Do you have a spare $800,000?
If yes, then HTT Technologies has a nice automobile just for you.
HTT (High-Tech Toys), in Quebec, has designed its 750-hp Pléthore LC750 supercar for a very exclusive audience. HTT has been quoted as saying that its target customer is the billionaire auto enthusiast. (By the way, the 390-km/hr Pléthore LC750 is cheap when compared to the 415-km/hr Bugatti Veyron Super Sport which is $2.5M).
If the price tag isn’t exclusive enough, the company says it will build only 99 cars. Exclusive design, exclusive price, exclusive production.
Sure, HTT could’ve designed a nice, average car. But that wouldn’t get all the free publicity that an $800,000 supercar gets. Plus, HTT has said that selling an average car would require a huge sales volume to earn back its investment.
Apparently, at $800,000 each, the company needs to sell only a handful of cars to break even on its initial investment. The company has said that it hopes to sell about six or seven cars per year.
On one hand, HTT has chosen to go after an exclusive, high-end niche. It has produced a high-end product with a matching high-end price. Everything seems to be properly aligned.
But on the other hand, the HTT web site is low-end. The very plain site is not much better than someone’s blog. The gallery page has annoying music. The site is somewhat vague and lacking in concrete details. Although, one could argue that, in this case, numbers aren’t the selling point but rather it’s the (emotional) experience of the car. Sell the sizzle and not the steak, right?
What is the absolute number one way to sell the sizzle?
Professional photography.
A high-end supercar demands high-end car photography and a high-end web site. Sadly, the HTT site has failed. There’s no excitement or emotional impact whatsoever. Some pictures are either out-of-focus, poorly composed, poorly lit or simply missing. It’s all boring and emotionally cold. In fact, it’s so cold that some photos even have snow.
It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to sell an $800,000 supercar to a billionaire or a $40 pair of jeans to a teenager, the concept is the same: Expected Value.
Expected Value is a term used in mathematics (Probability Theory) which refers to the sum of all possible values for a random variable. Expected Value is the sum of all gains multiplied by their individual probabilities.
But the term could also apply to consumers when making a purchasing decision:
What a customer expects to gain from a product purchase equals the sum of each potential benefit of that product multiplied by the probability of actually receiving those benefits.
The benefits of buying a supercar might include: a sense of accomplishment and pride, having fun driving the car, owning a work of art and maybe selling the car at a profit. But the HTT web site expresses none of this. So the probability of actually receiving those benefits appears to be low. In turn, the low Expected Value will push customers away.
Customer expectation starts the moment that customer arrives at the web site. The site sets the tone and level of expectation. A cheap web site with poor photography creates low expectation, low credibility, low excitement and low motivation to buy. All of this prevents a company from charging a high(er) price.
Quality commercial photography can raise expectation and desire, and build credibility and trust. By increasing Expected Value, a company can increase, or at least justify, its prices.
Custom commercial photography is always worth more than what it costs.
