How to Use a Subject Matter Expert

The photography world descended on Cologne, Germany last week for the biennial trade fair known as Photokina.  Sony showed off at $2,700 compact camera.  Leica, the Duesenberg of the camera world, showed off their latest and greatest wunderkamera, the M, yours for just a tick under seven grand.  Of course, you cheapskates can make do with the lowly M-E for $5,450.  And Hasselblad, purveyors of Neil Armstrong’s moon camera, previewed their latest bijou, the as-yet-unpriced Lunar.

So what did Adorama, the mighty camera emporium, feature in one of its email newsletters this week?  A oversized frisbee for $17.  And that, friends, is how you use a subject matter expert to enliven your communications.

Don’t get it?  Let’s discuss how this approach works.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Bytes

Your digital photos tell a lot about you.  Obviously, they tell you whether you travel, like to go to parties with friends or just can’t stop taking pictures of your kids (who, me?).  However, they tell a lot more than that, such as what kind of camera you used, the camera’s settings, when you took the photo and, sometimes, location.

While photographers use these data, called EXIF for “exchangeable image file format,” to help them categorize and improve their photos, I’d like to think that camera manufacturers could get a lot out of those data as well.  Specifically, the manufacturers could use EXIF data to improve their products and their marketing.

So, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax et al., here’s what I’d do with those data if I were in your shoes.