You guys are right, this ad is in a 6 month series of ads-- so it will be much more "relevant" as the series goes on.
This is part of being a company on the bleeding edge, or at least the inflamed edge
. When Tyll started HeadRoom, almost no one made headphone amps. He had to spend years telling people about what a headphone amp is, and more importantly why you need one. This is the same sort of campaign... many people may not be totally aware of the exact nature of their problem, or what they're missing out on, so that when a solution/product is released it's not recognized as such. Companies need to "connect the dots" when products released that are unfamiliar to consumers or are positioned in a new way. You don't see a bunch of desktop speaker ads in Stereophile. Why do you need them? Why do you need speaker stands? There's a lot to tell there, and the feedback we received from doing our balanced headphone ad series was extremely positive. Consumers seemed to appreciate the fact that we gave them informative material that was actually educational rather than knee-jerk "click here now!" stuff, that quite frankly I feel often insults our intelligence.
The question is why did we put the picture in when they aren't available? Why didn't we talk about some of the other upcoming subjects (which you'll see are not as "product centric" but involve usage and set-up type stuff) and then unveil the products at the end? Well, we didn't do that because we wanted to show where we were going; this is what's coming as the result of these discussions-- otherwise they wouldn't have much relevance.
More interesting to me, is why did we show a product at Headfest that was so far away from production? Well, because you guys are special.
Well, first I'll acknowledge that as a manufacturer, there is some pressure to show new products, FOTM is a two way street-- it wouldn't be a term if there weren't a lot of people clamoring for (and buying)the latest and greatest. But the real reason we showed stuff so far in advance is this (and Tyll PLEASE correct anything I say here): you have the boss' ear and he understands the value of this community. He wanted to show you what our plans were for the future, and get very valuable feedback from some really tough and really fair critics. Head-fi'ers enjoy getting "first word" on upcoming stuff, talking to manufacturers directly, enjoying special events & discounts, trying out products before release, etc. But manufacturers need to get something out of that deal too, so head-fi becomes a focus group of sorts. And with this, you're going to get too much info sometimes, not enough info other times.
And, fwiw- I have no problem whatsoever with jpelg calling us out on our ad tactics, they are certainly rather unconventional. I think it's made for some good dialog about why we do what we do. (Hey, if you think this is weird, you'll see a lot more stuff in our ad archives!
)We don't measure the success of our monthly ad by how many sales it brings in-- it just doesn't work that way, and 99% of the time companies won't be able to justify their ad budgets. Building brand awareness, creating new product categories, cultivating the return customer... these are things that are slow, on-going, and strategic. I believe it's these things, in conjunction with building great products, that give HeadRoom it's longetivity and growth in a rather volatile marketplace.
This is part of being a company on the bleeding edge, or at least the inflamed edge
The question is why did we put the picture in when they aren't available? Why didn't we talk about some of the other upcoming subjects (which you'll see are not as "product centric" but involve usage and set-up type stuff) and then unveil the products at the end? Well, we didn't do that because we wanted to show where we were going; this is what's coming as the result of these discussions-- otherwise they wouldn't have much relevance.
More interesting to me, is why did we show a product at Headfest that was so far away from production? Well, because you guys are special.
And, fwiw- I have no problem whatsoever with jpelg calling us out on our ad tactics, they are certainly rather unconventional. I think it's made for some good dialog about why we do what we do. (Hey, if you think this is weird, you'll see a lot more stuff in our ad archives!