Promoting technique

NikolaiNikolai Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
edited December 18, 2006 in Mind Your Own Business
As some of you know, I recently shot a Christmas concert at my kids' high school.
I did shoot many similar events before, but it never generated neither traffic, nor sales :cry . The reason was obvious - not many people knew about the pictures. :dunno
This time I decided to draw the attention. The band's BBS has been shut down for a few months already, so I decided to use the actual bulletin board - you know, the cork one:-). All I needed was the actual ad.
I decided to create a collage of all the pictures, kinda the same way I did the "faces of dgrin" after the shootout.
I had to collate about a 100 of them. From the bitter experience I knew that I need small versions of pictures. Of course I could use Image Processor, but since I haven't uploaded ALL the pictures I had I'd have to go through the sorting process again. It wasn't too much of a hassle (all the winners were "rated"), but I have chosen the other path:-)

With the Star*Explorer on my desktop, I simply used its "download images" feature, and requested custom smaller size images:

116874657-L.jpg

Few minutes later all the pictures were on my hard drive. Then I used the trick Marc Muench showed us during the last shootout: I used the Photomerge feature of PS on those smaller images to create a collage. Of course, few images were left out, and i had to manually rearrange a few shots, but, hey, creating a 100-image collage in a matter of a few minutes - that's pretty fast, at least by my standards.

Putting the image into Word doc, adding a link to the website was a totally trivial task. Tomorrow all the band students will see this:

116874709-L.jpg

with the link to the website, of course:-)

I do hope it will bring some traffic. And hey - maybe even some sales:-) :wink
"May the f/stop be with you!"

Comments

  • NikolaiNikolai Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
    edited December 15, 2006
    And if you have...
    ...a rather talented and PS-proficient daughter who happened to have a few hours on her hands, you may even end up with this:

    Collage by Natalie:
    116913990-L.jpg

    wings.gif
    "May the f/stop be with you!"
  • SamSam Registered Users Posts: 7,419 Major grins
    edited December 15, 2006
    Great idea, and execution!

    Sam

    ps: Get that girl who did the second one to give a few lessons. :D
  • NikolaiNikolai Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
    edited December 15, 2006
    Hey Sam,
    Sam wrote:
    Great idea, and execution!
    Sam
    Thanks! thumb.gif
    "May the f/stop be with you!"
  • SwartzySwartzy Registered Users Posts: 3,293 Major grins
    edited December 15, 2006
    That is a great idea!
    Wow...cool Nik....can't imagine you won't get some traffic with that technique. The business side and marketing is always work...thanks for sharing another super idea!
    Swartzy:
    NAPP Member | Canon Shooter
    Weddings/Portraits and anything else that catches my eye.
    www.daveswartz.com
    Model Mayhem site http://www.modelmayhem.com/686552
  • Scott_QuierScott_Quier Registered Users Posts: 6,524 Major grins
    edited December 15, 2006
    That is such a cool idea and I love how easy it was to implement. Hmmmm, maybe I can figure a way to do this around here, hmmm
  • NikolaiNikolai Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
    edited December 15, 2006
    Swartzy,
    Swartzy wrote:
    Wow...cool Nik....can't imagine you won't get some traffic with that technique. The business side and marketing is always work...thanks for sharing another super idea!

    Thanks David!
    We'll see! I have the statcounter (plus, of course, SM stats), so it' will be easy to see any changes in traffic.
    "May the f/stop be with you!"
  • NikolaiNikolai Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
    edited December 15, 2006
    Scott,
    That is such a cool idea and I love how easy it was to implement. Hmmmm, maybe I can figure a way to do this around here, hmmm

    Glad you like it! Try it, if nothing else, it's a lot of fun...thumb.gif
    "May the f/stop be with you!"
  • ndsimmndsimm Registered Users Posts: 25 Big grins
    edited December 18, 2006
    Man, I love that!!
    looks like I got something new to play with in PS2! time to do a search for the way to do it
  • NikolaiNikolai Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
    edited December 18, 2006
    Nathan,
    ndsimm wrote:
    Man, I love that!!
    looks like I got something new to play with in PS2! time to do a search for the way to do it

    Thanks for stopping by, glad you got some ideas:-)
    "May the f/stop be with you!"
  • NikolaiNikolai Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
    edited December 18, 2006
    Well, what do you know...
    Out of the blue I got one those nice smugmug letters we all love so much. Promotion obviously worked, since it looks like some band mom ordered a whole bunch of pics of her dauttie (prolly xmas season also played some role into this).:ivar

    At any rate - my marketing efforts worked, even if so little...wings.gif
    "May the f/stop be with you!"
  • FlyingginaFlyinggina Registered Users Posts: 2,639 Major grins
    edited December 18, 2006
    Wow. Congratulations, Nik. What a great idea - and wonderful execution too. Are you offering the collage for sale? If I were a parent of one of the participants I'd want that as well as pix of my kid. I'm really impressed with your creativity in the marketing and photography departments!! bowdown.gif

    Virginia
    _______________________________________________
    "A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know." Diane Arbus

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  • NikolaiNikolai Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
    edited December 18, 2006
    Virginia,
    Flyinggina wrote:
    Wow. Congratulations, Nik. What a great idea - and wonderful execution too. Are you offering the collage for sale? If I were a parent of one of the participants I'd want that as well as pix of my kid. I'm really impressed with your creativity in the marketing and photography departments!! bowdown.gif

    Virginia

    Thanks, appreciate it!

    Yes, it is for sale, but nobody wanted it yet:-)

    The whole thing just proves one rather old and trivial point: the most important thing in any business is to inform the potential customers of your service. Hence the ubiquitous ads everywhere. The problem is to find an empty niche or somehow stand out.
    In two cases when I managed to do that (this one and the civil war event, when I managed to be the first guy with the pictures on the official event site) I got immediate sales. Then, for the reenactment, the other guys showed up, the whole thing lost its novelty and sales plummeted.
    I wonder for how long they allow my poster to be in the band room - the official photog may have a problem with it :-)mwink.gif

    Cheers!
    "May the f/stop be with you!"
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