Are you what I call a “slasher”? You know- the wedding planner/photographer/stationer/confection artist? OK that may sound a bit extreme, but the combination of wedding professions that I’ve encountered lately are getting out of hand. I’m seeing more and more of the wedding stylist, who also mentors, makes etsy items, bakes, and is a self proclaimed video blogger rock star. I mean really?
“Slashers” love to just do it all and they try to play it off that the more diverse the list of services they offer, the better their perceived value to the client. Wrong! If I go to your website or twitter page and still don’t understand what you do or what makes you different in a few seconds, you’ve lost me. There is simply too much going on. How do you capture your target market when you do this/this/and this?
The most alarming part is that many of us in the wedding community support this and praise that it’s a good thing do be everything to everyone.
How can you be a videographer turned wedding planner, plus you sell wedding favors, and have time to offer custom hemstitch napkins for events? Oh and you’re a wife, mom of 3 and volunteer too. My 2 big questions are: how do you keep up and are you making money doing all of that?
As a bride, how do I really believe that a vendor is the best at something if they claim to be the best of lots of things? It makes me wonder. When companies claim to do it all: wedding planning,/PR/printing/photography- to me it says that they don’t know what their core business is. Instead it seems like they want to capture a little bit of all the markets at an attempt to make money where they can. They see what someone else is doing right and think “oh I can do that too”. What if they could take away 2 of the 3 or 4 of the 5 different types of services they offer and just hone in on one? The message they’d communicate would be much more powerful.
As Seth Godin says, “When your brand is lots of things (like AOL became) then the expectations are all over the place and the emotional resonance start to fade.” Don’t be a Slasher! Pick one and do it well.
Photo by Jose Villa
