Syria Print Sale Update: A Complete Failure

There's no point trying to pretty this up. The print sale was a failure. Magnificently so. Not a single print was sold. There was interest from one party, but it dissipated quickly.

So, the total raised for Médecins sans Frontieres' work in Syria was nil euros and nil cents.

Why?

That's an interesting question.

Clearly there was no appetite for the prints at the price point among those who knew about the sale and visited the site to find out more.

Maybe they were seen as overpriced. I don't think they were, but it is a subjective issue. For some, prints are priceless; for others they have little value. We live in a digital world, so what is the point of a print? If you need an answer to that one, a print sale is never going to appeal, regardless of the beauty of the prints and the reputation of the photographers.

It is also possible that the work of MSF in Syria or the Syria issue as a whole didn't resonate with people. There are so many problems in the world. Maybe this appeal just didn't, well, appeal.

Perhaps the messaging was all wrong.

Perhaps people just don't like me and therefore they don't like anything I'm involved with.

Or is it, to borrow a phrase from a past US Presidential election, "the economy stupid"? Folks may want to help, but they don't have the spare cash.

Probably all of the above in some measure.

Now what?

All of those things are meaningless compared to the answer to the question "What now?".

We have 15 wonderful prints to use to help raise money to do good in Syria. MSF will get that money to support its efforts on the ground there.

Those are the fixed parameters.

The challenge now is to find a way to make this work.

This isn't the end of the road. It is merely a weigh point.

We'll come back to this.