An extremely pithy description of something, prepared in advance to be used in situations where time is of the essence. The term comes from the hyopthetical situation of somebody seeing a pin or something similar on your person that arouses their curiosity while in an elevator (such as a Unitarian Universalist chalice pin), and then asking you what exactly the pin stands for. Because Unitarian Universalism would be rather difficult to explain in the remaining duration of the elevator ride, the prepared elevator speech serves to provide as best of an answer as possible in the available time.
I've often struggled come up with an elevator speech of my own and never have come up with anything I like. I think it's important to have such speech not so much because you're gonna want to sell somebody on yourself. But mostly because developing the speech lets you narrow down what exactly it is you do and it forces you to distill it down to its essence. It would be like having to tell me what what you do over Twitter. Being limited to a few sentences really makes you think hard about yourself, your work, your goals, and how you communicate. It cuts out the fat, so to speak.
Personally it's been a challenge because I think I have a very well defined photographic style and it's hard to communicate that style without actually showing anyone some photos. I can't think how many I've started and but tossed it into the round file. Anyway, here's the one I'm working on now:
I create images, primarily environmental portraits, which possess an inherently strong emotional content. I use and craft lighting to reinforce the emotion and composition for superior dramatic impact. I strive to create images have the highest production value and would be well suited for display in a magazine, brochure, or a billboard.
What do you think?
Do you have an elevator speech? I'd love to read it in the comments.
5 comments:
nice, but maybe you could be more to the point: "I create emotionally strong environmental portraits" (as a substitute for your first sentence).
That said: hurray for getting anything down at all. Your elevator pitch/your raison d'etre/mission statement is possibly the hardest thing to do when starting something new. Don't be afraid to change it every once in a while.
I like it - except I think it's a bit to condensed to be understandable to most people.
I agree it may be a too much too fast but you have to be able to account for the height of the building - so you have a good two floor speech there.
If you have five floors you can add a little more but give the person a moment to respond. Above all else when actually using this speech in an elevator be reaching for your card as you talk so you can end with... "and here's my card - call me"
Most "elevator people" don't know what "environmental portraits" are. I'd say save the speech for the art directors and tell everyone else "I am a photographer" and give them your card. Mystery is power.
Or tell them what they want to hear- you are a celebrity photographer or you are on assignment for National Geographic..... Ha!
Great post!
Hey Jeremy,
Here are my suggestions (mostly grammatical changes):
"I create images, primarily environmental portraits, that have inherently strong emotional content. I craft lighting that reinforces the emotion and composition of the image for superior dramatic impact. I strive to create images of the highest production value that would be well suited for display in a magazine, brochure, or on a billboard."
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