Life Inside the Shoebox

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

From the fantastic blog, PMA Foresight.

Taking Back Monday

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?

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

JA

More on Charter Schools

This from the American Enterprise Institute on Public Policy Research.

JA

Marco Photo Service School Picture Delivery Times

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

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?

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

Interesting discussion on marketing youth sports photography.

Jay

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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