I’ve written in this blog before about my admiration for the accomplishments of my Irish friends and colleagues Padraic and Sonia Deasy. So I was extremely pleased when PPA’s Professional Photographer magazine presented a cover-article feature about them in the December 2011 issue to call attention to their business program at Imaging USA in January. It was my pleasure to introduce them in New Orleans, where I mentioned that it is rare to find a studio business that combines the success elements of artistry, marketing, sales and financial management to the degree exhibited by Deasy Photography Studio.

To illustrate their marketing savvy, I want to point out how last year they made the most of the Irish PPA’s “Happy Faces Day” charitable promotion, the promotion upon which PPA Charities’ own “Celebration of Smiles” is based. What it demonstrates is the power of charitable marketing to help you accomplish marketing goals you might not accomplish any other way.

While they Deasys have a lovely studio facility in a downtown retail area, an established mall display, and plenty of notoriety (he currently is European Portrait Photographer of the Year and Irish Photographer of the Year), you might wonder why they would want to participate in a freebie promotion. It’s because they are smart marketers! Padraic and Sonia used “Happy Faces Day,” the charitable promotion upon which PPA Charities’ “Celebration of Smiles” is based, as a strategy to move their business forward by offering to conduct the promotion in Kildare Village, an upscale mall where they had not had an opportunity to display their photography. Here’s their setup:



To call attention to the on-location promotion, the Deasys created this cute video ad featuring their children.

IPPA Happy Faces 2011 from Deasy Photographic on Vimeo.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Kildare Village folks were so pleased with the effort the couple put into driving customers to the mall for the Happy Faces Day event, that they invited Padraic and Sonia to return for a holiday promotion.

The moral of this story is, of course, is that charitable marketing is one of the best tools you have to introduce your business to consumers and potential marketing partners whom you might not have an opportunity to meet any other way. So if you haven’t signed up for PPA Charities’ “Celebration of Smiles” Day set for April 21, then I hope you’ll do it NOW! Simply log on to ppacharities.com and you see the registration button.