Dynasty Signs With...

[KillerOnion]

You NEVER....

Originally posted by Nick Brockdorff
....see companies that are limited to a single sport do advertising directed at the general public.

The return on investment is simply too small - and it also benefits their competitors.

We won't see paintball companies do advertising directed at the general public, until we have a comprehensive industry organisation or one completely dominant company.

Nick

Ah, and therein lies the problem that could be easily solved if they could get the realization that just because their competitors benefit in the short run too doesn't mean they shouldn't do it. Why not get the public in the door first THEN divide them up, swipe them from someone else, etc.? The petty squabbling for existing market share which is pocket change at best has kept them all from going out, even if as individuals, and getting their slice out of the bigger pie instead of ripping and stomping the small one into crumbs and making total asses of themselves in the process.

The GIANT success story that comes to mind is Starbucks coffee, which started out as a single shop among many in Washington that essentially single handedly started the high dollar coffee craze. Did everyone else gripe and complain about everyone going into Starbucks, or think "HOLY SH*T, THE CUSTOMERS WANT COFFEE AND THEY'LL PAY $4 A CUP FOR IT! HEY PEOPLE, OVER HERE, WE SELL PREMIUM COFFEE TOO!!!" Everybody you talk to in the business, Joe Muggs, Borders, Barnes and Noble, Royal Cup, etc. is glad Starbucks did what they did! Any emerging industry should be more than glad when a single firm makes a big entry because everybody benefits from the combined attention. After people get into a market, they want choices, so in no way whatsoever is it bad to be the secondary rather than the primary seller. Fly fishing over here has made big gains in part due to Orvis putting up stores in shopping areas, billboards, and major newspaper ads--people buy an Orvis rod on opportunity, take it out and fish, then see Redington (I love mine, by the way.), Sage, G Loomis, St. Croix, etc. in the same place. You can bet that those companies are smiling all the way to the bank.

I can think of as many examples as you care to fill your eye with. Unity isn't needed, just a departure from extremely shallow thinking and tunnel vision, hands on the microphone and the pen instead of on knives sticking in each others' backs. Domination isn't required either, nor should it be sought. Leadership instead needs to be.

 

[knobbs]

Re: You NEVER....

Originally posted by KillerOnion
Fly fishing over here has made big gains in part due to Orvis putting up stores in shopping areas--people buy an Orvis rod on opportunity, take it out and fish, then see Redington (I love mine, by the way.), Sage, G Loomis, St. Croix, etc. in the same place. You can bet that those companies are smiling all the way to the bank.

I can think of as many examples as you care to fill your eye with. Unity isn't needed, just a departure from extremely shallow thinking and tunnel vision, hands on the microphone and the pen instead of on knives sticking in each others' backs. Domination isn't required either, nor should it be sought. Leadership instead needs to be.

That's hardly advertising to the masses. That's just putting a store in a visible place. There are paintball stores in visible places already (i.e. any Warped Sportz, Bad Boys Toys, etc.) that may draw local people into the sport just like your example, but they still don't advertise to out of industry people.

 

[KillerOnion]

Marketing it to the general public and marketing it to major companies and media need to be approached simultaneously and in an integrated manner with elevated pace, effort, standards, goals, and priority.

They're not comparable? Large dollar purchases aren't impulse based? According to whom? The entire kids toy and women's fashion markets are impulse driven, ghastly expensive, and often largely without the slightest rationality. The snob appeal factor alone accounts for more large volume high dollar commerce a year than paintball has taken in through its entire existance! Now, given urban locations and legal restrictions I can see how you might not have paintball markers available in every store in a mega size mall, but why not everything else? Just selling the clothes, packs, and other soft goods to pick up curiosity will do. Why not sell what can be sold at the time and take the money and consider the rest at the time to be a rain check? You'd have the names out in the air, money in pocket, people's curiosity aroused--maybe even sell tickets to events or prepay rental fees for fields--by using a mobile, versatile format that can be located ANYWERE. You don't have to be in stadiums to sell tickets and jerseys to a sport, do you? Of course not. Put enough of the product where the people are instead of resigning oneself entirely to back roads and cow pastures where the urban roaming feet rarely tred.

People, especially the 14-17 school age will wear ANYTHING these days. North Face, Patagonia, Columbia, and such are camping and hiking wear, at least by original intent, now millions of people wear there stuff, hang scenic posters of the Himalayas, Rockies, and midwestern areas in their homes and call themselves adventurous. Commercialization works! Now, take that model and apply it to paintball. Dye just by themselves can appear in any clothing store, any at all, and easily trample loose fit jeans, faded t-shirts, and Birkenstocks. Is that hard? Merchandising is a huge revenue source that's again presently being directed inward when it could be EASILY turned outward.

The same hand in hand approach applies to courting companies. Fuji film has been taken on this year, for example. Why not have great images of paintball for their displays? I love paintball photography--gee, go figure on that one--and anything that looks great on film or digital makes the company look good when it's taken with their gear. Camera shops are everywhere, so paintball pictures can be everywhere with them. Both sides win. Sit down with any business, be it a sandwich shop, printing shop, coffee shop, whatever, and crossover points can be found within 20 minutes of chit chat or less. It's all in how creative and cooperative you can be.

In my estimation, too much pessimism prevails amongst the attitudes towards public outreach. The same parroted responses spill over and over in a circle that really only have two roots: the individuals don't know how to do it and it hasn't been done. Excuses, excuses, excuses... To quote the preface of a photography book I've been studying, written by a top corporate photographer named Gary Gladstone, a bit of rather stirring instruction he received from a former boss "Don't tell me about the damn problems, just do it!"

The cups of coffee or glasses of beer, paperwork, and handshakes are all that's left to do. No excuses left.

 

[KillerOnion]

Whaaaaat ?

Originally posted by Nick Brockdorff


Killer Onion, you have to understand that paintball is fundamentally different from these markets, in the sense that they cater to large portions of the general population in a very general way, whereas paintball is specifically targeted at the narrow demographics of males age 12-24 (at the moment at least, 95 % of participants are in this group).

Because that is all that is being tried.

 

[KillerOnion]

It's all dollar grab, when it comes down to it. The strategies are the same in essence, just adjusted for detail and scaled up for budget, implementation, and aggressive mentality. It's targeting pockets. Buy this instead of that..."this" can be ANYTHING. The aforementioned sectors just happen to pick a bigger, wealthier (in sum total), and more reliable market and happen to be good at getting to it. No more, no less. They play the lion and we play the mouse.

Ask any marketing or economics professor or professional and they will tell you exactly the same. It's competition for time, money, and attention. Paintball hasn't put up any kind of respectable fight. Instead of declaring defeat we should be developing a mentality and plan for victory.

 

[knobbs]

Re: Whaaaaat ?

Originally posted by KillerOnion
Because that is all that is being tried.

So you're saying that all Smart Parts has to do is buy a spot during the Superbowl for several hundred million dollars and they should expect all the success in the world and paintball is going to grow like crazy.

Sorry, it doesn't work like that. Just ask all those dot coms a few years back that did just that and then went under.

 

[KillerOnion]

Read the notes and think a little. Not one shot deals, not high dollar per item, and not in a manner than can be tuned out. Ya know how many Super Bowl commercials I see? Zero. That's too easy to click off and ignore. Dot coms are too easy to simply click to another dot com or click off the computer. Wasting money on junk like that is only for those who could afford it and have thousands of other much more permanent forms of billing themselves. The dot coms were unsound businesses (I even laugh to call them businesses at all.) at best, and with apparently as negligible an understanding of advertising as anyone suggesting paintball do the same. Instead...as you perhaps you would actually read in the context of my last half dozen posts or so, a much more planned out BUT STILL AGGRESSIVE PERHAPS MORE SO THAN ANYONE ELSE and comprehensive plan should be undertaken. Super Bowl ads are impressive on paper, but cost-to-effect is rather poor but masked because it's impossible to clearly pick apart which ads within a company's campaign actually bring in the sales. For someone large, for instance Home Depot, the same people view many of their ads many times in different places, so as to exactly which ad specifically swayed them to make a purchase is very difficult to pin down. However, you can amass some idea as to how often they see Home Depot ads, as well as the ads for the products they purchase, and figure up a total time they've spent viewing the ads. In this aspect paintball companies can act by implementing grass roots/guerilla marketing for a large percentage of the time and then pick and choose which time slots and alliances within which to work.

*beats knobbs over the head with a yardstick in a school teacher-like manner* Use your head boy, use your head! 4 processes are involved: penetration, establishment, enticement, and entrenchment.

 

[KillerOnion]

...Wait a minute...why am I giving all this info away? People get paid to teach, analyze, and implement this *stands demanding a paycheck*

 

[Gudmann]

Originally posted by KillerOnion
People, especially the 14-17 school age will wear ANYTHING these days. North Face, Patagonia, Columbia, and such are camping and hiking wear, at least by original intent, now millions of people wear there stuff ..... SNIP SNIP.....

Dye just by themselves can appear in any clothing store, any at all, and easily trample loose fit jeans, faded t-shirts, and Birkenstocks. Is that hard? Merchandising is a huge revenue source that's again presently being directed inward when it could be EASILY turned outward.

You can not do a brand extension to a brand nobody knows about. Those clothing brands were already established to a large portion of the people, outside of extreme mountaineering, when they slowly extended their products and the reach of their brand.

When DYE, SP and ANGEL wear has been on extreme TV for a quite a few years, then they might introduce "streetwear" extensions of their clothing in the same way billabong has done for skating and snowboarding....

But snowboarding gets lots of airtime on TV, extreme sports channels and what ever...the brand extensions follow the sport and it's brands into the public.

Doing it the other way around would be a unproven gamble. Tradtional brand extensions a gamble, but with known methods, controllable expenditure and predictable odds.

my best
Gudmann Bragi

 

[KillerOnion]

Ok Nick, just for one quick example that comes to mind:

I use JT's gearsack, Animal's pants (the black on black variety), and Ratko's lens wiping cloths (just to name three right off the bat) whenever I'm out doing golf, nature, industrial, and general around the town photography. The gearsack is well padded, precisely organized, just the right size, conveniently sorted, and distinctive enough to be identifiable as mine should I lay it down in an airport, school, or other place where I might be sitting it down next to other backpacks. Animal pants, well, not to too shamelessly plug here, but they're the toughest pants I've ever owned. I kneel down, shuffle-slide this way and that, crawl on the ground, do whatever I have to in order to get in the right positions for taking just that right picture, so all that reinforcement in the knees and sides stands up to the punishment, and the reinforced pockets don't let notes and paperwork get torn or wet. That side loop comes in handy for hanging stuff on too. I use it all. Ratko wipe cloths, designed and sold as mask lens wipes, stay with me in my camera case. Anything--mud, blood, grease, whatever zips right off without a trace, no exceptions.

Photographers of any age, size, or proficiency can benefit from using those three products. That's a HUGE market that JT, Animal, and Ratko can sell to and easily bump up the sales of their products that already exist, as is, and automatically get the name brand exposure to boot which would only help them. ANY sales of ANY product just to get in the door is part of the approach. That's a ton of business that otherwise wouldn't get the chance to even exist. Merely even viewing them in a camera store would get a bunch of people clicking on their websites just out of curiosity.

Now, that's just one example of what's called guerilla marketing. Full frontal conventional marketing takes a little bit more effort. I'm not saying at all that target audiences and demographics don't exist--what do you think I am, stupid? NO! I'm suggesting that we go after them all with individual plans and advertising campaigns for each. There is something in it for everyone: sell them what paintball can do for them. Women aged 18-45? Simple. EXERCISE! Also appealing to the independent, capable self image thing that's BIG in marketing campaigns right now. Put that in any women's magazine or Newsweek. Bald, tired, irritated working age men 35+? Stress relief, be your young self, spend your money on you, and your wife isn't there. Examples of how I would do it:

Poster: A bubbly blonde, obviously more makeup than skin jogging along the sidewalk with athletic shorts, tank top shirt, walkman, the whole gym chick look going on--looking confused as she's passed by a more attractive brunette wearing a jersey and paintballing pants, maybe a mask on a side loop, and a wide smile on her face. Caption: "One better thing to do than run in circles all weekend."

Magazine ad in Sky Magazine, which you see in pocket of the chair in front of you on Delta flights. I'd have a picture of a sapphire, shown clearly but not too close up, next to a ruler, showing as less than an inch. Caption underneath: "For her, maybe next year" Next to it, in a rather sexy pose, a blue Angel on a black gridded background with a chrome finished ruler a little ways away, captioned in slightly bigger text "MINE, THIS WEEKEND."


Those approaches and attitudes have worked pretty damn well for the golf business. They do ads, promo programs, and PR campaigns PRECISELY along those lines. Does it work? I observe thousands of cases of those precise selling points alone every week.

How much more ya need?