Welcome to Issue 119 of McCurry Associates' Marketing Idea Exchange.

Please send us your marketing idea as well as comments on those ideas posted by hitting your reply button or emailing to editor@mccurryassoc.com. You may offer free subscriptions to your colleagues by telling them to send an email to editor@mccurryassoc.com - Ask them to include their name, store name and city in the body of the email - privacy is protected, see below.

Please Enjoy, Consider and Profit from these ideas.

Idea #1 - United Cerebral Palsy Day
Joel Paymer - Camera Land - New York, NY - www.cameralandny.com

   This past Friday we had Olympus/United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) Day at Camera Land

   We advertised for 2 weeks that we were having the event. We donated 5% of every Olympus product sold on Friday to UCP. We had the people that worked for the UCP center at the store, as well as a few clients of theirs. It was a huge success. It brought awareness of a terrible condition to people that never had seen its effects, as well as monetary support to the center.

   For years Camera Land has been associated with UCP of Nassau. This was the first of what will be an annual event with the three companies. For the record, the 5% came from Camera Land, not Olympus. They do not need all of their dealers asking them for donation help for their favorite charities.

   People that were coming into the store for as little as a battery thought it was such a great idea that they donated varied amounts. It was a great day for UCP and both business and Camera Land's image did well with the event.

Editor's note: the signature of Joel's email, in addition to listing the store address and phone number, says, "We specialize in corporate gifts." What a great idea! We're blown away by the number of people who don't have signatures on their emails - ought to be illegal for businesses to be anonymous! 

More from the Dixie Division Annual Meeting, held in Savannah:

   Gary Grinaker of The Photo Express in Bismarck, North Dakota has turned what others might call liabilities into selling points. For example, the location of his store, tucked deep inside a mall. He promotes it as "cleverly hidden in the Kirkwood Mall". His logo is a caricature of himself with a fedora pulled deep over his forehead, so he looks like a private eye. His staff answer the phone "Congratulations, you've discovered the Photo Express, cleverly hidden in Kirkwood Mall." The result? EVERYBODY knows where he is! His website? www.cleverlyhidden.com

   In a truly animated presentation, Grinaker made dry statistics come to life.

   He counseled us how to get ready for the coming tidal wave of passport photo business (passports will soon be required for all trips outside the US, and there are projections of passport issued growing from 8 million to 23 million annually over the 2 years)

• Make a friend in the post office, or whoever else processes passport applications in your community. Find out who "Jim" is and call him to see how you can make life easier for him. In the case of Grinaker's local "Jim", it was the first time anybody had ever sought him out! While government employees aren't allowed to make specific recommendations, they can drop heavy hints about who does the best job!
• Have renewal forms on hand to make it easier for your customer (you can get them from the local passport office).
• Print passport informational brochures and distribute them to your local travel agents (in North Dakota, "local" might mean everyone within a couple of hundred miles) for more on passport brochures, check issues 15 and 16 on the archives http://www.photoimagenews.com/mcarchive.htm
• Find out what other markets exist for ID photos. For example, concealed weapon permits in North Dakota have to be renewed every 3 years and require an ID photo. Gary contacted the state bureau and requested a list of permit holders with their expiration dates and addresses. It's public knowledge, available under the Freedom of Information Act! The state bureau sent him everything in a database format. Grinaker, in addition to contacting permit holders as their renewal dates are coming up, also contacts all the gun shops in the area so they know where to send people for really good ID photos
• Make your ID photos better than your competitors' product. Better lighting, better background, a mirror so the customers can check their hair.
• Charge enough! Find out what the "competition" is charging and adjust your own pricing to reflect the premium product.

   Your editor came back from Savannah and immediately implemented most of Gary's passport tips! We found we had the best ID photos in town but we were selling them at a lower price than almost anyone else. So based on that local research, we raised our prices.

   Grinaker opened a lot of eyes that morning in Savannah. Here's one of his factoids: for every 1,000 people in the US, 6.1 rolls of film are processed each day. If there are 150,000 consumers in your market area, that works out to 915 rolls per day processed in your market area. If you process 900 rolls on an average day, you have maxed out your market share. If you process 9 rolls a day, you have significant opportunities for growth.

Another factoid: today the world is your market for odd and unusual items. On eBay, people are selling plastic 35mm film canisters for craft storage items. You know, those empty film cans you've been storing for years cause you don't know what to do with them! (Let's hope none of us are still piling them in the front window as a display!) 

Upcoming Bill McCurry Imaging Industry sessions . . .

Sunday, July 17 - Wednesday, July 20 Photographic Research Organization 47th Annual Convention and Trade Show, Fort Lauderdale, FL - For members only

Thursday, September 8 - Saturday, September 10 - Fall DIMA/PMA/PPFA co-located with Independent Photo Imagers (IPI) convention in San Diego, CA. Marketing session
> Thursday, September 8 - 8:00am S101 - It's Your People . . . Really!
> Thursday, September 8 - 9:15am S102 - Marketing Idea Exchange
(Note that the IPI convention actually starts Wednesday, September 7 and is for IPI members only - info at www.ipiphoto.com - the PMA sessions are open to all industry people - info at www.pmai.org.)

September 23, Friday Evening Keynote after dinner discussion- "Signs of Success" and Saturday, September 24, "All New Big Bang - Little Bucks" PMA Canada Exposition 2005, Hamilton Convention Centre, Hamilton Ontario

Wednesday, October 12 - Thursday, October 13 - PMA Birmingham, England - Bill will be showing "Real Life Examples of Effective Marketing" based on his international research on Wednesday at 3:30PM.