Well, here we are, 2 weeks into the new year. 2012! Every time I hear that I can't believe we are 12 years into the 21st century. It seems like just yesterday that we were talking about and dealing with Y2K. Remember that?
Anyway, I thought that for our first post of this new year we would offer a few closing comments on 2011.
Price was a big issue for us last year. Not only do our customers want the high quality that they have come to expect of us, but they also want us to match Costco transfer pricing. First, we don't sell dogfood, pizza, frozen foods, and car tires. If we did, we might be able to bring our transfer prices to their level, but we don't. Furthermore, if we could then we wouldn't really be specializing in video, would we? Also keep in mind, that Costco doesn't do the work themselves-they've aligned themselves with one of the most questionable transfer houses in the county and your tapes and film end up in Mexico to be transferred. Is that where you want your media sent to? And is the risk of your media being lost worth the few dollars you'll save?
Now pricing works both ways as I am also a consumer. And a great big thank you to all our vendors who kept their pricing steady throughout the year to help offset the pain that we on the front line are feeling. And a great big "BOO" to all those vendors that didn't! And you know who you are. And a great big "DOUBLE BOO" to that won't even entertain the notion of helping their customers out. CenturyLink, you are the worst! You treat your good, hardworking customers like crap and I can't wait to rid ourselves of your miserable services!
Standard Definition is dead. At least as far as filming goes. To help our customers out, we offered the option of having their events filmed with our SD cameras rather than the HD cameras (thus keeping the price lower). 2011 will be the last year that we do that since some of them still complained about the quality. Sorry, but you chose standard definition filming rather than high definition. If you wanted a HD picture, you should have chose HD filming. To that end, we are eliminating SD options on all productions.
Weddings. Hmmm, where do I start. 2011 was a miserable year for weddings. We have won awards for our wedding productions and our customers love their productions. Having said that, we are going to discontinue the mvsweddings.com site and discountinue marketing that service. We spend far too much time and money keeping that site alive and talking to the budget bride only to lose the business to the "uncle Charlie's" of the world. We are happy to have the business and will continue to produce wedding videos, we are just not going to pursue them any longer. Weddings start at $2995 and if you are interested in award-winning wedding video, please contact us, if not please don't waste our time. Sorry to be blunt.
For the entirety of our existance, McKenna Video has always offered free pick-up and delivery. It has been a staple of our business. We were happy to go out and meet our customers at their homes or places of business and we still are. However, we are now going to qualify that service for the new year. We require a minimum of $75 in transfer work or duplications to offer free pickup and delivery, or we will charge a $25 pickup and a $25 delivery fee. Sorry for any inconvenience, but economic conditions dictate that we either discontinue the service altogether, start charging for this convenience, or raise our prices across of the board.
In regards to promoting your company, we are working out the details in some low cost HD promotions for your business. Video on your website it a great way to increase your Google ranking and we want to be sure that you can get a video on your homepage at an affordable rate.
We are also starting to offer disc print-only services. We have been resistant to that in the past, but we have seen the light and if you are in need for "print only" we can meet that need. We can also design your disc label for a nominal fee.
Related, if you are producing your own video, but need help with lower-thirds, animated backgrounds, etc., give us a call, we might be able to help.
Well, probably enough for now. (this entry seems like a lot of complaining to me, which is so against my nature). Stay tuned for more announcements in the next few weeks and months.
Blessings,
Chris.
