An old politician once said ” You can please some of the people some of the time, all the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time.”

Marketing is like fishing, the more times you cast your bait the better chance of catching a fish.

Don’t ANAlize, just do it.

Vern

You put together an awesome slideshow that had a ton of great work in it. What happened to that? I’m having trouble finding the link…

Yikes!

Email unfortunately, until Nostradamus’ prediction of technology getting the best of the whole world in 2012…will be the better more economical way to go especially in our economic world 2009!

Email-Livebooks and postcards. It’s really not inspiring. I like the fact that a person will use a photobook, personalize a gift and/or presentation.

Then send it. The Shot gun approach is wasted. Unless done in a source book like Black Book, At Edge or whatever else is out there.

All of my work since then has been by word of mouth. But I don’t do much editorial work. It’s almost all commercial.

As for Agency Access and Adbase – just ask that your name be removed or you be listed as “doesn’t want to receive promos” in the database. OR, if it’s a slow news year for you, post a sensationalist story listing people’s emails. Yeah – that would be cool.

I’d really have more sympathy if they had more credibility. Maybe it’s not Chris rehashing press releases, but their reporting is pretty lazy compared to their golden years.

For most of my clients, I do the old fashioned networking through humans. People, who live, breath, shake hands. I’ve avoided some really really crap jobs because I visited their plant/office/company/house before agreeing to work. No substitute. When I was working in London I found most photo editors/directors of photography perfectly happy to spend five minutes meeting me and talking to me. Sometimes I got work, sometimes I didn’t, but I made a few friends, and the network spread.

I *gasp* write letters and cards by hand to my people. Quality versus quantity. Since I’m going to go through and make images carefully, I might as well form a relationship the same way.

(hire me hire me hire me hire me)

Ha ha.

That said, yep, he’s a jerk.

No, you can select job titles with agency access also. It’s not that much different than adbase just a better interface, in my view. And it’s a good list source. (Don’t work for them, but have used both.)

It all depends how you use it. I like Art Director’s post where he says, “Content is key.” If useful content and information than what is the issue.

And not everyone on Agency Access has an email address because not everyone agrees to have their email address published.

Additionally, when I review Chris Anderson’s list from over the 30 days, it’s hardly 100 spam emails a day, please. And afterall, in some form or fashion Adbase OR Agency Access asks permission to collect this information. At some point he gave them the OK to list his email address. There are plenty of Art Directors on the Agency Access list who have not chose to have their email address listed.

I consider his listing these sources email addresses as completely irresponsible and childish. Interesting that some who write in support of him are really just redirecting folks to THEIR blogs, one of which says that WIRED is a dying magazine.

I also don’t buy that most of these sources don’t have easy unsubscribe policies. Most of them are going through constant contact, Emma, or Vertical Response. ALL are a snap to unsubscribe and do not mine you for further emails as he has stated. We aren’t talking about Viagra ads here.

I call bullshit on this. Most of these are reputable firms. While I’m certain that some of them don’t need to be contacting him, I can see how it can happen when he has opted into a legitimate industry list service. He choses to blame the likes of sub-par or temp hires at the list service, and I hope he has something to back that up and that he didn’t actually give out his address, or the list service could easily give legal at WIRED a run for their money.

In the end this guy comes off as being a jerk.

Photographers get it too. Everyone gets it.

Content is key, there is no ‘new images’ that I realize are new unless I am following you. But I get 20 emails a day that say ‘new’ images. Try a spin on some content. It will make you stand out.

http://www.lensmodern.com/photographers.php

You send out 10,000 emails to reach 10 people who can really make a career (who don’t respond to spam promotions anyway) and alientate the other 9,990 in the process.

Explain.

Anyone who buys lists from Agency Access is stupid. Anyone who thinks there are 7000 **really influential** image buyers out there is stupid. Anyone who pays $10,000 for lists ain’t exactly the brightest bulb in the marquee.

APE may be unhappy about the number of unsolicited emails he gets from photographers, agents & PRs but would you rather receive unsolicited faxes, books and calls?

Actually, maybe all those PRs should just send press releases to Chris Anderson via fax and **then** see how much he complains about emails.

They are like photo Mavens (Can such a thing exist? sure why not)..so much knowledge and information on them. In a way it (a blog ) is the new format of an old school medium – word of mouth.

BTW I agree with Chris’ frustration. As a photo editor I would be livid for one if I got 100 fashion releases a day. I also see the frustration in the photographers reasoning.

As APE says, spam is spam regardless. The latest VI@gaR@ spam has an opt-out link at them bottom of it as well.

PS – Dan, regardless of what agency access says I highly doubt Chris Anderson filled in a questionaire or told some bloke over the phone he was an ‘image buyer’…please do not take what these agencies are telling you as truths. But don’t get frustrated with lack of replies to calls and emails…and certainly do not take it personally.

PSPS – Wired is looking and reading better than it has in years.