AttentionMax

Have you ever been on an awesome thrill ride at an amusement park, had your photo, with a big grin on your face, taken unsuspectingly — only to end the ride with an aggressive pitch to buy a low-quality print for, say, $5, $10, $15, even $20? It’s happened to me countless times, and always left a sour feeling in my stomach.

While such establishments risk the appearance of ripping off or actually offending customers, they’re simultaneously blowing major promotional and loyalty-building opportunities. Those photos are documentary evidence of brand enjoyment. And in the hands of happy, talkative customers, they could be worth many times the price of what only a few customers might pay for them in the first place. Which begs the question: why do businesses so often fail to facilitate the sharing of great moments, and instead build awkward or petty barriers?

And that’s the issue I tackled this week in my MediaPost column.

(Flickr photo credit: bkmcae)