Oh, I sound like a Debbie-Downer and I swear, that's not how I am!
But I've just been dealing with honesty and being transparent in my business, and somehow a flippant award to attract people to me just rubs me the wrong way.
I don't expect anyone to agree with me, just sharing my thoughts.
A site like this is not in it to benefit any vendor group personally at all.
They want you to put the badge on your site to get more traffic/ads/money.
Marketing plan = give out a meaningless award to talk up their site and get more people using them.
It seems more fair to at least have a poll or contest that actually engages the brides into voting on their local vendors rather than just pulling out the ones that fulfill the "5 star/5 review" qualification, if indeed that is how they do it.
Awards and recognition from local or national groups that qualify/measure your professionalism and business are far more valuable for us as vendors. Unfortunately, we have taken the watery road of anyone that will hand us a "special sticker" gives meaning and validity to our business.
One of our older clients saw the Facebook post, congratulated us and referred someone else the same day. Wins all around. I understand hating from the sidelines, but its fun to play the game.
Things like this are what's bad about the wedding industry in my opinion. Think about it this way:
- WeddingWire decides on Bride's Choice promotion to help them build prestige, get advertising dollars
- Vendors feel good, can post it, it makes them look good.
This all seems like a win-win on the surface. If there were actually some qualifications for this, it'd be a great service and honor. The unfortunate thing is that it's clear that there are not... Therefore the real losers are the clients. Clients see things like this as a badge of honor on their vendors (I'll be the first to acknowledge that it works for brides). But when these are handed out in the manor that they are it deceives our clients and has the potential to push someone towards an uneducated decision.
Sometimes in the wedding industry, businesses seem to have this 'it's the bride's responsibility to do their homework, we're just looking out for ourselves' type of mentality. This is a dangerous attitude for things like this, backroom referral deals, ect... Businesses have every right to 'look out for #1', but quite frankly I'm tired of it in our industry. I'm tired of hearing stories from people who hired 'qualified' photographers only to be devastated later. The truth is that people look to The Knot and Wedding Wire as authorities. They have no financial responsibility to take this seriously, but I do think its the right thing to do.
We've chosen not to advertise these because of that. After posting about this on Facebook, I had several non-photographer friends who commented about how many of their semi-pro photographer friends who had posted the accolade. In a sense, I think it can even hurt a high-end brand depending on how many people post it.
TRReichman wrote:
One of our older clients saw the Facebook post, congratulated us and referred someone else the same day. Wins all around. I understand hating from the sidelines, but its fun to play the game.
- trr
Don't mean to single you out Todd, but given your stance on pricing in order to not bring down the industry, I find this view surprising.
Tony, I'm somewhat in an agreement with you, however, this is the way I look at it... The award by itself, most likely, will NOT sway a potential bride to go with one photog over another. The work of the photog and the chemistry (from meeting and talking) between client and the photog would still be the biggest decision factors for the client. The award itself, as someone suggested above, provides some sense of validation for the client. Though it might not be the best validation...
I guess what I'm saying is client will not simply hire a photog just because he/she has this award posted on his/her FB. But I wholeheartedly agree that simply giving "awards" away has somewhat damaging effects on pros' reputations and could mislead and miseducate consumers.
isoesilo wrote:
Tony, I'm somewhat in an agreement with you, however, this is the way I look at it... The award by itself, most likely, will NOT sway a potential bride to go with one photog over another. The work of the photog and the chemistry (from meeting and talking) between client and the photog would still be the biggest decision factors for the client. The award itself, as someone suggested above, provides some sense of validation for the client. Though it might not be the best validation...
I guess what I'm saying is client will not simply hire a photog just because he/she has this award posted on his/her FB. But I wholeheartedly agree that simply giving "awards" away has somewhat damaging effects on pros' reputations and could mislead and miseducate consumers....Show more →
Yeah, I agree with this. I certainly don't mean to indicate that someone would book someone based solely on this... It's not a huge deal, but just a crappy way for them to do it in my opinion.
Tony Hoffer wrote:
Yeah, I agree with this. I certainly don't mean to indicate that someone would book someone based solely on this... It's not a huge deal, but just a crappy way for them to do it in my opinion.
I agree that this is more about WW promoting themselves than anything. I don't know if many people noticed this, but the link they included in that announcement included a link to WW. I swapped it out with a link to my own reviews. I figure if they're going to use me to put the word out about them, then I would use their 'award' to my advantage. FWIW, I've never advertised with WW, the Knot or any of those sites, but I will use those free listings for SEO.
