Editorial by Juan Carlos Lopez

To each his own, but certainly there is always a consensus about what is right or wrong. In our society money is usually what drives the world and a end goal in our business and lives. There are people in this world that say money is not all, but then others say "Its the only thing". There two different issues to deal with in this somber editorial. Feel free to email me to discuss as I don't read boards too often as I am too busy trying to make money...

Penny for a Poor Man

And no, this isn't a discussion about Bill Tsamis' 80's Heavy Metal band Warlord in which one of the songs bears the name of this portion of the editorial; its much about promotion on shows. So what determines a good show? The promoter will usually tell that as long the money is returned in the investment its fine but in the long run they want a profit not just to break even. Sometimes you have to spend in order to make money, so some shows the first year will do well sometimes they won't. Its all about how much you put into the show and how smart you get about it. The first example of greatness are the Craigs who put on the Emerald Cup you can go check their website: http://www.craigproductions.com/. Their show pull in lots of people and is the largest regional show in the world probably. Even Nationals don't have the amount of booths and people at the show. They go above and beyond the call of duty and are an example of how to run a show. The Arnold and Olympia are also well put and even most Nationals have a good degree of coverage and tons of competitors. Attending these last Nationals in Canada opened my eyes at certain things and then the logic that most promoters should know but don't. Same venue, same city and time frame so you would think that it would become a larger show in attendance and a larger show in sponsors and advertisers. Well that wasn't the case at all, probably the model search was a better investment given the location of it.

Now let me explain the logic behind visibility for a sponsor or advertiser. The promoter for Canadian Nats decided to exclude most of the media that wanted to cover it except for 3 photographers which they know very well, other than that no one else was around to cover the show. Here is the key, if a sponsor or advertiser wants more visibility they want as much media from all over to diffuse photos on their website. If the banner behind says "Blah Supplements" every photo of the winner will include that banner. Most companies that have a physical product, be it a logo or name will receive most out of the sponsoring of a show if they get their logo or name to the most people possible. A large company phone Voipus.ca sponsored the 2006 show and for 2007 pullout early as they were announced on the promoter's website. As to why it happened we don't know but it could have been due to the lack of promotion for them. Any other photographer that wanted to cover the Canadian Nationals would have to pay $500 to get a seat behind the judges so the result was no one paid that amount. Then less visibility and probably most sponsors don't care about paying money for a show that will not advertise them properly and return their money spent. The number of booths was limited to around 5 and there was still plenty of space left that could have been used. Possibly some of the sponsors last year didn't make their money back due to lack of sales, which in turn is caused by lack of people which is created by lack of promotion. And yes media is the biggest and highest form of promotion, from that word of mouth can spread the news. So lesson to be learned for Canadian promoters is get as most media as possible, we won't even go with what is happening to the province of Manitoba that is another whole editorial.

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