultural history. Almost everyone who was once a student in an American public school has a shoebox full of them stowed away somewhere, if they’re lucky, or else framed and proudly displayed on their parents’ mantelpieces. Or, better still, posted and tagged by a dear, dear frenemy on Facebook. School pictures are a great equalizer. They keep our hubris in check. They say, you may be super-successful and have stunning children and a really effective personal trainer, but underneath it all, you’re just another kid in a velour shirt, with goofy glasses and an untamed cowlick, grinning nervously in front of a painted forest backdrop. When the endearingly embarrassing yearbook photo of some celebrity finds its way into the pages of Us Weekly, we feel kinship — hey, that person really is “just like us”! (We also feel reassured by concrete evidence of the obvious surgical enhancements the celeb has undergone since middle school.)

If the school-photo companies want to put off their seemingly inevitable obsolescence, they might want to play up the nostalgia angle a little more. Acknowledge that school pictures are all about tradition — and then stop tampering so much with that tradition. When my elder daughter’s first Picture Day in kindergarten rolled around, I didn’t know what to expect, especially after those prop-heavy photo shoots in preschool (Teddy-bear tea party, anyone?). I was surprised by all of the options; for example, you could pre-select a pose and a background, though the choices were disappointingly limited to a few boring colors — blue, gray, green, or amber. If you’re going to offer different backgrounds, at least give me something interesting, even kitschy. Then again, that monochromatic “tastefulness” will one day probably seem as dated as the birch forests, covered bridges, and presidential libraries featured in my old school photos.

I was mildly disturbed to learn you could pay extra for the portrait to be retouched, and that you could even request that it be shot in soft focus — as if your fresh-faced 5-year-old were in need of the same kind of help as Marlene Dietrich or Barbara Walters. Perhaps I’ll change my mind when puberty mars my kids’ peachy complexions, but right now the idea of a sanitized school picture seems to defeat the spirit of the enterprise. They are supposed to be true to the moment, warts and all, and destined for the shoebox in the back of the closet. •

Young People Sharing More Digital Images

2009-03-19T17:06:00.000-04:00

From the fantastic blog, PMA Foresight.

Taking Back Monday

2008-12-17T08:51:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine sent this to me and it's brilliant. Full-disclosure, we're re-printing this without permission because it was pulled from another source. Robert is a great guy and has been a leader in the school photography business for years.

By Robert W. Kerr
ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHICS INC

If your fall school portrait season is anything like ours (and I believe it is) we have only about ten weeks to get all of our school portraits taken. To make maters worse very few schools want to take portraits on a Monday even though parents seem to prefer this date because they have more time to prepare their small children.

For several years I have had a difficult time booking school portrait dates on Mondays and was looking for any solution to this problem I could get. I figured giving up 20% of our school portrait capacity in an already short school portrait season was no way to successfully operate our company.

Think about this! Lets assume you have two portrait photographers (cameras) in place and that your portrait season is ten weeks. If you eliminate the requirement to fully book each Monday you are limiting your ability to book 20 more school portrait sessions (10 Mondays x 2 Photographers = 20 portrait sessions) in the fall. This can amount to as much as 8,000 or more students on these very useful days. This lost capacity problem is only compounded as you grow to more photographers and cameras.

There will come a time when you will have to spend even more money to add additional photography staff and expensive photography equipment just to grow beyond this limited capacity.

So what is the solution to this problem. It could not be easier. Just give your schools the financial incentive to select a Monday over any other day of the week. In our case it is $100 for each portrait camera put into production payable to the school or PTA on July 1 each year. This is even before portraits are taken. We call this our Monday Bonus and many schools are finding out now that Mondays can be a great day for portraits as well as instantly rewarding financially.

Using the scenario above selling 20 new schools on a Monday can increase your sales by as much as $100,000 and it will only cost you $2,000 in Monday Bonus awards. On the first day we initiated this program we rebooked four of our long term school accounts and three of them took a Monday as their portrait date even though they had never selected a Monday in the past. Sounds like this is a solution we all could live with.

Making better use of your personnel and equipment will help improve your bottom line by as much as 20% because you can now increase your business in the fall without adding to the cost of staff and equipment.

This is a great solution to the problem because we have made it a win-win situation for the school and the photographer.

DVD Yearbooks?

2008-12-02T12:20:00.001-05:00

Interesting perspective on DVD yearbooks from someone outside the industry, a student.

JA

More on Charter Schools

2008-11-10T11:44:00.000-05:00

This from the American Enterprise Institute on Public Policy Research.

JA

Marco Photo Service School Picture Delivery Times

2008-11-06T10:29:00.002-05:00

It's no secret in the school picture industry that Marco Photo Service has delivered fall undergrad packages in record time this year, but I got a few stats this morning that I just have to share.

By close of business today, we will have printed and shipped all work received in the month of October!
Late orders, corrections, and other one-off orders are shipping in betwen 12 - 36 hours.

A hearty round of applause to all of the dedicated Marco Photo Service employees who are helping schools and families all over the country receive their picture packages in record time!

Jay

OASSA Conference - David Warlick and the Role of Technology in Today's Learners

2008-10-20T10:37:00.005-04:00

MPS Foto just finished our first educator's conference and trade show. Over 300 secondary school administrators learned about our company -- many for the first time -- and we learned a lot about them.

I also had the opportunity to listen to a keynote address by a gentleman named David Warlick. He's an educator who travels all over the place talking about the changing role of technology in the lives of our children. He talked about how classroom blogging, the idea of a flat classroom, cell phones, texting, video games, YouTube, and any number of other things -- ever hear of machinima? -- have made young people into dramatically different learners. His point, as I understood it, was that educators had to make a commitment to making today's schools relevant to tomorrow's learner. The educational community cannot afford to go the other way and try to force students who are now, in Warlick's view, genetically coded to learn differently than we are, into educational situations where they are just going to tune out.

Here's his links if you want to check him out. Fun stuff.

David Warlick
For Teachers: http://landmark-project.com/
For Clients: http://davidwarlick.com/
Blog http://2cents.davidwarlick.com/
Podcast http://connectedlearning.davidwarlick.com

Jay

Charter Schools a Growth Opportunity?

2008-10-11T08:59:00.006-04:00

Charter schools have popped up all over the country in response to failing public school systems. They have absorbed thousands of students that formerly went to public schools. Now, assuming that the statistics showing falling public school enrollment have stayed steady, this means that many of the schools we are working in are seeing a decline in enrollment. Currently, Ohio has 328 charter schools, enrolling about 88,800 students at an estimated public price tag of $603.2 million this year.

That's a lot of students. For example, look at the stats from the AP / Cleveland Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND (AP) — Enrollment in Cleveland's public schools keeps shrinking.

The state's second-largest school system had more than 150,000 students in the late 1960s. Now, district chief academic officer Eric Gordon says the count has fallen below 49,000, after a recent accounting of students who never show up and have been confirmed gone.

Gordon thinks the figure could dip to 47,000 in early October, when Ohio schools take formal head counts.

The Cleveland school district trails only Columbus for enrollment. But many students have left Cleveland's public schools for privately run, publicly funded charter schools or attend private schools on state vouchers.

More than 25,000 Cleveland school children went to charter schools or used vouchers last year.

———

Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com

What this means to us (and our competitors) is that we now photograph fewer students per public school on average than we did years ago. This fact, combined with declining school enrollment is a real challenge we have to overcome.

So how can we grow our photographic businesses with the charter school boom? Here's what we're finding as we photograph and process more charter schools.

1. Charter schools primarily pull students from failing urban school districts. In Ohio, that means Columbus City Schools, Cleveland City Schools, etc. The prevailing demographic that we have seen has been one where 70+% of students are on free and reduced lunch.

2. Charter schools are pretty well-funded and often operate in great facilities.

3. Charter schools are photographically under-served -- many never having seen a school photo rep as late as this past September.

4. Charter schools operate with a refreshing lack of traditional school bureaucracy and will make decisions quickly.

5. Charter schools will accept -- and understand -- that high commissions and giveaways are not realistic if they want top-notch photographic services.

Our studio division is betting that charter schools can be a big part of a rapid growth strategy.

The value proposition we put forward is basically this.

1. We remove risk from the parents by providing proofs of the portraits. Allow them to see what they are purchasing.

2. We keep prices competitive and allow parents to purchase whatever they want. There is no requirement that the parent purchase a package before adding single sheets.

3. We allow a variety of payment options. We allow payment via cash, check, credit, or debit cards. Credit or debit cards go through our online store.

Obviously, proofing entails a greater up front risk for us. In exchange for what we are offering, the school makes a couple of concessions.

1. They accept a very low commission, or no commission at all.

2. We work together to limit the number of service items that they receive free of charge.

We're gathering data now and will post it as soon as the photography season closes, but we're interested in what you have to say. How have charter schools impacted your area? What are you doing to capitalize on their emergence as an academic force?

Jay

Youth Sports Marketing

2008-09-18T14:07:00.001-04:00

Interesting discussion on marketing youth sports photography.

Jay

Performance of On-line Commerce in School Photography, Part 1

2008-09-17T11:15:00.000-04:00

Online photo ordering has recently gained a lot of traction in school photo marketplace. Our company, Marco Photo Service, has been engaged in the online model for a number of years. We've been collecting data for some time and thought it would be interesting to make some of it public, and possibly start a discussion.

Everybody's raging right now about pre-pay online services and web-enabled proofing which have really begun to hit their stride this year. These areas are probably going to prove the tipping point for our industry that takes us from cash or check into the internet age, but we'll look at these in a different post.

On-line re-ordering has been around a little longer and we've got more data on it. Here's a summary, but if you would like to know more about it you should contact us. We'll be happy to go into detail.

Hard Facts
Number of subjects offered opportunity to order online: approx 200,000

Average sale to those who ordered: $48.00

Purchase rate: About 1%

Things to Think About
As a rule, if you assume $15.00 - 20.00 per unit retail, getting participation at or above one percent is the key to profitability. If you can drive participation past one percent, profitability is almost assured.

Don't get fixated on only the hard numbers. Remember that outsourcing your customer service to the web can be a great money saver. Example: one large studio processed 305 reorders through their site last fall. At 30 minutes total labor saved per reorder at $15.00 / hour (that's conservative, we think) that studio saved 152.5 man hours -- or $2287.50.

Schools with great pre-pay buy rates will probably not be net profitable, simply because most of the parents have already purchased. They are just going to be less likely to order again.

Novelty items like coffee mugs and aprons do sell -- but not very much. The overwhelming leader in terms of sales are still traditional flat prints with no enhancements.

Again, if you want to know more, drop us a line.

What have others experienced?

Jay

Size Matters -- The 11x17 Proof Envelope

2008-07-16T16:00:00.000-04:00

This past spring, we introduced a new item to our catalog for underclass proofing that worked really well for our photography customers. That item was the 11x17 custom proof flyer. I know, I know... photographers and labs have been printing proofs on order envelopes for years now. What's the big difference?

Well, what we were betting on was the concept that, as a professional lab, we are obligated to provide the best tools to our studio customers. So we looked at the current standard for spring proofing and here is what we found:

60 lb uncoated offset paper
8.5 x 14 with a money envelope
Smallish proof image
In-house design
Not enabled for e-commerce (most of the time)

So what we decided to do was try to each one of the above things differently or better. Here's where we ended up:

60 lb gloss coated stock
11 x 17 in size with a money envelope
Room for larger proof images
Professional graphic design
E-commerce ready

We don't have comparative data from one year to the next, unfortunately. Anecdotal feedback from studios and parents was universally positive, though. The coated stock gave every proof a really professional look to it that uncoated stock couldn't touch. It had the added benefit of boosting the contrast and quality of the proof image as well.

Customers commented that the larger size was a great feature. The two most commonly cited benefits were that they had more room to market to their customer and also that it made the proof flyer more prominent and harder to lose track of at home.

Finally, the e-commerce ready ordering was a huge boon to those who took advantage of it. In the case of our in-house photo studio, orders are being accepted and fulfilled today, months after jobs were photographed. The data we have shows that buy rates and total dollars spent are both up in the online space when compared to traditional ordering.

If you would like to learn more about how we made this project go, just contact us.

Build A Sales Machine: Stop Obsessing Over "The Decision Maker"

2008-06-28T13:17:00.000-04:00

This is a great post. It makes a lot of sense in terms of who we (as labs or photographers or printers) sell to in 2008. Even speaking personally, in my own team I often refer salespeople to people who work for me because I will not make a decision until they have met and talked to him or her. Their buy in is imperative -- and the lack of it will be a huge negative influence on a potential deal.

Here's a quote form this short article and a link to the whole thing.

"One of the changes in B2B selling is that, instead of decision makers making their own, often arbitrary decisions, purchase decisions today are made through a collaborative process involving multiple people and teams. This has always been a part of B2B sales, but now it's dominant. The 'decision making process' is now more important than 'the decision maker'."

Build A Sales Machine: Stop Obsessing Over "The Decision Maker"

Developing Sports Leads with Google

2008-06-25T12:54:00.000-04:00

Part of Marco Photo's business model is to also serve customers as a portrait studio. We photograph and produce picture packages, programs, marketing, and yearbooks for schools and leagues all over Ohio.

One of the interesting things that cropped up as we began to develop our sports league business concerned the question of developing valid sports leads. Schools are easy. Either subscribe to a data service or purchase your statewide directory and - boom - you've got everything you need to get started.

Sports leagues have been a lot more challenging. We think that has a lot to do with how leagues are organized. By and large, they are associations staffed by volunteers that have no central mailing address or location to visit. They are very, very fluid in terms of who to contact, when to contact, & where to contact. This left us with a problem to solve and I thought it might be helpful for us to share how we solved the problem.

In a nutshell, we love Google.

What we've found is that the internet has become the central location for youth sports organizations. Most have their own web sites, which will often list coaches, boards of directors, schedules, etc. For example, one search on "youth soccer in arkansas" took us here, one click later we were here, and one click later we were here. Check out all the valuable data that is there for the taking. It takes a lot of effort and manual work, but the content of these sites can be entered into spreadsheets or e-mail applications like Outlook. Once the work is done, the marketing and sales efforts can begin. Now, of course we have to be mindful of SPAM laws and smart about what we do with the data, but there is a lot of it there to work with when the effort is expended to get it off of the internet and into a database.

Jay

How to Copyright your images

2008-06-06T00:42:00.002-04:00

As a photographer, you may not feel like it is necessary to register your images with the U.S. copyright office. However, there has been a few cases, where if the photographer had take the time to do so, they would have been much better protected.

I don’t think most photographers would ever sue a parent over copyright infringement. The publicity alone would be enough to put the photographer out of business. But, there have been some cases, where the media copied the image from a yearbook or received one from a parent and used it without the permission of the photographer.

The authority on Copyright issues is:

Al Hopper, CAE
Director of Membership, Copyright & Government Affairs
229 Peachtree Street NE, Suite 2200
Atlanta, GA 30303-1608 USA
phone: 800-339-5451 x232
ahopper@PPA.com

He is from the Professional Photographers of America. They actively lobby congress for image copyright laws.

Images must be registered with the U.S. copyright office. You have up to 3 months after an image is taken to register it. For a flat fee of about $30.00 you can register your images in bulk with the copyright office. This means you can register all of your images 4 times a year (everything you’ve taken over a period of 3 months) and be protected. This doesn’t mean that someone won’t still steal your images, but you have done what you can to legally protect yourself.

Unless a work is registered before a copyright infringement takes place OR within ninety (90) days of first publication, damage awards may be limited to “actual damages”. This is often the fee a creator would have been paid for the work had it been licensed properly.

The problem comes from the fact that copyright law is a federal law and copyright claims must be prosecuted in Federal court. This can be very expensive. Just filing the claim and initial briefs can cost in excess of $10,000.00! In fact, a protracted copyright case can cost hundreds thousands of dollars in legal and court costs!

If your actual damages are only a few hundred dollars, say for an infringement of photograph in a ¼ page ad in a local newspaper, you need to be really motivated or independently wealthy to bring the case to court.

However, if your images are registered, you are eligible for actual damages as well as up to $200,000 in punitive damages per infringement. And, the courts may (and frequently do) force the infringer to pay all legal and court costs. The fear of the legal bill is often the leverage that motivates an infringer to settle a claim long before it moves to court. Registration clearly is the “big stick” for independent creators.

Here is a simple procedure to register all of your work. Keep in mind that you need to register every three months for full protection. Images must be registered before an infringement takes place OR within 90 days of first publication. Registering your current work every three months will keep you within that legal time frame.

You will bulk register all of your images as unpublished images using short form VA. http://www.copyright.gov/forms/formvas.pdf.

1.Setup a folder on your desktop and label it “Copyright”
2.On each assignment you photograph, simply make a low-resolution j-peg copy of each image and drop it in the file.
3.At the end of the second month, write the folder to CD-ROM
4.Fill out Short Form VA completely
5.Write a check to the Register of Copyright for $30.00
6.Send the submission, in a box, to: Library of Congress, Copyright Office, 101 Independence SE, Washington, DC 20559

Taylor Publishing in Hot Water

2008-06-02T22:37:00.002-04:00

This has not been a good year for yearbook publishers. First Lifetouch makes the national news regarding the altering of images in a Texas high school's yearbook, and now, tonight, I see on MSNBC that Taylor Publishing is in hot water. A Google search revealed not one, but two scandals inside of a week:

First, there's a spell checker gone crazy.
When one reads the final comment (reported by the AP) of the Taylor representative, Ed Patrick you have to just get a little sick for our industry. Here's what he said:

"It happens all the time, every year," Patrick said. "Look at any yearbook in the country."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the school photography or publishing industries.

Then, as if that isn't enough, a Taylor Publishing representative was recently convicted of a fraudulent scheme where he bilked schools out of over $700,000 over the course of 4 years.

Wow. All that fun in less than a week. Who wants to bet if there might be a vacancy or two in the Taylor public relations department?

Jay

Now Introducing Michael Stevens of PhotoLynx

2008-05-30T10:54:00.004-04:00

Hi, I'm the general manager of PhotoLynx, Inc. We develop software mostly used by school, event, and sports photographers and photo labs, such as Marco Photo Service. I consider myself a geek. I spend a lot of time checking out the "latest & greatest" gadgets. I particularly keep my eyes open for stuff I think will be helpful to school, event, and sports photographers.

I'm going to start off with what I think is a pretty cool device. I have actually used this and I was initially a little disappointed in the noise I see when used with modeling lights. But, after a while I got used to the noise and didn't notice it any more.

Zigview attaches to the eyepiece of most any digital or film SLR and displays the image in real time on a 2.5 inch color display. It also has an additional output that will allow it to be viewed on any video monitor. The Display flips around and up and down for easy viewing, without bending over to look through the display. It can also be detached and viewed away from the camera.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2oEVRJh4pY&rel=1]

Here is a list of camera Models that the Zigview will fit to:

I feel this would be perfect for school photographers as it will better able the photographer to frame and crop the students without having to bend over and look through the viewfinder each time. Much like in the days of long roll cameras such as the Camerz Classics, ZII, & ZIII. You can also just tape a camera mask on the screen for verifying head size and crop. This will save a lot of time in ImageMatch doing head-sizing. You won't have to send your camera in to have the viewing screen etched.

You can purchase the Zigview finders online at most of the big camera stores. It appears to be going right now for $399.00 at B&H Photo. The previous generation, which doesn't swivel or detach is going for about $279.00 online.

Creating a Sales Machine

2008-05-22T16:13:00.000-04:00

For many salespeople (myself included) sales just kind of comes naturally. You meet the client, listen, exchange information, establish trust, and then go from there. Outgoing and social people like myself tend to do pretty well in this context. We also tend to believe we're doing really well when actually we're not. In my case, I think it comes from having a generally optimistic attitude combined with some adult onset ADD. Ha!

What I've found over the past couple of years however is that access to sales data, and having the discipline to understand and act on it, can be be a much more powerful tool than the ones that come to me naturally. This discovery has become particularly relevant as I manage a growing team of salespeople working in different markets. By working to understand where we're winning and losing, I can more effectively equip my staff to win more often.

Recently, I came across a blog I thought I would share with you. It's coming from one of the guys that was very involved in salesforce.com. We don't use salesforce.com software, so this is not a pitch -- leave it to a salesperson to have to issue that kind of disclaimer.

At any rate, the theme is how sales professionals can use the data they have to better serve their prospective and current customers. I read it often and you might want to as well. The link to it is below. Enjoy.

Jay

Build a Sales Machine

An "Unfortunate Lapse"

2008-05-19T09:49:00.003-04:00

This link on CNN.com is great. And that it happened to our biggest competitor is even better. But after reading it, I had to consider the many times we have had to do the same thing to satisfy a customer's needs. Lifetouch had their intentions in the right place, but sloppy execution sure did backfire on them here.

Check it out.

Jay

Integrity Selling

2008-05-13T13:52:00.001-04:00

Recently, we've began to employ a sales system that we really like. It's called Integrity Selling and is based on the book of the same name by Ron Willingham. It tends to systematize the very best parts of Marco's corporate culture into a repeatable sales process that really values the person doing the purchasing. Our sales people have really taken to it and it is producing results across the board.

If you have any questions or would like to chat about it, give either Nichole or me a call at 877-811-9010.

Jay

MeadWestVaco Gets a New Logo

2008-05-07T13:56:00.002-04:00

One of our paper suppliers, MeadWestVaco, just gave their brand a face lift. There's a review of the change at one of my favorite design websites, Brand New. The site has really nothing directly to do with the school photography business, but it makes for interesting reading about corporate identities and how they are shaped. It often makes me ask questions about the company I work for and our identity. Are we relevant? Does our branding, marketing material, web site, etc. work together to a greater end? What does it say about us?

Probably a good thing for us all to think about.

Jay

Brave New World

2008-05-05T11:43:00.000-04:00

Hi, and welcome to the launch of Marco Photo Service's new web log. Our goal in creating and maintaining this space is to keep our customers up to speed on what we're up to, start some discussions, learn from others, and - hopefully - inform the professional imaging marketplace with insights from our little niche.

Thanks for dropping by, please bookmark us and make sure you comment on interesting posts.

If you are a member of the professional imaging community and would like to publish your thoughts to this blog, contact us and we'll talk!

Creating Upward Buying Pressure

2008-05-03T10:59:00.002-04:00

What would happen if you could reach out directly to the check writers? Most of us in the school photography business take it for granted that we serve two customers -- the school principal and the parents. You can't get to the parents until you go through the principal, right? Maybe not.

Since we started our school & sports photography studio last year, we have been kicking that idea around. What if we could out-flank our competitors and reach out to the parents of our target schools at the same time we are selling to the principals? We're reasoning that aside from picture day communications, the parents rarely (if ever) hear from the big national companies. Why? They're following the traditional communication paths.

And when we stick to the traditional Studio >> Principal >> Parent communication line, they never hear from us either because we haven't passed the gatekeeper. We're filtered out by our own marketing because we accept that we have to go to the principal to talk to the parent.

Do you hear this? We stop ourselves -- voluntarily -- from speaking to our customers!

If we accept the above as true, this means that our primary paying customer is effectively isolated from the normal marketing and advertising traffic that would make her aware that there is a choice. While the parent doesn't (and probably won't) make the actual choice between studios, we're betting that they can certainly have an influence.

And so the question becomes, what is the best way to reach the parent of the target school? How can we create a groundswell of upward buying pressure that makes the principal and secretary take notice of us? What do you think? We're working on this and will post as we try different things and begin to make progress. But by all means, post a comment or e-mail us with your ideas. www.marcophotoservice.com

Jay

Marco Welcomes Paul Dzugan

2008-02-27T11:06:00.003-05:00

Marco Photo is pleased to announce that we've added a new member to our team. Mansfield resident Paul Dzugan has signed on to help us build our exciting new commercial printing business.

Paul brings to Marco Photo many years of consultative B2B sales experience, most recently in the commercial printing and wireless markets where he was a leader in Alltel's business sales division. Paul's experience and his proven record will be instrumental as we add this exciting new dimension to our product offerings for our clients.

Starting now, Marco can supply our school and sports photography clients with a complete selection of marketing materials, printing services, direct mail services, and custom printed products that help them grow their business and upgrade their appearance. If you would like to learn more about these services, give us a call and we'll put you in touch with Paul. Hey, that rhymes!

Jay

Marco Photo Adds Offset Printing

2008-01-16T10:08:00.001-05:00

Starting in the first quarter of 2008, Marco Photo Service is adding a brand new digital printing division that will serve professional photo studios and other regional businesses. We'll use this exciting new capability to do two things:

1. Add exciting new products and services for professional school and sports photographers.

2. Provide professional commercial printing services for all kinds of retail and service businesses.

MPSI will be actively building our services throughout 2008 around these two markets. As the division moves forward, we're very optimistic about how this diversification -- both in production method and in market served -- will help make our customers more competitive, build their brands, and increase profitability.

We'll keep you posted as we grow, but if you want to know more feel free to drop us a line.

Jay