I met a few people yesterday that told me about Monday’s Joe Duffy programme. I didn’t hear it myself but the gist seems to be that a photography studio was doing a promotion in a Shopping Centre where passers-by were able to ‘win’ a voucher for the studio for a session and an 8×10 ‘worth around €300’. Someone contacted Joe because apparently almost everyone that entered the competition won the voucher.
These vouchers / prizes / teasers generally have one purpose: to get customers into a studio. The objective is to get the photos done, present the ‘free’ or ‘won’ image, make it look pathetically small and then generally the studio aggressively up-sell. I have spoken to a number of people who have gone in with their voucher expecting to get something for free and walking out having spent many hundreds of euro.
Now I have to say that most of them have some very nice photographs for their money. Almost all of them are very happy with their photographs. But few of them had really thought about spending upwards of €1000 on a large wall hanging before they got the voucher.
My issue is that this is a classic cold hard sell. It starts with a trip to a shops and ends with spending a lot of money on photographs (albeit lovely photographs). There is no point where the consumer gets to make a value judgement based on suitability, quality or value.
No one I spoke to heard the end of Joe’s programme and it doesn’t appear to be available on RTE anywhere but there is nothing new about this style of marketing and I suspect it doesn’t break any rules. It is just a pretty aggressive way of selling photographs. It tends to rely heavily on emotional blackmail and implied guilt. How could you not want to get beautiful photos of your family? How could you put a price on those memories?
Photographs of your family are special. The memories they create are very precious. Their value stretches way beyond what you can expect to pay. I don’t believe that a hard sell of this nature is appropriate.
So next time you come across someone offering you something free in a Shopping Centre. Remember that they are paying a few hundred euro for a spot in the Centre, the wages of the person talking to you (who isn’t a photographer) and also for all that marketing material they are showing you. And then they’re offering you something for free. This is not a charitable gesture. There is some way they are expecting to profit and they intend to get it out of you.
You may be able to get something for nothing. I would however expect that overall you would get better value from someone who isn’t having to cover all those overheads. As for the value of the prize, I doubt even the studio concerned would actually charge you €300 for a session and a 8×10 if you walked in off the street. IMHO that’s a lot. There are a lot of very good photographers charging a lot less.
If you want to have a professional portrait session, I would highly recommend choosing a photographer because you like the style of their work, you have heard good things about their level of service and they charge a fair price, rather than just because they approached you while you were shopping for something else.
As I have said, I didn’t hear the programme. I’m sorry if I have the wrong end of the stick. My comments and opinions are based on the experiences of a number of friends and clients who have received vouchers from a number of different studios in Ireland and UK.
