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Our brand isn’t a look but a promise kept — not what we say but what we do.

Value

Imagine if you said, “I want you to pay me what you think I’m worth.” Most people would imagine themselves out of business.

We need to tell our clients what we’re worth, and live up to our rhetoric.

What is the value of your work to people who don’t know you, or how much they should be paying?

The value of a compelling and authentic brand is that it tells people the price of entry and helps them see it’s worth it.

Google

Back in the day the easiest way to remind yourself how much competition you had was to look in the Yellow Pages (RIP). Now you can google “photographers” in your home town.

More helpful are Facebook, Instagram etc, where likes, recommendations and shares — by people you already have some sort of relationship with — seem to make it easier for the cream to rise to the top.

Of course you can buy attention on all those platforms, just as you could pay for a bigger ad in the Yellow Pages. But stand out from the crowd, be noteworthy, and you have a much better chance to succeed — especially if people search for your name instead of “photographer”.

But the best word of mouth is just that. Word of mouth.

Heather describes it as "friends telling two friends."

There’s a good chance you’ve made it if much of your business comes from past clients. Just be aware that past clients could be pushing you in the wrong direction.

Signing our work

When we re-branded several years ago we began embossing the front flyleaf of every Queensberry album with our new Q-mark.

What we were doing was signing our work, which we hope you do, and building brand awareness. But some photographers didn’t like this. They’d like their clients to believe their albums are made by elves, and delivered, like babies, by flying storks.

What really made us happy was that not many bought into the stork theory.

For example, when we see our albums on photographers’ blogs and social media pages, it amazes us how often people include a shot of our Q. We reckon that means the Q looks good and adds value, which is what a brand is all about.

Branding is primarily about getting recognised – not a “camera” but a Leica, not a “wedding album” but a Queensberry, not “wedding photographers” but a standout individual like you.

Adding value

The purpose of brand recognition is to add value. If it’s Bentley, Hermès, Rolex, Chanel, it’s worth more. It’s better made … more exclusive … confers status … worn by celebs … made from hen’s teeth or unicorn leather … so it’s worth more. The brand justifies a better price.

If that sounds cynical it’s not meant to be. You need to be recognised for the right reasons. A strong brand is your reward for long years building your reputation. Louis Vuitton and Burberry have been building theirs for more than 150 years, Rolls Royce for well over a century, Apple for over forty years.

I hope you build your own brand, and we’d love it if you use ours to support it. Treat our albums as a profit driver, not simply an expense. If you were selling handbags you’d charge more for Gucci or Armani.

Brand recognition

You can trace the silhouette of the VW Beetle - one black line on white paper – and people will recognise it. Cadbury has the colour purple. Virgin has the colour red and Richard Branson’s teeth and hair.

Wouldn’t it be great if something that minimal made everyone think of you? Not world-wide, just in your own community would do.

You can’t wait for people to come in for their portrait or wedding to make an impression. Either they won’t come in at all or you’ll be on a long list out of a Google search.

It doesn’t need to be a heavily promoted name or logo or colour they notice … it could be your car or your blog, or your exhibition at the local cafe, or your network of friends on Facebook.

Brand building takes time and work, but it earns you a great return.

Never marketed? Bull.

I like this quote:

I once had a photographer tell me he never marketed. He wore only black pants and shirts, antique glasses, drove a 50 something Chevy (beautifully restored), shot only large format and hand made all his portfolios. Never marketed? Bull. — Don Giannatti

One of Heather’s mentors wore Victorian clothes, rode a penny farthing and made exquisite bespoke books.

Networking

Simon and I go back to 1986-7 when I walked into the family studio for the first time, to be confronted by portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Pope John Paul II. That doesn’t happen often!

Those shots were taken by his father, who’d run the studio with his mother since 1960. Later, Simon could brag about his own shoot with President Mandela, and many more I’m sure. But I remember liking Simon because he lobbied his Dad to buy Queensberry.

Some years ago I interviewed him for our blog while he was in Auckland. He was official photographer at a former Prime Minister’s investiture to the Order of New Zealand. He got a hug from her because they know each other that well and he’s that nice a guy.

A couple of nights earlier I’d spotted him on TV in the media scrum at a war hero’s Victoria Cross ceremony. Again he was the official photographer.

And to complete the picture of a guy who’s everywhere, one of his landscape images, of an unusual sunrise, had featured in his local newspaper the day before I talked to him. Trust Simon to be up with the birds.

I remember going to the studio’s fiftieth anniversary. The Governor General was there, politicians and diplomats, folk heroes, sports heroes and media personalities. And that’s in person – there were far, far more on the exhibition walls.

Simon is an extraordinary networker. He’s a stalwart of the Photographic Society of New Zealand, offers workshops and seminars (including photographic walking tours around town), and gives generously to the community. These days he’s a council representative.

Needless to say he’s very active online, especially on Facebook. He publishes a photo most days from around the Wellington harbour and hills. 

Here’s a social photographer who seems to know, like, and be liked by, everyone as far as I can see. 

I believe that’s a major factor in the studio’s ongoing success.

Imagine how well you’d do if you were as rooted in your community.

Get past their checklists

Brides-to-be can do so much research, come to you so switched on, so well-informed, so armed with ideas, questions, preconceptions and misconceptions, that they can sometimes lose focus on what’s important.

Call this the Checklist Effect. The bride has read ten lists in magazines and bride blogs, and everything on them needs to be crossed off if she’s to be sure her day will be perfect.

She ends up caught in a blur of shot lists, prices, packages, and other details.

Meantime someone less focused on the details might simply say: “I like that picture”, or “Wow, that’s cool.” And notice that you’re pretty good at your job.

You can’t ignore their checklists, but a strong brand is one way to move past them. 

Another is to leave people alone with your work for a while. It’s not always a bad thing to keep people waiting a few minutes. Think of those times you found a good article in a waiting room, and got called in before you finished reading it.

Collectible

Let me tell you a story about how we got into the album business, why we believe in brand building, and why you should too.

I’m looking at two very early Queensberries. In those days Heather made a range of handbags and wallets, as well as albums. So the first Queensberry I’m looking at is an old wallet. It looks a bit tired but it has excellent provenance as they say…

In 1990 Stephen brought his new fiancée home from Brisbane to meet his family in New Zealand. He gave her the Queensberry tour, saw one of our (new!) wallets and asked, could he have it? Heather gave it to him. (I hope she gave Sonya something too!)

Years passed. We stopped making wallets. But Stephen kept using his…

After — I don’t know — a decade or so, people felt he needed a new one. A great gift idea, they thought … but he wouldn’t part with it, he loved it, it was a symbol of something and he used it every day … for twenty years.

But in the end the credit card pockets got a little sloppy and he tossed it in the trash.

His daughter Charlotte, my grand-daughter, retrieved it. “You can’t do that, Dad,” she said, “you love that wallet!”

Three points about that wallet…

1. These were some of the first products we actually “branded”. Up till then Heather and I thought people would recognise quality when they saw it. And pay for it. What did we know? We were the hippy/handcraft generation.

2. Your mileage may differ but I’d say a wallet that lasts twenty years of constant use is quality.

3. Even so, we had to stop making them.

Why?

A few years earlier our government had dropped almost all New Zealand’s trade barriers. Good idea, maybe, but it devastated our business.

I remember calling on our best customer, who gave me a wallet to look at (from Thailand I think) that he could retail for about the cost of our materials and labour! It was made of “bonded leather”, and actually ripped when I was inspecting it.

But he just shrugged. Never mind, he said. They’ll replace it for me.

Our baby brand simply couldn’t stand up to the appeal of a really low price on an easily commoditised product. At the high end it couldn’t stand up to the power of brands like Oroton — products with a well earned reputation for quality. We couldn’t compete profitably at either end of the market and in the end we stopped trying.

But we persevered at product development and brand-building, and that — and our bespoke albums — saved us.

If there’s one thing that experience taught us, it’s that people don’t just buy quality. They buy a brand that adds reputation, expectation and certainty.

The second Queensberry I’m looking at is also a wallet. It turned up in an online auction. We just had to buy it when we saw it was described as “collectible”.

You're bespoke too

I said that brand-building and our bespoke albums saved us.

Your strength as a social photographer is that you’re bespoke too. You can’t be outsourced, and your customers can’t buy their pictures from Getty Images.

Add a brand that adds value and you’ll be OK.

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