This is not your mother's senior picture.
That's the tack taken by Michael Imus Photography in practice and in pictures movie pictures.
Imus has created a theater-based ad campaign to set himself apart from other portrait photographers. The ads are running all summer at Century Theatres.
Movie houses are where the teens hang, says Imus.
So spots run 15 minutes before the start of every film. Count 12 screens in each theatre and that's a lot of ads. He contracted with National CineMedia in Colorado, which handles sales for Cinemark, the theatres' owner.
Meanwhile, Imus has put as much time and thought into tracking teens as has any big-game hunter.
Already, he says, he's bagged 20 good contacts since the campaign launched June 1.
"If you want average," say the ads, "go somewhere else."
No teen would admit to wanting that.
"They all want the same thing but want to feel they're being different," says Imus.
He determined to target teens to bolster portrait photography, which has become a commodity item. After working 12 years in the corporate world for a freight company, Imus was able to bolster his artistic talent with business acumen. That meant tightening his former wide net to target just three niches families, weddings, and graduations.
"High school seniors are very profitable," he says. While seniors are required to sit for the schools' contracted yearbook photographer, they often want to supplement that with a non-traditional portrait.
For example, one teen loved his snowboard, guitar, and the war movie "300". So Imus composed a portrait in the style of the movie, with the teen depicted as warrior armed with snowboard shield and guitar sword.
"Younger parents will let the kids buy whatever they want," says Imus.
But what do teens want?
To find out, Imus who's 23 years out of high school himself interviewed 30 to 40 high school juniors to prepare for next year's graduating class of '08.
"I really had to get rid of my ego and what I thought they wanted," he says. "They all knew what was in style. And what's going to be in style next year."
But he wishes now he'd done that before ordering a run of promotional T-shirts.
"The kids said they wouldn't wear them," he admits. Now he knows better. "The guys wanted an old retro style in light green with a contrasting color collar. The girls wanted solid dark brown, closely fitted."
And teens want it online.
"They never went to the phone book, but used Web sites exclusively to find things," says Imus. So he turned the focus away from his storefront at 5425 Desert Peach Drive in northeast Sparks and focused efforts on the Web site, michaelimus.com yes, forget the www. that is so uncool.
But the challenge remained: How to drive teen traffic to the Web site? Traditionally, photographers use radio, he says. But his research showed that teens listen to radio only a fraction of the time; they mostly listened to iPods.
So the company created its own buzz in the form of posters, rock band style. But where to hang them?
"You see the kids eating in fast-food joints close to school," says Imus. "But seniors have cars and want to get as far away as possible. So we started hanging out to see where the seniors went 10 to 15 miles out."
He already knew where to find those teens on weekends: At the movies. And during summer vacation?
At the mall.
That's where he hires an entire posse sending a group of 12 teens, all wearing promotional T-shirts, on a walkabout at Summit Sierra. Payment is a $10 gift certificate to Starbucks.
Traditionally, photographers would target the popular kids at school and offer them free pictures as payment for handing out the studio's business cards.
"But kids today don't care about free photos because their parents will pay anyway," says Imus. "So we give iPod cards."
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