The May issue of Mix Magazine

[netguyjoel]

I have been working on this for a while...and this is the ad I arranged & designed w/ S|C, NovaMusik & Mix Magazine.
Finally...some marketing in the US!

[dante]

well done, hope it gets attention.

[siriusbliss]

Nicely done indeed!

Greg

[Fluxpod]

Very nice! Thanks for doing this joel!!!

[netguyjoel]

I really need to thank Hans, Tom & Bill w/ the assistance of GaryB & most of all...Holger.
This was no small undertaking...to say the least.
I just had the right contacts, at the right time, to pull all of this together. It was talent (provided by many), skill, some luck, and just plain and simple, good old fashion hard work...

[Fluxpod]

Its a good step! Made me remember the old Keyboard ads around 2000.Creamware and pulsar ads were e-verywhere

[netguyjoel]

There will be 5 more...ssshhhh...everyone will know.....

[dawman]

Beautimas..

[Sounddesigner]

Great job! Nice to see some good advertisement for the platform. S|C is blessed to have your help.

[Nebukadneser]

Looks good, but ...

Seems like the main argument for buying the stuff is quotations from well known artists who happen to be using the platform. Nothing wrong with that as long as the Hans Zimmer quotation is not the old one; dating back to an interview made in 2001.

Very few facts about the platform. 18 sharc does not in this context say a lot, the old boards had 14, and nothing says that this is a new generation of DSPs. The 2 other facts mentioned seem to be random pick. Two mic pres (pres? pre amps I presume) are standard these days, not much of a selling argument today I am afraid.

So, the main source of information are from a semiotic point of view the pictures, which show the same plugs which some have been around for 10 years or more. Interface design has come a long way among competing products, so careful what screenshots you choose. Does the Modular V sell itself the way it looks? Is Virtual Analog still what is in vogue, is a Minimoog clone and a B3 still what people invest in, and are these still the most powerful synth of Scope? Have competitors come a long way since the release of B2000 and Minimax 10 years ago? And how about showing the back panel for people to count ins and outs and connectivity?

I guess an important aspect of Scope XITE-1 is the power which allows for giant setups combining multiple plug ins on the laptop. This does not come through very clearly in the present ad. I would recommend listing more facts which demonstrates the adventages of running DSP platforms today, and which clearly communicates the difference to SCOPES advantage when compared to UAD and other platforms.

No pricing mentioned, which is good, since the high pricing definitely would require more fact based arguments for buying this equipment today.

[astroman]

nice contemplation, but well... we don't live in the 50's of the previous century anymore.
Around that time your estimation was a fairly common marketing strategy...
(I can quote from an original book, if required ... or for amusement sake)
Not even nerds buy on rational arguments or facts, even if they pretend the opposite... at least not fully...
Humans are emotional and as such are our business(!) decisions, too.
If the ad makes it interesting or cool to have then that's about it, noone cares about the date of a quote.
Hans surely meant what he said and the paradigm of the system hasn't changed that much over the years.
Stuff was improved... but then again... who cares about the past ?
SC certainly doesn't want to convince geeks that followed the developement of DAWs over the last 15 years
As a sidenote I'm quite happy that Joel didn't stick with the crowded-project-window-idea. Cool.
oops and another sidenote:
UAD didn't even sell a handful of cards ever on 'facts'.
They sold on people's anticipation of a bunch of vintage gear for a few bucks.
Those customers just BELIEVED in what they saw on screen graphics, and the sentence: if it sounds as it looks, great... not an uncommon quote in DAW Forums

cheers, Tom

[netguyjoel]

Thanx fellas for the support....the quotes are from the 2011 NAMM show btw.
There will be more to come...and they all will be different from the next...trust me...
The objective was not to bombard people with stats....it is to bring awareness & name recognition to the product.
If someone sees the ad and wants more info...it's all on-line....

[Nebukadneser]

I am a happy owner of a NOAH EX which i bougth in 2003, new, for the same price as it vends for seconhand on Ebay today. It sold poorly at its release and was heavily reduced after a while. I think they make 1111 units in total. I am a little concerned that history may repeat itself. The niche of customers who will spend USD 3 890,- (Novamusik) is probably smaller than the former userbase of Creamware products which ranged from the affordable Luna, via Pulsar II to Powerpulsars. It is therefore important that S|C succeeds in expanding the customer base beyond those loyal users who already own a CW product (such as the Planetz members).

It is just as important to communicate the advantages of this system aimed at it primary target group which is problably the semi pro / pro studio market, not hobbyists. I doubt this kind of equipment sells on "people's anticipation of a bunch of vintage gear for a few bucks".

Back in the 50s, you could trust that a good quality product would sell, since the competition was marginal in most areas of consumer goods. Today, you can't rely on the qualities of the product alone. Nowadays it's all about brand identity, positioning in the market, and making targeted marketing activities directed at spesfic market segments. True, price as a sales tool, may not be so important when dealing with niche or specialist products.

You may be right that there are more information online for users who see the ad, but bear in mind that the S|C website speaks german only on most pages, which in itself may reduce the effect of the ad campaign.

[dante]

The objective was not to bombard people with stats....it is to bring awareness & name recognition to the product. If someone sees the ad and wants more info...it's all on-line....

I'd agree with the 'not bombard' and keep it simple. The current add covers a lot of ground, as its important to convey all the selling points, which to me would be :

. Versatility - devices and synths (covered)
. Sound Quaility (covered)
. Modular Synth (covered)
. Unlimited Routing (covered)
. I/O (covered)
. 64 Bit compatibility (covered)
. High end testimonials (covered)

So whats not covered ? I would say maybe more in terms of clobbering competition :

. More DSP Power than anything else in a 1U rack.
. Versatility - Live portability as well as Studio functionality.
. JimmyV's big one eg something like - 'The best of both worlds - responds like classic hardware but with the versatility of software'.

But always remember the trade off with space, adding more stuff makes it cluttered so some of the message could get lost.

[garyb]

yep, but nice points...

[spacef]

what you can do with scope/xite is so vast that the marketing options are not less vast.

Even I don't use scope the way i used it last year or 3 years ago... like a totally different setup.....I changed its purpose, without changing a single piece of hardware....

One has to wonder what it brings for this price: sound, modularity, customization, real time.... all this is quite hard to convey in a single page when most people will think "mm, can't I do that with my pc/mac already" ? There are several elements to play on such as the sound quality, the modular, the fact that "we are still there while other have left"... a single add cannot make understand the 12 years of Scope history, but it can create an expectation and desire to know more.
And it has to be construed as something that is not made to replace existing gear, but something that adds more than the sum of the two. This was the biggest misunderstanding of early scope, when people took it as a "better than protools" or "protools competitor" , but it had nothing to do with protools except that it included dsps (mainly the fault of some users who didn't understand what was Pulsar in its guts). You will never convince a professional or semi pro to replace his existing gear (that he likes and use and is satisfied with) with a scope/xite, but you may let them know that it is the best addition for their existing systems because it will bring more than the sum of each system taken seperately.
That's how I see it personnally nowadays, so i share my point of view. My 2011 setup is really lightyears away from my previous configurations...
just my personal thoughts, not a criticism of the work that has been done already, which i think is quite fine because it doesn't give too much information and has nice quotes

[Nebukadneser]

Thanx fellas for the support....the quotes are from the 2011 NAMM show btw.
There will be more to come...and they all will be different from the next...trust me...
The objective was not to bombard people with stats....it is to bring awareness & name recognition to the product.
If someone sees the ad and wants more info...it's all on-line....

Yes, valid point. Just don't forget to add www.soniccore.com on the ad. There is only very sparse information on Novamusik's web.

Most Scope users refer to sound quality, including in this thread, as one of the superior features of the platform. Again, from a semiotic point of view, sound is the modality which cannot be conveyed by a printed ad.

I believe a sales campaign woud benefit from some clever presentations online, such as YouTube, where the sound and versatility is in focus. Like you suggest, use the ad to get people online, and upload a proper video demo. Make the products speak for themselves through sound and screen captures. Show some crazy modular devices, and multitrack recordings, play the Moog, show how well it integrates with Cubase, Ableton, Sonar etc.

I have seen one demonstration of the Ferrofish interface, presented by Gary, on YouTube, which is one of the more serious attempts on presenting S|C using sound and moving images. Still, the device is off during the video, and it is all an oral presentation of facts and functions. I belive a presentation would benefit from showing the product in action in all its glory. These days people expect to find information also in the social networks.

S|C should be present on YouTube - exploit the multimodal affordances of the medium!

[netguyjoel]

There is a video on the table....we will have one in the next month or so... NovaMusik will have a video too..it just takes time. I'm working on it. AND a product review from Mix as well...

[dante]

S|C should be present on YouTube - exploit the multimodal affordances of the medium!

They are. I'm compiling them onto a single page viewer. Everyone in the marketing dept just keep beaving away the way they are...this is a revolution !

Scope Video Compilation

video-library.JPG (21.66 KiB) Viewed 5618 times

[mausmuso]

Just wondering whether you will get feedback from the magazine as to how successful the ad has been?
Success might be hard to judge - I guess I am talking about interest shown
Not sure they would necessarily know, but they must monitor their readership in some way?