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Tips From a Master on Getting Press for Your Wedding Business

July 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

With everything you have to do, worrying about getting press for your wedding business is probably not high on your to-do list. Well it should be.

For most wedding businesses, by press I mean getting your work out the on the top blogs as well as the multitude of local and regional wedding blogs. Those are, after all, where today’s bride is finding her muse and inspiration.

Just as important, being able to show all those posts on your own Press page is a huge boost. Somewhere in the back of many of today’s brides mind is the secret dream of having their wedding splashed all over their favorite blog. If they see that you are regularly being published, that is one more point in your favor.

Now the question is, “How do you get your work on all those blogs?”

I have one client that is a master at it. Kathy Best, owner of Front Porch Farms seems to do it without really trying.  Truth is, Kathy has a bit of an advantage over most of us, she also owns Front Page Publicity, a PR agency in Nashville. When she started Front Porch Farms she had no problem using those skills to promote her new venue. Bottom line, she knows the power of PR and how to get it.

fpf on Style Me pretty

Here is how she does it.

 I do think my PR background played a huge role in our success. I know from PR that images are everything and there are times when I go way above what I’m paid to do or what is included because I want the images for the website. Everyone fusses at me about this but I look at it as a form of marketing…we want weddings to be a certain look at our venue so we were making them that way long before brides could really afford to do it.  Brian finally got used to everything we did having to be about the photos. Now he gets it.

First of all, she makes sure that her event are “press worthy.”  We live in a visual age and Kathy know that it is all about the pictures. That often means going above and beyond the original contract.

(Brian is her hubs and partner. He builds many of the cool props they use)

The next thing Kathy does is seeing to it that her work gets submitted to Two Bright Lights. I know this because I maintain her site and I see the emails. Today she had one picked up by a blog in the UK. Not bad for a site in the hills of Tennessee that is just over 4 years old!

“But Christine”, you ask, ” Two Bright lights only accepts submission from Photographers. I can’t even get them to send me images how do I get them to submit to TBL?”

Make you events press worthy.

As Kathy said, go above and beyond if you have to. Think of it as part of your marketing budget. Believe me, the bit you spent on some extra flowers or better linens is a pittance compared to what you would spend in advertising to get the same exposure. I am not saying do it on every wedding, but if you have one that comes close, do what it takes to get it there. Re read this part of the quote “we want weddings to be a certain look at our venue so we were making them that way long before brides could really afford to do it.”  Doesn’t that tell you that now they do “afford it”.  Kathy made an investment and it is paying off.

Ask them!

I don’t know many photographers that don’t want their work praised and raved about. Who doesn’t want to be published. If you give them “press worthy” events they are going to want to show them off. Ask them to submit to Two Bright Lights. The more often your events get picked up, the easier it will be to convince photographers to submit. If all else fails, hire your own photographer even if you have to write it into your contract.

Beyond TBL, you can still submit your own work to the blogs individually. You will have to have the approval of the photographer that holds the copyrights. Read and follow their submission guidelines carefully. Submit to the blogs that already showcase your style. Another tip is to find out what blogs your brides read and submit to those.

Yes, Kathy has an advantage but only because she has done PR for so long.

You can do it if you try.

One more itty-bitty thing: You may be on blogs and not even know it. Set up a Google alert for your company name, that way you’ll know.

 

Filed Under: Ask Christine, Blog, Inspiration, Marketing, Outrageous Marketing, wedding marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Logo Design

April 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It seems that more and more clients are coming  my way without any real branding. One of the pieces of your branding puzzle is a logo and graphics to go with it. Another piece of the puzzle is marrying it into the look of your website. Easy peasy when you have the same team doing them.

logo for caterer

This little number is for a caterer that specializes in updated Southern Classics. How better to represent that than a diner plate. To finish up her website we created a gingham border to match and a bunch of juicy cherries as icons. Check out the full package on her website.

 

 

 

 

logo for wedding planner

Mary Beth came to us with no logo and no website. I picked her brain a bit and this is what came out.

If you will notice, the fonts are both Google web fonts so they could go in her website when we built it.

 

 

 

 

custom shopping cart icon for florist

This one isn’t really a logo, just a bit a graphics for a florist that wanted to promote her new “Order Online ” page. Still cute though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is one for an invitation company

Filed Under: Branding, Logo & Graphic Design, Portfolio Tagged With: , , ,

What Are You Really Selling?

April 11, 2012 By 2 Comments

I have had several thought provoking conversations after yesterday’s article concerning the often unrealistic expectations of today’s brides.

Many things have changed in our little world of weddings, much as they have changed in the greater world at large. Time was that how and what  you charged for your goods and services was largely determined by those that came before you. The problem with that is that often what the consumer was really paying for was cloaked in something else. You can’t do that anymore.

Take the women in the video. She has failed to see the talent behind the purchase she made, reducing it to fabric and labor and forgetting the knowledge and talent that went into it. There is a lot more that goes into selling a wedding gown than fabric and labor. There is the expertise and the eye of the designer. There is the expertise of the person that was able to listen to your dreams and assess your body type and pull the perfect dress off the rack to compliment both. There is the care that goes into handling, pressing and preparing your gown once it arrives in the shop,. There is the salons knowledge of a myriad of little details like which gown is easier to alter and will any Chinese holidays interfere with your expected shipping date. These are the thing you do and know that make you special. You deserve to profit from this.

Lets look outside our industry for a minute.

The advertising industry has been hit by this.What an ad agency really produces through their creativity and their knowledge of your product and your market is the ad campaign. In the days of Mad Men, what they charged for was the ad placement, the art and copy was used to pitch the client.  Companies today are using less and less of the traditional media to advertise with the end result that ad agencies still charging in the old way are losing their ass. Only the nimble have realized that they have to charge for what they really produce. They have to relearn how to charge and charge for their talent.

Wedding photographers are facing the same issue.

Once upon a time photographers charged virtually nothing for their skill behind the lens, their profits were cloaked in what they charged for the prints and the albums. They weren’t charging for their real talent. Today’s bride can order prints online for next to nothing and design her own albums at unbelievably cheap rates. What she can’t do is capture the picture the way a good photographer can. She can’t set up the shot and understand the lighting the way a professional photographer can.

Your talent isn’t the ability to order prints. It is your ability to capture them in the first place.

Times have changed and your thinking has to as well. Each and everyday there are more tools available to the consumer. This isn’t just you photographers.

Look at what it has done to the invitation segment.

Brides everywhere are hitting PaperSource and using the laser printer at work to print their own invitation. Heck, there are even consumer devices for letterpress printing. Would it hold up for the long haul? Probably not but I bet you could shoot 200 invitations through it. So sure they can print it, but can they design it? Do they have your knowledge of color and scale and typography?  Your design work should be your biggest charge! You deserve to profit from this.

Here is my point.

Are you charging for what your real talent is?

Suppose, just suppose? Follow me because this is crazy. If a bridal salon were to charge a small markup on a dress. Then they add a shipping charge and what would essentially be a ‘dealer prep’ charge. The bride would only see the price of the dress and you would be charging for your talents.

You need to take a hard look at what makes you unique among your peers and competitors. That is what you need to be selling, marketing and for which you should be charging.

Take me for example. People that can set up a WordPress website are a dime a dozen; you may have to cough up a quarter for ones that can customize one. Heck, you can build it yourself on a free template. What I charge for is my design style and the fact the I know your product and your target market better than just about anyone out there. I charge what I do because I understand your unique industry and circumstances. I get what I do because my clients trust me and know that I will be there after the sale to make sure they know how to use the shiny new tool I just built for them.

Even back in the day, before the we hit the rest button and I still baked for a living, I knew this truth. I charged a flat rate for my cakes because they were all delicious, but it was lower than many. What I charged out the ass for was my hand made sugar work and my unique design talents. If you wanted my unique talents, you had to pay me for it.

How has your market segment changed? Have you changed with it?

Are you charging for your talent or are you still trying to make money the way generations before you did?

 

Filed Under: Back to Basics, Blog, Inspiration, Marketing, wedding marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Brilliant Wedding Marketing

March 14, 2012 By 4 Comments

Marketing is tough. How do you decide where to start, where to invest and how to design your marketing material.

You are getting pitched daily by this one and that one telling you have to advertise with them.

“You have to do print!”

“I can deliver  (insert ridiculous number here) leads to you a month!”

“If you want to do well in this market you have to do this bridal show!”

Who do you believe?

The only real way to know what to do and who to believe is to build a marketing plan specifically for your business and stick to it. Don’t you wish someone would just tell you step by step how to market.

BINGO!

Brilliant Wedding Marketing is the step by step guide to building your marketing plan in a logical, layered way.

It tells you where to start and why. As you grow your business, add a layer.

Not only where and why, but how to perfectly execute each facet of your brilliant plan. From what to include in your website to  how to design an ad for print, here are the answers. What about Email? It’s covered! Outrageous marketing? You didn’t think I would leave that out did you?

It’s all here in one clear, logical road map to marketing your wedding business brilliantly!

Brilliant Wedding marketing ebook

What do you spend in a year on marketing your wedding business? Isn’t it worth $19.95 to make sure you get it right? You bet it is. One decent print add will run you at least $2400!  Isn’t it worth less than 20 bucks to get that right?

I know there are about a million books on marketing, but how many of them are written specifically for this wacky industry known as WEDDINGS? More than that, how many of them are written by someone you already know and trust?  One of the reasons you read THINK is for marketing advice in a clear and easy to understand style. No bullshit, no gobldygook; just straight talk from someone who has been there.

Brilliant Wedding Marketing boils it all down to a step by step plan to keep you on track with your marketing.

Brilliant Wedding Marketing ebook

Get the e-book today!

 

 


$19.95
Still haven’t bought Bridal Show Success? Let me tell you, Bridal shows are a key part of your marketing plan and you also have to do those right. If you buy both ebooks I’ll take $5.00 off.

Buy the e-book bundle and market like a pro.

Brilliant Wedding Marketing and Bridal Show Success

 

 


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Filed Under: Announcement, bridal shows, eBooks, email marketing, Marketing, Website Design, wedding marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Mastering a World in Flux

January 21, 2012 By 4 Comments

 

I caught this great quote in the editors column in the February issue of Fast Company magazine

“In our hyper-networked world, the rules and plans of yesterday are increasingly under pressure; the enterprises and individuals that will thrive will be those willing to adapt and iterate, in a disciplined, unsentimental way.”

This is more or less what I have been saying since 2008, much more eloquently stated. You have to keep your eyes open and be agile and unafraid; but that isn’t what this post is about.

This post is about this philosophy in action; a case study if you will. This is a post about my dear friend, Paul Pannone and how he is single-handedly and unflinchingly transforming a very stuffy, nearly dead industry.

The men’s formal wear industry had all but written its own obituary. Stuck firmly in the past; saddled with outdated looks and hopelessly chained to traditional marketing channels, it was sinking fast. They were living in a bubble. Paul, however saw the bigger picture:create product that followed fashion and market it in a way that would appeal to a younger demographic. To survive, the industry had to get with the program…This ain’t your Grandpa’s tux!

To accomplish anything he had to break down the walls of the stuffy, ‘this is how we’ve always done it’ men’s club that ran the industry. To do that he had to get noticed and show his chops. Chops in formal wear he had in spades having been in the industry for 28 years and publishing a successful industry newsletter, E-formal News. What he needed was to show his mastery of the new marketing. Enter eWedNews. Well, that worked for a while, but it still wasn’t quite it. It did open his eyes to what it was going to take to get this done. Throwing off the bonds of a traditional milquetoast editor he struck out on his own with eWedNewz. Look out world!

Paul understood that in today’s fast paced, information heavy, 24 hour news cycle world you needed a little sensationalism and controversy to shine through the haze. Love him or hate him, he got your attention. More importantly, he proved to the powers that be that he knew what the hell he was doing in the new social media world.

Enter the Weintraubs and FLOW Formal Wear. One of the largest manufacturers of men’s formal wear in the US, they had a lot to lose if the industry failed. Seeing that it was time to adapt to a changing market, they brought in Paul.

Finally in a position to influence change in an industry he had been in since 1984, he stepped up to the plate. Styles were updated, marketing changed and you started to see formal wear that didn’t look antiquated. That was the first step.

 Time to raise the roof.

A big part of marketing today is celebrity endorsements. What you want is a celebrity that understands social media and eyeballs. Oddly, it’s less about how closely the celebrity personifies your brand as it is whether or not they are getting the eyeballs of your target market. So who does Paul pick? Not a dapper James Bond type, but the Situation from Jersey Shores, Mike Sorrentino. Again, love him or hate him, he loves clothes and gets a ton of media attention.

The traditionalists in the formal wear industry blew a gasket! To say they were appalled is an understatement.

This is what MyTuxedoCatelogBlog.com had to say:

When FLOW Formal Wear announced that Mike Sorrentino (aka “The Situation”) from reality TV series ‘The Jersey Shore’ was going to be the celebrity face for their new line of tuxedos, we were admittedly… concerned?  Confused?  We didn’t really get why anyone would choose for a tuxedo line spokesperson a guy best know for losing his shirt

Get over it, you wanted new, you got it. The Situation got his own branded line to stand alongside the lines of Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. You want to appeal to a younger demographic? Here you go.

Was it a risk? You bet it was. The top style in the line, the Avalon is just beginning to arrive in stores and according to Mr. Pannone, “Without going into numbers, let’s just say if this was a book, we blew away our first printing and are already on our third.”  Here is how the industry reviewed the Avalon once they actually got their hands on it.

From the original quote,”adapt, iterate in a disciplined and unsentimental way”; I would say that pretty much sums it up. How one man, unafraid to take risks but with a vision of what can be is on his way to saving an industry.

So what are you doing to shake up your world?

 

Filed Under: Inspiration, Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Top Post for 2011-Groupons for Weddings

December 30, 2011 By 2 Comments

With all the controversy and news of closings and consolidations in 2011, who would suspect that a story advising against wedding vendors getting sucked into the Groupon culture would be number 1?

Groupon for Wedding Vendors? Not!

I am willing to wager that it wasn’t wedding vendors looking for a boost that sent that traffic through the roof. Now as far as I know, there are still more brides than wedding vendors. (Although some days I question that!) I will bet you money that it was brides looking for a deal. You should see the list of search terms used to find Think this year! Of the top 50, 10 were Groupon related.

  • wedding groupon
  • groupon wedding
  • groupon for weddings
  • groupon weddings
  • groupon wedding deal
  • wedding groupons
  • groupon wedding deals
  • wedding deals on groupon
  • groupon for wedding
  • wedding planner groupon

Right about now you may be thinking , “Hey, I could get a lot of traffic if I did a Groupon”.  Well, yes, yes you could most likely use that to get a ton of traffic, but is it the traffic you want? You may want to read this first…

A photographer works for free for a year through Groupon

Sounds like fun to me.

Here is what brides have to say on Wedding Bee. You might want to notice the comment by the bride than got a deal on here engagement photos…not a word about her booking them for the wedding. Hmmmmm Also the one that bought cake pops, didn’t see her commit to a cake from that baker.

What does this mean to you? Front and center it means brides are looking for deals, but you already knew that. I think that you would be smart to find a way to offer some deals, just not through Groupon-type sites. Come up with your own deals and publicize it yourself with your social media. Put it out on Facebook and Twitter. Publicize it on the local wedding platforms you advertise on.

You might even consider doing it in a Groupon-type manner. Limit the number and require a tipping point. Have a deal on a regular basis, say weekly or monthly posted on your website to keep brides coming back to check.

I can’t even begin to tell you what kind of deal to offer. You will have to think long and hard about that one. Make sure that it gets them into your store or your website. Make sure you will at least make something off of it. Make sure that you don’t do something that will overwhelm you.

Just don’t do what the photographer above did. I want you around next year!

 

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, Outrageous Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

How to Handle a Bad Review

December 23, 2011 By 1 Comment

I don’t know if you have been following the recent string of articles over on eWedNewz concerning reviews on wedding websites. If not you can catch them here, here and here.eWedNewz logo

What started as a story regarding the sale by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia selling their interest in Wedding Wire grew to be an indictment of Wedding Wire and it’s review program. Whether you like Wedding Wire and it’s review program or not isn’t really important to my point. They are only one of many review programs out there and I happen to think Wedding Wire does a pretty reasonable job.

Here is the thing, you are not going to please everyone.

Yes that is what we all strive for, but it isn’t going to happen.  So on that rare occasion when someone is upset enough to take finger to keyboard and put it out there, how you react is of vital importance.

The first thing you want to do is step away from the keyboard. DO NOT post a response in the heat of the moment. Your feelings are hurt and you are probably angry. Give it a day or two to filter.

Then post one or two reasonable sentences. Something along the line of

“I am sorry that we did not meet your expectations. We are actively reaching out to you via private channels to help resolve these differences.”

Of course you will need to reach out to them, but the point of the post was to let anyone reading the bad review know that you stand behind your work.

What you don’t want to do is post some long, rambling explanation or string of excuses. That is just going to start a very public pissing contest and that is the last thing you want.

Be sure to contact the hosting website to have the review verified or moderated. Sometimes this works. Sometimes.

What if you have no idea who this bride is?

Yep it happens. What if a competitor that is sneaky, malevolent and underhanded lies and posts a bad review on your page?

First you will contact the hosting website to have it verified. That can take forever and they may not even take your side. In the meantime, you need to respond to the review.

“I am not finding any reference to such an incident in my records. Would the poster please poivide her wedding date and location so that I may attempt to resolve this issue.”

Now you have publicly called them out and the ball is in their court. If they continue without providing the information they look like fools. You have also done a lot to CYA.

The main thing you want to keep in mind is that today’s bride is savvy enough not to base her opinion on just one bad review in a long list of stellar ones. In fact in some ways, it makes the other ones look more real. If every single review is Amazing!! Stellar!!! Way beyond expectations!!!!! they start to look a little fake. You know, like those late night infomercials.

Come on now, you do that yourself when you read reviews.

If worse comes to worse and you just can’t take it or find a way to resolve it; contact the website and have yourself removed entirely from the site.

Since this whole bruhaha started with a Celebrity planner’s bad review on Wedding Wire, I reached out to Sonny Ganguly, CMO at WW to be sure you could have Wedding Wire rated badgeyour business removed. Here is his response:

In regards to your question, a wedding professional can inactivate their WeddingWire account by sending a request to our Support team at support@weddingwire.com. Our team will then inactivate the wedding pro’s account and remove personal information that they entered from the Storefront.

Ok, so that was kind of vague and didn’t really answer my question; so I followed up with this:

I need just one point of clarification please.

 Our team will then inactivate the wedding pro’s account and remove personal information that they entered from the Storefront.

Would you remove ALL information regarding said wedding pro? All traces of them, including reviews or would you leave a basic listing?
I still haven’t received an answer to that one yet, but I will post it to the comments when/if I do.
If nothing else comes out of this dust up and the press from it, I do believe that WW will be more closely watched with regard to the review process. To quote one of their, umm, associates “That’s a good thing!”

 
 
As I was writing this I saw this come through my Twitter stream

@idillionaire: If you’re not making enemies, you’re not doing well enough.

Filed Under: Announcement, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Are you Selling “Happy”

December 16, 2011 By 2 Comments

I was doing some much needed maintenance today on my Google Reader and ran across a post from last week on Broke Ass Bride and had another one of those light bulb moments. Take a second to run through the images on that post and see if you get they same “well damn” flash.

There are few moments in life that should evoke “Happy” the way a wedding does. It is at its heart a day of joy and hope.  Shouldn’t  a smile be one of the symbols used to market it? Now look at all those faces in that post. One, only one shows any real joy. Guess who’s ad it is.*

I know, you are thinking, “But C, those ads are about the dress, not the wedding.”  Hold it right there Bucko!  Everything we do is about the wedding, it’s about the fairy tale, it’s about the JOY!  Are you selling JOY or just some item or service?

Have a look today at your marketing materials. Is there JOY? Are people smiling?

There is an old saying, that no one ever goes to Home Depot because they need a drill; they go because the need a hole.

Your client needs JOY, not a flower or a planner or a dress. Those things are there to help create the fairy tale that she envisions. The fairy tale that, in her mind, will bring her JOY.

* Oh ya, the ad is from David’s Bridal. Any wonder why so many brides gravitate to them. There is a sense of pure joy in their photographs, not high fashion.

Filed Under: Ask Christine, Back to Basics, Marketing Tagged With: , ,

What Brides Want

December 8, 2011 By 2 Comments

 

Some days the universe just seems to present itself in ways that make thoughts and ideas crystal clear.

I ran across an article from last month on Forbes Magazine’s website talking about why so many Millennial women are burning out at work by 30. It made perfect sense. They have been pushed since birth to reach higher, strive harder. To get the best grades and the best resume in order to get the right job and shatter the glass ceiling. Go! Reach! Strive! Succeed! The one thing they never learned is how to take a little time for themselves. I mean for heaven sakes, they are answering email while they squeeze in a pedicure!

I’m short of breath just thinking about it.

Now let’s throw in a little touch of wedding planning for good measure.

Do you have to wonder why today’s brides can be a little frazzled and touchy?

Then low and behold, the universe laid two different answers on my table.

Brides want wedding vendors to take the pressure off. Oh, they may not know it, exactly, but they do.

First I received an email blast from a wonderful wedding professional I have know for years and highly respect, Kellie Bryson of Main Event Productions. Kellie had the opportunity to interview one of her MoBs and shared it in her newsletter. With her permission I want to share parts of it with you.

Getting right into the details — how long did you have to plan the wedding?

A total of 13 months.

Tell us what you thought were the most important aspects in selecting a wedding venue.

The number one priority was a beautiful outdoor setting with a backup plan in case of rain. It was also important that the venue have a wedding package available because we did not have the time or opportunity to shop for vendors. 

Ok, this family had 13 months to plan but felt they did not have the time to shop for vendors. Hmmm, so having a package took off some pressure. You can read the entire interview on The Main Events Newsletter  The point is, they specifically chose a vendor that could take off some of the pressure. Look for this trend to continue.

 

Next an email came to a website I’m webmaster for from a website I had not heard of  that was beginning to explore my local market. I figured I would check it out. My immediate suspicion was that it was just another wedding portal looking to be the next Knot. Well if you have read Think for more than a month you know where I stand on those. This one caught my eye, specifically these few lines

 She wanted something fast and easy that could help her find her vendors. She realized much of her precious time was being spent asking vendors about availability and price range, as well as exchanging basic wedding details. She wanted a location where she as a bride could “shop for vendors,” as well as give vendors a way to see her wedding details and budget without having to pick up the phone.

Wait, you mean to tell me this site was designed from the brides point of view? This bride was sick of wasting her time on the phone telling the same details to multiple vendors just to find out they were booked or out of her price range.  Why couldn’t she just put all those gory details out there and then contact vendors she might be interested in to have a look?

Damn, makes perfect sense to me.

Enter Haley Suggs, the genius behind the nearly brand new website The Bride Link. With most sites vendors buy listing and the lead list that comes with them; a bride registers and then get spammed by every vendor in a 200 mile radius on no information. With The Bride Link, our bride starts the process by listing her information, date, location, guest count, budget, her hopes and dreams even her Facebook page if she wants. Then she looks through the vendors (which are required to list some type of ball park pricing) and for the ones that look promising, she sends them a link request. (Think: Facebook friend request. )  Once the vendor accepts the link request, they can see the full details of our bride’s information and start the contact back and forth.

Brilliant!

This puts the power in the brides hands, gives them the information they want, blocks out all the spam from vendors they don’t want and keeps them from wasting time telling the same details over and over again, Brilliant!

Over the last year in development and the last 4 months post launch, Haley and her team of developers have honed this site down until it is sleek and flawless, just what today’s bride expects. It’s clean, easy to use and easy to navigate. Now it’s time to start scaling.  You see up until now it is specific to Knoxville,Tn. Smart move roll it out locally, perfect the processes and systems then start to scale.

If you are smart and want to be on the forefront of what I think may be the next big thing, contact Haley for a demo.

So what is your take away from this? Find ways to make it easy for your bride. Do what you can to take some of the pressure off. Think packages like Kellie or a streamlined system like Haley.Make yourself their lifesaver.

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, wedding marketing, What Brides Say Tagged With: , , ,

Get Married Folds. What’s Next?

December 1, 2011 By 6 Comments

All the buzz yesterday in the Wedding Water Cooler was about the demise of Get Married. According to their press release, the once promising platform will cease operation on December 16th, 2011.

When they first hit the scene, it looked like a winning idea; the marriage of print, online and TV. Sadly, they never got the kind of support from TV that was needed.  Web TV is still in it’s infancy and didn’t come fast enough for the folks at Get Married. They needed big backing from networks like Bravo or Lifetime and it didn’t come. Now whether that was a money thing or the programming they were producing just wasn’t that good, it was still a fail. Without the TV component being big, really big, Get Married was just another national wedding portal. Yawn.

Another nail in their coffin was the deal with Taylor Corporation. While I’m sure it brought a much needed cash infusion, it came at a price. The magazine became little more than a catalog for Taylor’s products. That was a slap in the face of any small local advertiser that Get Married hoped to attract. It also brought the unwanted problem of corporate masters. As long as Get Married retained it’s independence, it could remain nimble. Not so much with old school corporate investors breathing down your neck every quarter.

In short, another one bites the dust.

There was much discussion yesterday about whose next on the chopping block.  Here is how I see it:

The big boys aren’t going anywhere. Oh they may hunker down, shrink and layoff some folks, but I don’t see them folding. For instance, I can’t see Conde Nast folding their one remaining bridal title. David’s and the Knot have enough cash to ride out the economic storm for a while longer. They are the exceptions. What I don’t see them doing is gobbling up the small competitors as they start to devalue. Get Married tried that and no one was buying.

 

Here are the losers:

The Gajillion small websites that thought they could be the next Knot. National portals are dead and they are going to start folding quietly but at an amazing rate.

You will probably see more closings along the line of Encore Studios. I don’t just mean in the invitation business, but bloated, old-school thinkers that deal in volume rather than service. This group may or may not include some more bridal gown manufacturers.

I think a large percentage of the folks that rushed into the bridal world when they lost their corporate gigs or graduated university and couldn’t find a job will give up. It isn’t the “paved in gold”  party all the time, recession proof industry they thought it was.

What does this mean for we that remain? Hunker down, market local, build your own online presence and sit back and watch. It’s gonna be fun!

Filed Under: Ask Christine, Horror Stories, Trends Tagged With: , ,
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