My Paper

Trevor Morrison

ENG201
Z. DePiero

Rough Draft

In life, you have many choices to make throughout your life that accompany several different paths. The beautiful thing about the world we live in is, for the most part, you get to decide which path you would like to travel down. I found my favorite path to be one I am walking down with a camera in my hand. Now to you, when envisioning a day in the life of a photographer it probably seems pretty easy right? Snapping a few pictures, living life simply, and thriving every day? ... Unfortunately it's not just that easy. Us as photographers must have skill sets that range from advertising to business to creativity and everywhere in between. If an artist wants to make it in the world of photography he/she must have the professional capability to appeal to a large audience of people and draw attention to their product. After sitting down and speaking with someone who works in the professional world of business you can learn there is a lot that goes into appealing to your audience and bringing the attention of the largest possible array of customers. A huge part of this involves writing and presenting to various groups of people. Now, in order to make these people inclined to listen to you or what you are trying to pitch to them you must write and present effectively, this is common sense. Furthermore, how you present yourself and your product is really what changes minds and turns heads in your direction.

    Someone who works as a business consultant in the world of marketing is a great example of someone in the mainstream business world who has to maintain certain quality in their writing or presenting. This correlates directly to photography and presenting products or types of images and working with clients to get the image exactly how they want it to look while having the largest impact on the audience trying to be reached. I interviewed Doug, someone who works in the field of consulting and found out a lot about his writing and techniques he has to use on a daily basis in order to satisfy clientele and customers. I asked Doug about how writing correlates with his job as a consultant. Doug explained, “On an everyday basis I need to communicate to a client that he/she understands their problem and has a specific solution or answer to this problem. alot of the time I must communicate my solution and research through the written word. This may include creating powerpoints and word docs to bring in new clients and begin new projects”. A consulting agent must work with a client in order to solve their issue with marketing whether that may be changing the color of their packaging to promoting a special cause for their product, inclining people to buy said product. A huge part of this is communication and successful exchanging of ideas in order to find a solution to their marketing issues. This means the communication between the client and Doug must be effective and professional.

    One of the most important aspects of writing or speaking to an audience or customers is how you speak to them. It is human nature to try and read someone through how they speak and how they select their words. There are proper speaking conventions for different groups of people and different occasions. For example, if you are hanging out with your friends, just talking loosely and “shootin’ the shit” if you will, you know you can speak in an unorganized and sporadic like fashion because your friends have an expectation of how you speak; however, that expectation is not one which they expect to hear old english come out of your mouth or even the type of speech you would use in a professional business situation. That’s just not what you and your friends are used to (hopefully...otherwise I’d be considering pursuit of a new friend group) On the other hand, if you are presenting your work or trying to pitch your idea to a group of people in a business-like situation, you are going to to select your words in a meticulous and professional manner. This can otherwise be referred to as rhetoric. The idea of rhetoric is that there is a different strategy to speech depending on the audience. In a text Spaces for Writing, “Understanding Rhetoric” we can learn, “Each writing situation has its own demands, its own expectations, and its own sense of how writing is to be presented” (page 9). If you imagine the places where you see writing, you will see that the way it is written is decided specifically for that occasion. Writing is everywhere if you think about it. There is writing on warning labels, written in a very strict transparent way so that the reader understands the danger efficiently and quickly. There is writing in store windows to potentially attract customers. This is a perfect example of writing being implemented in a business environment to enhance the company appeal to clients or customers. If you see a store that has a sign reading “SALE 20% OFF” in the window that is written and placed strategically so you as the buyer will first of all see the sign (written in all caps) as well as feel like you are getting a better deal by buying their product opposed to other stores products. This can be considered the company using rhetoric as a marketing technique to its customers. While rhetoric is being used between the sellers and the buyers, rhetoric can also be seen behind the scenes of the exchanging of ideas in order to create a marketing tactic for this specific product. An experienced marketing consultant knows in most cases, this will be made up of an organized plan of attack, respectful gestures, and an interesting presentation that will hold their attention. When interviewing someone in the professional world who deals with this type of interaction on a daily basis you get to understand what goes into a business meeting such as this. Doug goes into detail regarding various situations in his field, “If presenting to large group of a 500+ audience I’ll include less slides, make the message simple, and try to apply to a broader general audience. when speaking to 1 or 2 people I will try and be very specific and drive into their specific issue in order to give good solutions and recommendations because when speaking to 1 or 2 people individually, they have a specific need and a specific want and anything less would make them frustrated and unsatisfied.” He showed me two different contrasting artifacts that show this. One was a powerpoint directed to a large group of people, specifically IFMA and IFDA who are huge international food distributors. This powerpoint was much more broad while maintaining focus on what TPG can do for them. The document included various strategies for attacking problems and TPG’s plan of attack. It touched on the mapping out of the problems the 6 different issues in themselves, and the way they can be corrected with an easy to follow plan. In contrast I also got to go over a Powerpoint regarding a smaller audience, Lamb Weston a potato distributor. As you could assume the Lamb Weston document was much more detailed and driven to solve extremely specific issues and targeting those from a certain angle. This presentation included the specific problem and how to fix it through various phases. Then, through these phases there are detailed explanations of what each step brings to the table and how to execute that plan. As you can see these are two very different ways of presenting and writing depending completely on the audience being reached. The way you speak to people and write to people will be completely different depending on the audience. This being said, you must prepare accordingly. Preparedness shows that you are serious about what you are doing. It will show your client that they can depend on you in future products. Everything that goes into the meeting with your clients must be thoroughly thought through and planned. You should have everything planned from the preparation before the meeting to the interaction during the meeting to the follow up after the meeting. The same follows for the world of photography. As photographers it is our job to create and present a product or image in this case that appeals to our clients in an organized and professional fashion. My interviewee Doug went on to talk about his techniques for organizing a presentation for people, “I make sure that I clearly understand their wants and needs. To align with them on the phone or via email prior to meeting to make sure I have captured their issues or problems properly. As well as, always building a general outline before any final presentation or proposal. I finally show that I understand by asking good questions and communicating alignment points to them such as “Am i understanding you correctly that you need to develop a customer strategy in this space.” How a person communicates means a lot about how they hold themselves, how passionate they are, and what kind of person they are. If you can holster these qualities in the best and most appealing fashion to your clients then you will have yourself set up for success.

    Another major part of establishing a successful business practice is presenting your work in a way that well represents you yourself, your motives, and your passion. This is very important in establishing a self image for yourself. Around the world there are many different people for many different things. Have you ever found yourself watching an old-time movie or even a TV-show where the character turns to the other character and says, “I got a guy”. Now, there are many different “guys” throughout the world we live in for many different things. Someone may have a book guy, or a fruit guy, or a construction guy, and so on. As a photographer you want to become one of those “guys”. A person who has a signature for themselves, a reason people will hire you opposed to the next guy This comes down to a matter of organizing your work and establishing a signature for yourself. Something that makes you stand out for what you do. This can be achieved in one way, by going above and beyond the expectations of your client. If you blow them away with your organization and professionality as well as the final product you will have extremely reliable customers and plenty of them. My interviewee Doug tells me about his strategy for making himself stand out opposed to competitors, “In my job it is important to represent myself as a practitioner-someone who has done marketing and strategy work and therefore can teach it- in order to show I have experience in this field. Through the written word I need to represent myself as someone who has done the work, is self motivated, and helps the client fix problems and represent himself as better than his competition.” When pitching through presentations he has a section of the presentation on why TPG and why Doug meant to highlight his points of difference vs. the others. Doug showed me one of his presentations and I got to see the different components of this section. He first explains a history of where they started and how they’ve grown. Then shows simple diagrams of how TPG can help the client market their product through different strategies. Finally, there are a few slides literally explaining the positive attributes of TPG and what they have in comparison to the competitors such as “20 best practice publications, 225+ Registered intellectual properties, retail and industry leaders, etc”. Also, sealing the deal with all the big name clients and even more local ones that TPG has collaborated with. This is exactly how you set yourself apart from the competition. Another example of this can be seen in my rhelm of photography. I have a photography teacher, Greg Voight, who once told us a story about his beginning years as a photographer. He was trying to get a job shooting for a golf event coverage between him and several other photographers. When Greg showed up to deliver his images they were all organized neatly in a binder labeled and all. The director was astonished. He had never seen something so professionally done. He was used to receiving a bag full of negatives and to have them all organized and layed out nicely… who do you think was the first person he called the following year? To this same point you want to create an image for yourself that stands for your business. When you are trying to run a business you want continuing and reliable customers. Customers become reliable when they become comfortable. Creating this signature for yourself allows people to feel comfortable with what they are buying because every time they pick up their phone to call you for a job they will know what they will get as a final product. It’s like a sandwich shop, sure there’s plenty of sandwich shops around town but you just love that one sandwich place because you know you’re going to get a fantastic sandwich. Now, you like that sandwich so much that you want to go tell your friends about this great sandwich you just had. It is the same when you are trying to sell a product and this is exactly how good business works. Supporting a strong and positive representation of your business is key in drawing people in and maintaining relationships with clients.

    As a photographer it is our job to grab your attention and make you feel through the imagery that we capture. This is the same for business practices you want to grab the attention of the client and customer. My interviewee, Doug is a marketing consultant in a group of about 50 people that all work together to pitch ideas to different companies ranging anywhere from hallmark to sara lee to petco. These ideas consist of ways that the company can make their product better and more appealing to their customers. If you think about it this is a huge part of the company selling their product. So in a way Doug has to figure out what will make people more inclined to buy this product. Part of that process will be finding out how to make people feel like they have to buy this product. This might be putting rough looking shelter pups on the packages of the dog food for Petco to appeal to people’s emotions. They see the dogs on the bag and maybe it says 5% of profit will go to shelter organizations. These are all business practices to get someone to feel more inclined to buy that product opposed to the others. The same follows for photography. Our job is to produce an image that you see and you feel happy, sad, angry, confused, it doesn’t matter what you feel as long as we can make you feel something. Because, that feeling alone draws you into the image. In a photography business example, imagine you are a wedding photographer. A couple walks into your studio looking for a potential photographer. If they look at the walls and see all the beautiful married couples so happy and wonderful and nothing in the world could ever be wrong with them. They both go “Awww, look at them we want that, we want to be like them. We’ll hire you.” And that’s how business works. Make them feel like they will be happy in the end of things just like the couples on your wall. This my friends can be referred to as using ethos, pathos, and logos in your business practices, an extremely valuable tool. In one of my classes, my brilliant teacher Zack Depiero asks us, “who has seen a movie recently that made you cry?” People went on to answer, and Zack then asks, why? Why did this movie make you feel like that. To his point, this movie was completely fiction. All the characters are made up and so is the story. So why does entertainment basically lying to you make you feel so strongly for the characters? It’s because the person selling to you is establishing a relationship between their piece, product, or characters and making you feel connected to them and emotional for them. You would be surprised how much emotions really affect people’s choices every single day. If you can appeal to people’s emotions through your work, I guarantee you will be able to reel ‘em in. It is simply how us amazing human beings work, true human nature.

    It truly is crazy how related photography is with the business world and how many people would never know how connected the two are. If you can communicate effectively to an audience they will take you seriously and be more likely to be a client to you if you treat them like their interest is your priority. Creating an image for yourself and relationships with clients is key in maintaining continued business. Finally people love feelings, our society is becoming more and more dramatic as the days pass, so recognize that and feed the drama! Make people see what is before them with their feelings and encourage them that your product is worthy of their emotions. Being a successful businessman is achievable by harnessing all these techniques and using them to attract an audience to your work.