Dear Shutterfly,
Last November was the first time I heard your name
associated with the venerable, dare I say, tour de force of a company that is
Lifetouch School Portraits.
It happened when Lifetouch sent me an email with promo codes
to create free Shutterfly photo books.
A few days later, Lifetouch sent another email explaining
that “We were a little too excited to deliver your free Shutterfly photo book
offer so you may have received a code that doesn’t work.” I guess they included new promo codes that may
or may not have actually worked. I’ll never know, because I never tried them.
I never tried the original promo codes either, because the
pictures Lifetouch was offering to put into a free Shutterfly photo book were
taken by Lifetouch.
I don’t even have to go back and look at them. I just know.
Son Number One will have a forced, pained smile on his face,
like he just stepped barefoot onto a bunch of seashells.
Son Number Two’s hair will be all over the place and his
glasses will be visibly smudged and probably on his face crooked. His smile is
a fifty-fifty toss-up.
Son Number Three will have some sort of food or condiment
prominently displaced somewhere on his face or head, and his “smile” will either
look pained, quizzical, confused, nervous, or, like last year’s picture,
strangely rodent-ish. It will look like anything other than his actual
beautiful, joyous smile.
I’m not sure why I would want any of that in a photo book,
free or otherwise.
Lifetouch screwing up the codes didn’t surprise me one bit,
because I have a long history with them. I have written them many helpful
letters over the years (thirteen to be exact) giving them tons of free advice
on how to take passable pictures of children, how to improve their business
model, and how to just generally not suck at what they do.
As far as I know, no one at Lifetouch has ever read a single
one of my letters. They certainly haven’t taken any of my free advice, like,
maybe wiping the macaroni and cheese off the kid’s face before snapping the
picture, and stuff like that.
You might not have as much direct personal experience with
them, but the fact that they screwed up the free promo code email should have
been a major warning sign for you.
But instead of running away as fast as you could, apparently
you just went ahead and purchased
Lifetouch. And according to Forbes, you paid $825 million for them! You really should have called me first. That
was not a good idea.
If you really wanted to get into the school picture business
so badly, I honestly believe you could have cornered the market for less than ten
or twelve thousand dollars by hiring retired postal employees to take pictures
at the schools with their personal cell phones. Seriously.
Anyway, today I received a desperate plea from “Lifetouch +
Shutterfly” that my Fall Portraits would soon expire, and I was given helpful portrait
ID numbers and access codes for all three boys so I could purchase them and
have you preserve them forever.
Sounds like you guys over at Shutterfly are trying to figure
out how to get back some of those wisely-spent millions. And how do I know
those codes will even work?
Never mind that – back to my original point here,
Shutterfly. The pictures you want me to buy were taken by Lifetouch. If I
wouldn’t buy the individual paper pictures, why would I buy a hardcover book of
them? Or a coffee mug? Or a pillow? Or a wrapped canvas wall hanging?
He has mustard on his face!
I have to look at food on his face almost every time he’s
actually in the room. Why would I want to immortalize it on my wall, as well?
He’s smiling like he just backed into an electric fence!
Why would I want to put that on a pillow? Pillows are supposed to make people comfortable!
Why would I want to put that on a pillow? Pillows are supposed to make people comfortable!
Have your financial people call me. We should talk.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen
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