How to write "honest" marketing copy for audio equipment

[kemmler3D]

Inspired by this thread, I thought I would share how companies can make their equipment seem amazing (when it isn't) without technically lying.

I used to do this as a significant part of my job. I was careful never to lie about anything, but I had to make the product sound as impressive as possible. There is an arms race between you and all of your (often even less scrupulous) competitors to make the gear sound impressive.

The process is not complicated, but does require cunning, creativity, just enough technical knowledge to be dangerous, and a certain mercenary disregard for the quality of forthrightness.

My goal here is to perhaps help people recognize the pattern. Many or most of you will notice when this is going on already... but in case it's helpful:

1. Pick literally any component of your product.

It's really not important where you start, as long as you can draw an apparently logical connection to something the customer cares about, about 8/10 times this will be sound quality, the other two will be reliability.

2. Identify an attribute of that component that is different, or failing that, an attribute that is completely standard, but the consumer doesn't know what it is.

In speakers this will often be a detail of the drivers, cabinet, or (in actives) the DSP or amplifiers.

3. Determine (or invent) what role that component has in producing sound (or reliability).

It doesn't need to be audible, it doesn't even need to be intentionally part of the design, it just needs to be semi-plausible. Does the volume knob being made out of aluminum help damp cabinet vibration? Hey, maybe! You know, a little? Theoretically?

OK, so now you have a piece of the equipment, you have an attribute about that equipment, and you have a logical chain (however tortured) between that and the sound. The next step is:

4. Start tossing the word salad.

Do your speakers go through QC on the factory floor for about 3 seconds to make sure they're not broken? Sure, that's standar-- NO, dummy. No wonder you're not in marketing.

Your speakers are "Individually frequency analyzed using lab-grade equipment to reject even the tiniest deviations from our exacting standards". BETTER.

Do your speakers use a questionable batch of paper for the cones because your supplier couldn't get the normal stuff? NOPE!

Your speakers "Incorporate a proprietary blend of fibers to maximize stiffness and minimize breakup to deliver a sweet, silky midrange that reviewers* are calling "revolutionary"".

*The reviewer is your brother-in-law.

You get it, we don't just have flowery language, we have a whole bouquet.

So to bring it all together, here's an example.

Product: Headphone amp

Component: Completely normal SMPS

Marketing copy: We left no stone unturned in delivering the most exquisitely detailed presentation of your most treasured recordings in constructing [headphone amp]. We started with the bedrock of all electronic components of your signal chain - the power supply. The [headphone amp] Bulldog™ PSU employs multiple filtration and rectification steps to ensure the amplifier circuits receive a perfectly audio-compatible current signal, to deliver a clarity of tone our review panel are calling "heart-breakingly warm" and "crystalline".

Honestly, I don't really know how a switching power supply works, but in true marketer fashion I googled it, noticed there are filters and rectifiers, and there you go. What I wrote technically applies to ANY power supply, and it's not technically lying. What's a current signal, you ask? What's NOT a current signal, I reply.

Two quick notes: The 'review panel' can be anyone, like your 4 drunk friends. And the ™ symbol doesn't mean much legally speaking. Anyone can put it on anything if they intend to use it as a trademark. This one ® actually means it's legally registered, so at least they cared enough to pay a lawyer to file the paperwork.

And that's how it's done! Watch out for those weasel words lurking in the salad, folks.

 

[syn08]

Shy questions:

1. Have you enjoyed this job?
2. If yes, why have you left?
3. If not, have you ever felt embarrassed by your work?

 

[kemmler3D]

1. Have you enjoyed this job?
2. If yes, why have you left?
3. If not, have you ever felt embarrassed by your work?

1. Yes, I love audio and I also got to participate in product development.
2. Company went under.
3. Not really, and I still do marketing in another field. This post was a huge exaggeration of what I actually wrote most of the time. And, because our products were legitimately better than the vast majority of our competitors, I did not have to stretch or invent advantages very much. But, I still got an inside view of where this kind of stuff comes from.

Audio marketing copy is really a more extreme example of normal marketing copy. You take noticeable (and ideally unique/different) aspects of your product and connect them to things the customer cares about. There is nothing wrong with that, people need to know why they ought to buy something or not. It's only problematic when you exploit the customer's credulity and ignorance to go beyond good taste and good sense.

The problem is that in audio, many times there is nothing good or unique about a given piece of gear, but someone has to market it anyway...

Think about it like this. There is nothing wrong with chatting up someone in a bar and getting a date with them. There's something wrong with using exploitative mind tricks you read in a book, to pretend to be someone you're not, to get dates in bars. Either approach is legal, but one is unsavory.

I like to think the copy I've published falls in the former category! This post is meant to help identify stuff in the latter.

 

[Blumlein 88]

This is HONEST!!!!!! No way dude.

HP in days or yore were honest technical best in class test gear. Maybe Tektronix too.

Okay quoting you and your misguided design:

We left no stone unturned in delivering the most exquisitely detailed presentation of your most treasured recordings in constructing [headphone amp]. We started with the bedrock of all electronic components of your signal chain - the power supply. The [headphone amp] Bulldog™ PSU employs multiple filtration and rectification steps to ensure the amplifier circuits receive a perfectly audio-compatible current signal, to deliver a clarity of tone our review panel are calling "heart-breakingly warm" and "crystalline".

Some companies will try and mislead you about their rock solid power supply. However, music is fleeting, and flowing and emotional. An overly 'hard' supply will sound just like what it is....hard, unyielding, unnatural and not very human. Our lightning fast, lightweight, regulated supply responds to every wisp of musical art and emotional intent that is what makes music an art and not some Teutonic exercise is squashing the humanity out of your gear for some sense of false other-worldy perfection. Our passion is music, not unyielding electronics. Choose music.....choose life....choose Human audio.

 

[syn08]

It's only problematic when you exploit the customer's credulity and ignorance to go beyond good taste and good sense.

Dude, you did in the above example exactly that.

 

[kemmler3D]

Dude, you did in the above example exactly that.

Yes, this was a fictional example to show how to spot the bad stuff.

This is HONEST!!!!!! No way dude.

In case it wasn't obvious for anyone reading, the scare quotes around "honest" in the thread title are meant to imply that the copy used as an example is anything but honest...

Some companies will try and mislead you about their rock solid power supply. However, music is fleeting, and flowing and emotional. An overly 'hard' supply will sound just like what it is....hard, unyielding, unnatural and not very human. Our lightning fast, lightweight, regulated supply responds to every wisp of musical art and emotional intent that is what makes music an art and not some Teutonic exercise is squashing the humanity out of your gear for some sense of false other-worldy perfection. Our passion is music, not unyielding electronics. Choose music.....choose life....choose Human audio.

I think you have given a really nice example of the difference between upper-mid-tier and true high end audiophile marketing

 

[syn08]

Yes, this was a fictional example to show how to spot the bad

I don’t get it; are you trying to show everybody around the amount of bull chips that such a presentation may deliver?

If so, you got the wrong audience; I don’t think there’s many around not aware of the quantity and quality of the said chips. There are other fora where your experience in such would be useful.

 

[kemmler3D]

I don’t get it; are you trying to show everybody around the amount of bull chips that such a presentation may deliver?

Yes, and how it works.

My goal here is to perhaps help people recognize the pattern. Many or most of you will notice when this is going on already... but in case it's helpful:

^^^

I take it you already notice when it is going on.

 

[SSS]

Yes, and how it works.

^^^

I take it you already notice when it is going on.

Like your post. It is indeed marketing and reviews which create the customer mind on a product. Therefore I do not read reviews anymore in general except when I want to know what is new gear on the market place and its trends. Being an EE does not help much in evaluating a product since the mix of analog and digital components hides what is going on in the integrated circuits which sometimes are custom made. So one can only rely on hopefully not cheated measurement data which themselves don't tell too much how a gear sounds or the build qualtity is for a long life. And most of the manufacturers don't offer schematics and/or service manuals to customers. So it is not possible to build own mind of the circuit used.

 

[DavidMcRoy]

How about just, "Let your imagination run wild."

 

[dasdoing]

marketing....gotta love it
WE pay for something that distorts competition
so that we can pay more

 

[fpitas]

Like your post. It is indeed marketing and reviews which create the customer mind on a product. Therefore I do not read reviews anymore in general except when I want to know what is new gear on the market place and its trends. Being an EE does not help much in evaluating a product since the mix of analog and digital components hides what is going on in the integrated circuits which sometimes are custom made. So one can only rely on hopefully not cheated measurement data which themselves don't tell too much how a gear sounds or the build qualtity is for a long life. And most of the manufacturers don't offer schematics and/or service manuals to customers. So it is not possible to build own mind of the circuit used.

True. So, I just won't buy their pig-in-a-poke product.

I kind of welcome flowery ridiculous ad copy and for that matter, spam. It shows me who to avoid.

 

[ernestcarl]

I normally do not "follow" audio manufacturers' online presence, but Fulcrum Acoustic's FB photos stream is one that I've bookmarked and visit once in a while. The marketing content is generally simple, and comes off on occasion not only as tastefully funny, but also very concise/straight to the point:



If you look at the data they provide for the RX series (RX599 and RX699), for example, it quickly becomes apparent why that blurb is actually factually correct and honest. For sure, it's not a perfect speaker, but what's necessary is that it fully fits the purpose and requirements of the job/gig it's ultimately going to be used for.

RX599 – 5” Coaxial Loudspeaker
90° x 90° Coverage Pattern
Operating Mode: Single-amplified w/ DSP
Operating Range: 100 Hz to 20 kHz
HF/LF Transducers: Coaxial 1.0″ diaphragm compression driver, neodymium magnet; 5.25″ woofer, 1.7″ voice coil; ceramic magnet
Power Handling at Nominal Impedance: HF/LF 150 W @ 16 Ω
Equalized Maximum SPL (peak / continuous): 113 dB / 107 dB

 

[fpitas]

I normally do not "follow" audio manufacturers' online presence, but Fulcrum Acoustic's FB photos stream is one that I've bookmarked and visit once in a while. The marketing content is generally simple, and comes off on occasion not only as tastefully funny, but also very concise/straight to the point:

View attachment 272271 View attachment 272272 View attachment 272273 View attachment 272274 View attachment 272275 View attachment 272285 View attachment 272287 View attachment 272288 View attachment 272289 View attachment 272290

If you look at the data they provide for the RX series (RX599 and RX699), for example, it quickly becomes apparent why that blurb is actually factually correct and honest. For sure, it's not a perfect speaker, but what's necessary is that it fully fits the purpose and requirements of the job/gig it's ultimately going to be used for.

RX599 – 5” Coaxial Loudspeaker
90° x 90° Coverage Pattern
Operating Mode: Single-amplified w/ DSP
Operating Range: 100 Hz to 20 kHz
HF/LF Transducers: Coaxial 1.0″ diaphragm compression driver, neodymium magnet; 5.25″ woofer, 1.7″ voice coil; ceramic magnet
Power Handling at Nominal Impedance: HF/LF 150 W @ 16 Ω
Equalized Maximum SPL (peak / continuous): 113 dB / 107 dB

View attachment 272291

Generally, stuff made for pro use doesn't use the "speaking to a retarded ten year old" approach so typical of consumer marketing.

 

[Head_Unit]

Once upon a time DACs got programmed to recognize a stream of zeros and mute, to "deliver" really high but false signal-to-noise ratios. I got annoyed by that and so used IIRC the NAB test disc which had a 19.05 kHz 1 LSB tone, which didn't let the DACs mute. We then measured competitors and printed graphs of the FFTs thereof.

Forgive me father for I have sinned, full "honesty" disclosure, I jiggered the order so the competitor almost as good as us was at the bottom and ours at the top... I then wrote some description how the "Trident" DAC (I forget what it was really called) combined the best attributes of multibit sound with the low-level linearity and timing accuracy of a 1-bit converter by using 3 bits internally.

I learned from once shopping for DVD players that yes, just as @kemmler3D alludes, naming some component or circuit or design philosophy makes it seem important, especially since many brands don't disclose anything special at all. I once took over an entire engineering meeting and swerved it to the topic of "I need you guys to put in some special stuff. I am quite sure you already do this! BUT you need to tell and explain to product planning and marketing so we can USE those efforts you made in promotion."

 

[Descartes]

OPPO delivered the goods without much marketing BS! Too bad they caned the audio business.

 

[fpitas]

OPPO delivered the goods without much marketing BS! Too bad they caned the audio business.

Yes, I've been using their BDP-95 for ten years now. It even came with rack mounting hardware. Not sure what I'll do if it dies.

 

[Sokel]

"2x400 [email protected] Ohms"

(at 1% THD+N,mounted in a different heatshink for 1 second)

 

[fpitas]

"2x400 [email protected] Ohms"

(at 1% THD+N,mounted in a different heatshink for 1 second)

Although, let's face it. If you bought the amp for 50 bucks off eBay, and the "specs" say that, you may be an idiot to believe it. Especially if it comes with a tiny wall wart good for 30W tops.