Things That Amaze Me :: Volume 1

For less than 50 cents, I can send a card to a friend. It goes in a mailbox, gets picked up and driven to a place where it gets processed, then it gets put on a plane, flown across the country, driven to another place where it gets processed and then, somehow, out of the millions of homes in that city, ends up at the right one, regardless of the weather. All this within a few days and for four dimes and four pennies. Amazing.

Creation vs Consumption

For roughly the cost of an iPad, you can hire a really great business consultant for an hour, maybe two. Yet many entrepreneurs who own iPads claim they can't afford the pricetag attached to the business advice. 

The iPad is primarily a consumption device (case in point: it doesn't even have a camera). Yes, there are some creative things you can do with it, but most will never use it for that. An hour or two with an expert who can provide valuable 30,000 foot level insight into your business is a creative device. It allows you to build something that lasts far beyond a couple hours.

This isn't a rant against the iPad, it's an observation on priorities. Create or consume. Choosing to create will give you a competitive edge.

Online Marketing and the Plus-Sized Bride

In light of the Marie Claire controversy this week (if you missed it, one of their bloggers wrote a vitriolic piece entitled "Should Fatties Get a Room? (Even on TV?)" about how overweight people gross her out), I wanted to repost this blog article I originally wrote in March about how the wedding industry often markets (or doesn't) to plus-sized brides. 

Before we get into that though, I'd like to give a nod to some people in the industry who are changing all this and celebrating love in all sizes:

• Khris Cochran, the brilliant craftista behind the DIY Bride brand, launched Plumage this year, a fashion resource for plus-sized brides. It features real weddings of non-skinny brides (which, frankly, rarely show up on mainstream wedding blogs), as well as directories for both bridal gowns and bridesmaid dresses in plus-sizes.
• Strut Bridal Salon, in Phoenix, is the first bridal boutique that I know of (and if there are others, forgive me), that caters exclusively to brides sizes 12 and up, with a mantra that "curves are meant to be celebrated." They carry gown samples in sizes 16-32.
• Randy Fenoli and Kleinfeld launched a new show called "Say Yes to the Dress: Big Bliss", which focuses on helping plus-sized women find their perfect dress and feel beautiful for their wedding day.

There may be others, but these are three companies that are focusing specifically on this market in a positive manner.

Here is the original article from March on the messages the wedding industry sends to brides online:

Online Marketing and the Plus-Sized Bride
originally published March 18, 2010

Last year, the Journal of Health Psychology published a study* of Australian brides-to-be and their pre-wedding weight concerns. The study included 879 brides with an average age of 26 recruited from five different Australian-based bridal websites. Here are some excerpts from their research:

• 75% of the brides intended to exercise more and eat in a more healthy manner. 
• 35% planned to cut out fat and carbohydrates from their diet.
• 43% planned to use an indoor tanning bed before the wedding day.
• 52% planned to undergo teeth whitening treatments.
• Over 1/3 of the brides had been encouraged to lose weight for their wedding by someone else. (emphasis mine)

In light of this information, my questions relate to how the social media marketing efforts of various wedding companies contribute to the body image of brides. I have listened to several seminars of wedding industry educators - both in person and on educational DVD's and webinars - on how to attract the "ideal bride" as a client. Most have explicitly stated that a vendor should only show photos on their websites and blogs of "beautiful" brides and "only rings that have a diamond of [x] carats or more". I have been told, on more than one occasion and by different vendors, that they couldn't blog a wedding because the couple just wasn't "attractive enough". 

Many people will criticize bridal and fashion magazines for showing an unattainable image, yet turn around and run their own websites and blogs in the same way. Is this type of marketing really effective for weddings? I can think of three specific wedding photographers off the top of my head (and I'm sure there are many more) who will post photos of each wedding, regardless of how photogenic the couple may be. Each of these photographers was also completely booked during the down economy without having to discount prices or offer specials. Were their bookings related to their blogging practices? Maybe, maybe not. The fact of the matter is that their businesses were profitable without them having to only show model-thin and tanned couples through their marketing efforts.

While I do believe that each bride needs to take responsibility for her own actions, at what point do we become accountable, if at all, for encouraging unhealthy extremes? Do we have a responsibility in our own marketing practices as entrepreneurs to a bride's well-being? Is there a line? If so, where is it? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter in the comments below.



*Note: I purchased this study through a subscription, so I am unable to link to it.

This Is How Twitter Works

Need a crash course on the mechanics of Twitter? This piece from designer Jessica Hiche should help. Click here to view full size.

How Blogs Are Making Some Magazines Better

Yesterday, as I sat in the hospital lobby waiting to be seen, I flipped through a magazine. It was a design magazine and a pretty famous one at that. I've read this magazine religiously for the past few years, and it is excellent, but as I read through this particular issue, I was surprised at how boring it was. The writing was sloppy. The ideas were creatively lazy. The advice was trite and useless. I closed the magazine, looked at the spine and saw that the issue was from March 2003.

"Well, that explains it," I thought, "This was published before the design blog boom." 

Design blogs started getting more attention in 2004 and seemed to hit their stride in 2005 and 2006 (to compare timelines, wedding blogs began to get more attention in 2007 and hit their own mainstream stride in 2008). When it became evident that blogs were here to stay AND here to compete, nabbing a part of the advertising budgets traditionally allotted for print along with several of the perks, including book deals and TV segments, many magazines reacted in one of two ways: they tried everything they could to discredit the blogs or they tried to emulate the blogs. Both reactions were mistakes, and too much energy was (and still is) spent on criticizing and copying instead of on creating something truly visionary. 

What struck me about this magazine I read yesterday, is that they took the third, far less-traveled approach. The issue from 2003 was terrible. The issues for the past few years have been remarkable and better than what you'll find on any of the design blogs. I looked at the masthead to see if anything had changed over the years, perhaps a change of guard. Nope. In the face of new competition, they hadn't replaced editors, they simply stepped up their game. They made their print edition SO good that you have to buy it because the blogs don't even come close to the magazine's newfound level of excellence. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say that about every magazine?

Wouldn't it be nice to say that about every company? There's an old saying, "trials make you bitter or better".  The same can be said for competition - it makes you bitter or better. Today, there is more competition than ever, and several of the new faces are ridiculously talented and are changing the game. You may be tempted to either discredit them or emulate what they're doing. Avoid both routes. Channel your energy into making what you do even more amazing. People will notice.

The Real Magic of Engage!10

In early 2008, I received an invitation from Rebecca Grinnals to speak at a brand new conference she was launching called Engage!, which would grow to be a semi-annual conference (June and October) that focuses on the luxury wedding market. Rebecca was one of the co-founders of Disney's Fairytale Weddings, and is the strategic force behind some of the biggest brands in the industry today. Of anyone in the wedding industry who truly deserves to have an ego, it is Rebecca, but she doesn't.

This week marked the sixth Engage! and I have been fortunate to have been able to attend all six, and to have spoken at four of them. Each one has held its own unique magical quality and each one has been beneficial to me both personally and professionally. I remember walking into the lobby at that first conference and being greeted by warm hugs from Rebecca and her appropriately named "Director of Awesome", Kathryn Arce. The genuine passion, intelligence and humility of these ladies is unparalleled.

This past Sunday, I walked into Engage!10 at The Breakers once again to warm hugs from Rebecca and Kathryn. This Engage! was a bit of a different experience for me. For the two weeks leading up to it, I had been in and out of two different hospitals in two different states and I gave my presentations this week while heavily drugged up on painkillers. If the event had been put on by anyone other than Rebecca and Kathryn, I would have canceled as things are still not back to 100%.

I didn't take a lot of notes during the other sessions this time around. Instead, I sat in a room filled with some of the most remarkable people I know and thought a lot about the fact that there are friends and colleagues who are designed for specific seasons of life and there are friends and colleagues who are meant to be in it for the long haul. I have been blessed to meet some of my favorite, lifelong friends through the various Engage! conferences. We are rarely all in the same place at the same time, and I am incredibly lucky that I got to spend time and share thoughtful conversation with them this week. I am also looking forward to developing similar friendships with some of the new people I met.

Frankly, Rebecca took a giant risk on me for that first conference. She had been following my blogs and company for a while, but had never heard me speak. She saw something in me at that time that I was still in the process of fleshing out myself. I knew that week that they had handed me a gift I will never be able to repay.

Has attending Engage! over the years been beneficial for my business? Yes, in both measurable and immeasurable ways. But the real magic of Engage? The real magic of Engage! is the people in the room.

The photo of Kathryn and Rebecca above is courtesy the official photographer of Engage!10, DVB Photo. Here are two same-day edit videos by Bruce Patterson of Cloud 9 Creative, the official cinematographer for Engage!10 that capture the spirit of Engage! perfectly:

Engage 10 {Day One} from Cloud Nine Creative

Engage '10 {Day 2 + 3} from Cloud Nine Creative