Traffic for 2009 April 9 (entry 0)

(2) Thu Apr 09 2009 10:47 EST in the spotlight: Yesterday I got to take a break from work and go get glamourshots! Apparently we put pictures and bios in our big proposals, and since this was my first one, I got to go through the ringer.

The photographer was really nice, but it felt wierd to be taking pictures to give to clients. Why should they care what I look like? Competence is not based on looks.

I tried to pawn the bio off on a coworker and told them to think of it as an eulogy, but no one was biting.

Comments:

Posted by Susie at Thu Apr 09 2009 20:38

haha, glamourshots! You sure look handsome. =)

Posted by Sumana at Fri Apr 10 2009 06:04

I think the rationale for giving clients your picture isn't so much that they care WHAT you look like. It's just so they have *A* face to put with the name & resume. As humans we just respond in a more intuitive & emotional (and friendly) way to seeing a face than we do to just text. Seeing a montage of faces gives the reader a stronger impression that this team really exists and isn't just a phantasmic set of interchangeable back-office robots.

If I see a person's name over and over without ever seeing a picture, I eventually start doing a sort of brand recognition every time I see that name (like with bloggers I read a lot), but it gets jump-started if there's a face. Especially a nice friendly face like yours!