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In Reply to: RE: Marketing Costs posted by BillH on October 15, 2014 at 11:42:47
Hi-
I think that you are mixing together two things. Kathy Gornik, on behalf of CES, headed a committee of CES members to focus on what CES could do to make membership in CES more attractive to high-performance audio companies of all kinds--domestic and foreign, startup and mature.
Whether because of that or for other reasons, in that time frame, CES did at least two things that arguably met that goal: The began showcasing high-performance audio products in the lobbies and public areas of the show hotels, and they made sure that HPA companies were represented in the Innovations in Design and Technology awards; one year, I was a judge for those.
Unfortunately, some people reacted to that as though CES were going in to squash an upstart rival, Ted Lindblad's A5 (American Association for the Advancement of Audio Arts or some such). I was at an organizational meeting of A5 and I participated in literally hundreds of email exchanges with dozens of people. A few people understood what I was trying to get across as far as the STRUCTURAL problems of an industry association for NON-FUNGIBLE products. Some apparently could not grasp the concepts, and some were simply in denial.
A5 never got off the ground and CES to my knowledge didn't do much more than the things I mentioned.
(I think you might have mixed up Cathy Gornik's official CES efforts with the decades-earlier TAS-supported (editorially, not financially as far as I know) independent trade group run by Cara Kallen of The Tweak Shop. In my humble opinion, that group had promise but did not achieve what it might have because too many people (not Cara) were going at it in terms of utilizing their own ego functions. Too much time holding fancy dinners and giving each other awards, and not enough time figuring out what the industry really was about and preparing for inevitable change.)
The problem is not "lack of support." The problem is that people are reluctant to support all but the best-established and effective such organizations because of the twin problems of free riding and non-fungible products.
When you have an organizational meeting for a new industry group, there are two unstated dynamics at work. One, the industry big shots want to assess the threat and determine if it makes sense to take the lead so that their same-tier Doppelganger competitor cannot. Two, industry new entrants are hanging on by their fingernails and hoping they can benefit from ad money spent by larger companies.
When you launch a campaign with the tagline "Say 'G'Day!' to Aussie Wines!" there is a prayer that that campaign can work and the organization survive, because that tagline and the media and the in-store dimensionals are supporting an entire industry that makes an essentially fungible product: All Australian wine tastes like WINE; it is mostly distinguished by price and quality. Such a campaign can help the maker of a $10 Chardonnay and it can help the maker of a $50 Shiraz.
High-Performance Audio is not a fungible product. It does not all taste like wine at different price points. LPs, tubes, and panel speakers "taste" different from CDs, solid-state, and dynamic speakers.
Ted Lindblad was very enthused by the speakers he imported, and I gather they had had some exposure in a TV series, and so I think he wanted his speakers to be the "face" of an ad campaign--paid for by others. Why would Mark Levinson Inc's corporate sibling Revel pitch in for that?
As far as I am concerned, the problem was not lack of support, but that the enterprise was unsustainable because of inherent conflicts of interest and the impossibility of one coherent real-world mission statement rather than a bunch of jargon laced with platitudes.
I charted out a very modest alternative proposal that was universally ignored. Not sexy enough.
So cooperation has not, in the modern era, been able to stay afloat for more than a few meetings.
Ironically enough, in the 1950s, when the hi-fi manufacturers banded together to determine what was hi-fi and what was not (keeping it semi-legit by asking the FTC to enact it--they were staying within the First Amendment and so not violating antitrust laws) the only thing they could agree on was that if the amp (mono) could not put out 10 Watts, the set was not hi-fi. This, IIRC, was at the behest of RCA. Except that regally annoyed some big retailers, some of whom had 8 Watt house brands...
Adam Smith once wrote (I paraphrase from memory) "Men of the same profession seldom gather together except for the purpose of a conspiracy against the public."
Amen.
JM
Follow Ups:
No, I think the idea was to promote the High End to consumers, like the Milk Board or the California Raisin producers. Anyway, it didn't work.
You do not.
Based on what you posted.
Did you really read my post, or did you console yourself with the delusion that you had read my post??????
Do you have a clue about the distinction between fungible and non-fungible products, which was my entire point?????
Milk is fungible.
Hi-Fi is not.
Please stop posting before reading and thinking.
JM
JM-
long-winded? These hi-fi companies has a duty to tour these audio shows displaying their wares for us consumers- simple.
The loss or failure of retail outlets is one reason why loudspeaker salesmen are having such a tough time. Even if every hifi manufacturer displayed at every trade show regularly, that would not be enough to generate widespread public interest and sales.Without retail outlets the general public cannot hear, touch, and see. Loudspeaker hifi cannot be expected to succeed this way. Besides, loudspeaker hifi is not the "must have" sort of thing that it once was. When it comes to music, it's now all about "small and portable" rather than "statuesque and majestic".
Modern headphone hifi is doing pretty well nowadays, in large part because of size and space considerations.
Edits: 10/22/14
Yeah, I read it, and I know what fungible means. I also know you went to law school, and it made you more than a touch pompous.
Fungible schmungible, marketing is marketing. Think tangible/intangible instead. Audio gear is a tangible product.
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