Category: Uncategorized

I’m going to be in Los Angeles next Thursday, October 11, to be Selina Maitreya’s guest speaker at her APA event. She will be presenting I Know This Much is True, based on her new book, then she and I will take questions. This will be a great opportunity to get not one, but two consultants’ ideas, opinions, and answers. I hope to see lots of you there!

Next, on November 7th, I’ll be presenting Beyond PMS to the ASMP Phoenix chapter. Besides learning how to deal with your marketing and productivity issues, this meeting will have amazing raffle goodies. How amazing? How about an Agency Access Full Access North American membership and (separately) a scholarship to an ASMP Strictly Business 2 event! You must be present to win, so come, learn, and maybe win!

Speaking of SB2, don’t forget to make plans to attend one of these events. A full weekend devoted to making your business successful, with plenty of time for socialization with the presenters and your peers–plus inspiration from amazing creatives–and all for the cost of a pocket digital camera (or less!). The SB2 mini-consultations, offered through ASMP, are already booking up so if you want to book time with any of us presenters, you should sign up soon.

If you’d like to meet with me for a deeper consultation at any of these events–LA, Phoenix, or any of the SB2 cities–I do have slots available for 50- and 110-minute Test Drives. Email me for more information.

I believe in value-based pricing, as has been discussed often on this blog and in my other writings.I also believe PITA clients should be charged more. I’m not alone in this thinking.Actually, I think that it is important to walk away from bad clients. At the very least, they have to pay a significantly higher rate to compensate you for the mental health damage they cause. Here’s a great list of 10 bad client types and how to dump them.

There’s an old saying about choosing to curse the darkness rather than turn on a light which I think applies to lots of creatives today. Seth Godin talks about this idea in a recent blog post, where he discusses an old business that is stuck in status quo mode and the new start-up which takes risks and tries anything because, well, it pretty much has to to get market attention and traction.

What particularly struck me was when he wrote that the older business’ employees felt “helpless.” I see this every day in my work. Creatives seem to fall into three main camps when it comes to their businesses: the “it was this way before and though it might not be this way now it should be, damn it” group, the “it’s not like it was before and there is nothing we can do” one, and the “well, things change, what should we do now?” one.

The first group are the curmudgeons, even when they are 20 years old. I hear the cranky old man voice when I read their posts: In my day, being a generalist was your ticket to success. I shouldn’t have to specialize! and/or I shouldn’t have to market and sell–people should just find me and hire me.

The second evoke the voice of the martyr: So Getty is charging $50 an image to post our work now and paying us less and less–they’re too big to fight and it’s better than nothing, anyway. and/or The clients won’t hire me if I don’t give them all rights so I do because I have to feed my family.

The third, however, are the future. Young, old, in the business forever or just starting out, these are the people who ask questions and reach beyond the expected: What can I do to make my business more successful? and I had this crazy idea for a marketing piece… and Getty won’t make a dime off me–I’ll license my own stock! and I’ll get a second job waiting tables if I have to to make this work.

This last group are the successful ones. They are thinking about the possible and reaching out for their own success. They are happier in the process as well. They remind me of the spirit I’ve been seeing in the people in Ken Burns’ fabulous documentary, The War. The people then did more with less, got inventive with what was available, innovated constantly, and changed the world (both at home and abroad). They didn’t sit and complain that things weren’t fair (even groups like the Japanese-American soldiers whose families were interned, or the segregated African-Americans), they worked to make things better.

Which category are you in? Are you ready to stop cursing the darkness?

I just got an email from HOW magazine with a promotion for a new “collaborative” project Toyota is doing. It’s called “HEYA” and, unfortunately, it is just another rights-grabbing creative rip-off.

They tease with a potential $2500 award for a creative to use to pursue a project, but cloaked beneath that carrot is a big ugly stick. To quote, from HEYA’s own Terms and Conditions page:

THE TOYOTA ENTITIES SHALL BE ENTITLED TO UNRESTRICTED USE OF ANY SUBMISSIONS IT MAY RECEIVE FROM YOU ON OR THROUGH THE SITE, FOR ANY PURPOSE WHATSOEVER, COMMERCIAL OR OTHERWISE, WITHOUT COMPENSATION TO YOU AS PROVIDER OF THE SUBMISSION.

(caps theirs)

Please, again, write to HOW and ask them to withdraw their support of this terrible rip-off. HOW is usually good for creatives, but they screwed up here and need to be reminded of it. Let’s give them the chance to do the right thing and support creatives, rather than the corporations so eager to rip them off.

Also, write to Toyota to let them know that this is a bad idea, too.

And share the idea on forums and blogs! Let’s let people know how bad this is and that we don’t have to take it!

*****

10/2 update: Apparently HOW did not know about the rights-grab and have come out to say that they do not endorse the HEYA project. Good for them to admit the mistake and stand with their “constituents.”

I’m working on an article and am looking for photographers to interview on the subject of meetings with potential clients. Local clients, not local–doesn’t matter. If you book in-person meetings (like to show your book), then you’re perfect for this and I’d really like to talk with you.

There’s only one requirement: you have to be an ASMP member.

Email me if you are interested in participating.  And thanks. Your participation will help others.

I’m currently in the middle of judging the student category for the APA National Photo Competition. Starting off with something like 236 entries (or was it 263…I forget) I have to pick 3. Ouch. This is not easy.

I think the student category is particularly difficult (not that any category is easy) because it’s not exactly apples-to-apples. Some students submitted still life work, some portraits, some architectural, some photo-illustrations, some photo-J, etc., so I have to try to be objective to judge the work regardless of its type. It’s challenging, but I love looking at images so, except for a few technical hiccups, I’m enjoying the process.

I do have to say, however, that what has concerned me the most about some of the entries has been a lack of originality. A few of the images were essentially copies of more famous photographers’ visions. Some of them are technically perfect, but one look at the images makes me immediately think of the other, better known photographer whose vision is being copied. While I understand that, especially as students, it can be helpful to copy someone you admire to learn techniques, submitting those images for competition doesn’t make any sense to me. We judges want to see your vision–not how well you can knock-off someone else.

Clients will feel the same way when you get out into the “real” world. In today’s fragmented markets, you need to be yourself visually. Your future business will only thrive if you make your work and make it great (and target your marketing, of course).

For those of you who submitted really original work, your own vision, please know that if you aren’t selected, that doesn’t mean you suck. Maybe your work came in fourth or maybe I liked it but the other judge didn’t (or vice versa) and we needed to come to a consensus. Don’t beat yourself up and keep trying!

______

One other hint: Photoshop is a tool, and like all creative tools just because you can do X with it doesn’t mean you should do X. As Steve Webster has been known to say: one concept to a customer. In other words, don’t try to say “technology” “global” “diversity” “strength” “happy workers” and “new” all in one image, especially if that means using Photoshop to combine the disparate parts in something resembling a Yes album cover reject.

The best Photoshopped images make the viewer think that they could be reality, either by the very subtle use of the tool (more traditional retouching, for example) or by such technically clean work that our monkey brains say “Nah…that can’t be real, right? He can’t really be sitting on a giant mouse…”

I’ve seen both (bad and good) in the student work, and I see both every day in my other work. If you are leaning too hard on your tools, maybe you are masking your own talent and vision. It has been known to happen that a creative will use bells and whistles to distract the viewer–to reduce the pain if someone says “I don’t like it” by telling him/herself (or the critic) “I spent 20 hours compiling that image and if you can’t see all the work that went into it then you are an idiot.”

Just a thought.

Remember the Modern Postcard debacle? Well, another company is at it–devaluing the creativity of one of their core constituencies. This time, it’s HP and designers. HP has a site where companies can make their own stationery based on templates designed by Paula Scher…for free. Yup, that’s letterhead, cards, etc., and at no cost.Way to go HP–it’s not like designers ever buy HP printers and other products. And Paula, thanks for thinking only of yourself and not of your professional community. How much money did they pay you to sell out your colleagues and reduce the value of design like this? What is the price for a designer’s soul these days?And it’s not like this is a new idea for HP or that HP is a photographer’s friend either. They promote iStockphoto right on another page of free templates. So why are we buying HP products?! They don’t care about us as customers, apparently, except to capitalize on the coolness of being a creative–for their own marketing.Enough venting…I want to call on everyone, photographers included, to contact HP and tell them this is a terrible marketing choice. Let them know that you will be telling all your colleagues and clients about this and asking them not to use HP products until these programs are pulled. Let them know programs like these won’t help their business, they will hurt it.We made a huge difference with Modern Postcard–we can do it with HP too. Let us creatives all stand together against the devaluation of any creative service.

Newest Creative Lube podcast is now available…on iTunes or get the feed here.

I get a daily digest of advertising news in my email every day and at the end of the articles there is a quote. Today’s quote really struck me as a perfect example of the right kind of competition we should have in business:

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.
–Mikhail Baryshnikov

Yesterday was my husband’s birthday and I gave him an iPhone. I don’t have one yet myself, but getting him one made a lot of sense. He is, after all, my guinea pig for ADD-friendly organizational techniques and tools (I wonder if that means I can write it off…).

Christopher recently started working as an independent professional and switched to a Mac; it was this second change that made getting him an iPhone a really good idea. We have a friend who is still using a PC and integrating/syncing the iPhone is not perfectly seamless with one of those machines. But with a Mac, it’s amazingly simple and, if you have ADD, you want to avoid distracting things like weird software hiccups.

More importantly, the essentially perfect integration between the two main tools in a modern businessperson’s life makes keeping on track and organized much easier. ADDers need to implement structures to be more successful but often they have an almost “natural” distaste for organization. Using one tool that works across platforms makes being organized less of a pain.

The elimination of distracting “hiccups” combined with simplicity of use makes an iPhone a great tool for ADDers. Fewer excuses arise to dump your organizational attempts and it feels less like building structures than using some other tools. Does this mean you must go buy one? No–if your system is working, there is no reason to fix it. But if you are still all over the place organizationally-speaking, perhaps this could be a good tool for you.

Over time I’ll see how using this new tool helps Christopher achieve his goals and let you all know what I learn.