Author: Leslie

Unbelievable disclaimer on a new Maxim-related website (covered by PDN) that says, essentially, “we don’t need no stinkin’ permission to use copyrighted materials…because we say so. So there.”

Well, if that’s the way life works now, I’m the new Empress of the West and all of you have to send me buckets of cash in tribute…because I said so.

Sheesh.

If you make images they may be interested in, keep an eye on their site and sue ’em when they steal your work. Please. And let us know when you do.

Sometimes goofy creativity is a great thing. Take this site (which I found from Coudal Partners) which teaches us how to prevent mind control via the perfect tin foil hat. The writing is hilarious and the illustrations silly but appropriate. What a great piece of creative goofiness.

On the other side, there are those creatives who mangle pop songs for ads. Here’s a site that points out many of the offenders, including two of my top three (“Crumbelievable” and “Turning 23″…ACK!).  They’re only missing the Burger King abuse of “Melt With You” by Modern English.

What creative goofiness have you done lately?

I have no idea who first said that, but sometimes it’s hard to remember that it is very untrue. This weekend was one of those times. I posted my opinion on a topic on a pro photographer forum, giving advice which I believe to be the best advice I could give, with the hopes that readers would find it helpful, and suddenly a couple of the other posters decided to make my life difficult. They got personal and beyond snarky.

I felt spanked, and without good reason.

Now, I don’t work weekends (as a rule) but I looked at this forum on Saturday morning. So, I guess I was asking for some spankage since I broke my own rule, but this was too much. I started getting pretty down about it.

Then I started getting emails and personal messages from other forum members. They, rather than snarking, wrote lovely comments about how I had helped them or that they had learned from things I had written, etc.

So, what started out as a negative response to my efforts turned out, in the end, to be a good thing.

How many times in the recent past has something that started out as an apparent negative turned around for you? Did you do something to make that happen? To make it better? To see the positive side?

Squidoo is Seth Godin’s newest invention. You can make a lens to gather all your stuff about a particular topic, and share it with others. For example, I have one for my business while other folks have done them for their interest in SciFi or cooking or, well, just about everything.

Squidoo earns money by selling ads. When someone clicks on the ads, Squidoo (and the lensmaster if s/he so chooses) earns a bit.  Lots of this money goes to charity and now there’s a chance to help even more–there are lenses devoted entirely to charitable contributions. I made one. Please go there and click on the ads. Send the url to others, and have them do the same. All the money generated will be donated to various causes like helping kids in Africa get anti-viral meds or to buy schoolbooks for other kids. It’s all good, and it’s so easy.

Here’s a quick diversion, also in the creative vein (but much less time consuming than yesterday’s fun): can you guess the correct logo? How fast?

Hat tip to Jane G. (aka caffeinegoddess) for the link. You should check out her blog for many good things creative/advertising/design related.

Sometimes it’s a good thing to just “waste” time in some sort of creative play. I suggest Line Rider as a good toy to play with. Deceptively simple idea: draw the slope for the sledder to slide on. The results, however, can be spectacular.

Warning…addictive.

Thanks to everyone who participated in my quick, 4-question survey (request posted on ASMP Pro/Student and APAnet forums). The results are in. There were 100 respondents, so this is by no means extensive, but it’s probably a decent sample.

When asked how business in 2006 has been (total billings), 49% said they were up this year over 2005. 37% said they were down and 12% said it was about the same (note, total is not 100% because someone didn’t answer). The largest group was those who said they were up 26-50% over 2005 (17%), which sounds like good news to me. On the down side, 13% said they were down by more than 25% for the year. Ouch.

For October 2006 compared to 2005, 43% said they were up, 22% said “the same,” and 32% said “down.”

On the open-ended question about how the respondents thought the rest of the year would be, and why, the answers were mostly positive, with neutral next and then a few negatives. However, the negatives were highly negative. For example “all I hear is that budgets are low or non-existent” and “dizzzzmal [sic] at best. A lot of companies are going out of town” are two of the negative comments.

On the positive side, one photographer said s/he was expecting a $2 Million year (bravo!) and several others said that their marketing was paying off (ex. “We […] have repositioned ourselves in our markets, targeted new markets and are rebuilding a client base. This has been successful and we are growing steadily.”).

As for what kind of photographers responded, here’s the breakdown (note, multiple answers were possible):

Advertising   60%
Corporate    53%
Editorial     48%
Weddings/Event     18%
Other, please specify  27% (mostly architecture, portrait, and a coupe of fine arts people)

While there weren’t enough data to do hard interpretations, my general sense is that those who were working their marketing plans were correlated to those who had more positive results and/or outlooks. Whether this is because people with plans generally feel more in control of their businesses (and thus are more positive in attitude) or not, as I said, there’s no sure way of knowing.

Thanks again to everyone who participated!!

Seth Godin, on his blog, recently posted about how the idea of some action being labeled “just business” is a warning sign–that is, when someone does something mean or nasty or unethical and says “C’mon, it’s just business.” I completely agree with Seth (yes, again).

Every day we get to make choices about how we choose to run our businesses. There are those of us who choose to make a little less money now rather than shoot for tobacco or to give away full rights for little or nothing, but in doing so, those people are standing up for their beliefs. They are being ethical.

Yes, my ethics and your ethics may not be 100% the same. Maybe you don’t have a problem with tobacco ads but I do. That’s fine. Those are the fine points of individual ethics–everyone has her/his own code.

But the larger issues should have commonality. I think we can all say that killing someone to improve business is right out. But what about putting someone out of business by, say, undercutting their fees. Is that okay? I say no.

See, business, for small creative businesspeople especially, is life. Besides the intimate connection between one’s art and one’s soul, on a practical level, if a creative’s business fails, s/he could lose her/his home, pretty easily. Is putting a creative and her/his family out on the street, just so one can make a buck/pound/euro/loony, ever acceptable?

What if it happened to you? What if someone undercut your business by lowballing, or badmouthed you to clients, or took credit for work done by you, etc. How would you feel?

Would it be “just business” then?

ADBASE has become a member of the PLUS coalition. Good for them. Yes, they are joining a group that connects them with their target market, but they are also helping out a group which may change (some might say “save”) the photo industry. It’s a great pairing.

Regardless of whether you are an ADBASE user or not, supporting PLUS is a great idea. Check ’em out (both of them) at PhotoExpo.

What a great trip! The people in the twin cities are absolutely lovely, kind, smart, and funny. At least the creatives I met there were. The fine leaders of ASMP-MSP can definitely hold their heads up–they run their organization’s events well and made me feel comfortable and appreciated. I’ll be recommending to some of my speaker friends that they consider speaking for that group. No question.

Thanks to everyone who made it possible for me to be there, including the sponsors (ADBASE, AsukaBook, Livebooks, Workbook, Minnesota Creative Source) and all the volunteers who helped out.
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The travel was fantastic as well. For those of you who do not know this about me, I don’t fly. Yes, that makes me a loon, but there’s never been any doubt about that. I took the train to Minneapolis-St. Paul…make that several trains.

I may be a loon, but I’m not alone in my preference to travel by train. I spoke with many fellow passengers and I did not meet a single person who also did not fly. Instead, several people said they chose the train because it was a much more pleasant way to travel. You don’t get strip-searched, you do get fed, and the service is great. Yes, it is slower and it’s not cheap, but you arrive at your destination relaxed and feeling energized, not stressed and compressed.

So what does this have to do with your business? Think about it. Airlines keep cutting back on service and struggle to stay afloat while Amtrak adds services to their existing trains and sees their revenue increase. In fact, they saw their greatest revenue increase in FY 2006–up almost 11%!

It’s not about being the cheapest or even the fastest–it’s about serving your clients. Figure out what their needs and wants are and cater to them. Don’t lower your prices, raise them, but make sure to give your clients great service for their money (and a great product too, of course).