In the bike shop the theme of the last 6 months has been electric scooters. I hate them with a burning passion, not just for the sinful engineering or dangerous electronics. But because they take advantage of people who just want somethingto reliably transport them to work or school.
Anyway, a guy came in today raving about a new scooter he wants that has “PlayStation Batteries” and “Tesla Carbon fiber”. He showed me the website and I just despaired!
I don’t know what my point to this rant is. But the way it relates to framebuilding is that I feel like it’s impossible to make good products nowadays when there are companies out there who lie so egregiously in their marketing material.
Rant over. Discuss terrible marketing things and how we all try to be honest with our marketing. I don’t know
Speaking of marketing, I clicked the link on my PC and got an ad on my IG app! Crazy!
I think the more surprising thing is how good Playstation and Tesla’s marketing is for people to have them on the top of mind!
It is sad how most scooters (this one seems alright) will probably last 1-2mo of use. When I was working with a toy robot company, we tried pushing for rechargeable lithium batteries for better performance and sustainability. However, it was cheaper to include non-rechargeable AAA batteries because it offloaded the cost of the battery, charger, and charging circuit to the (unknowing) customer.
Luckily, since USBC is now standard, more consumer electronics can include rechargeable batteries because they no longer need to include a cable and charger with their product.
I think this may have been loosely discussed elsewhere but personally I feel I’m constantly trying to find ways to ‘market’ something that isn’t ‘more’ or ‘bigger’. Perhaps I’m just not good at marketing but it seems when you try to create something (a bike) that really works for a broad spectrum of riders and their varied terrain, it can be difficult to find ways to sell it. It’s hard to find a headline.
There are already steel mtb makers using the ‘less is more’ and punching up to the bigger brands with a simplistic approach. And I feel somewhere caught in the middle regarding my designs and the way I view mtb performance.
Perhaps I should just start laying on the marketing until something sticks? Or keep doing what I do and hope for the best? Or probably have a chat with a consultant and gather some targeted ideas that aren’t BS. But it’s hard to find motivation for something that so often feels like BS whenever I encounter it (marketing).
I didn’t want to include the link to the page and was just going to do screen shots so as to not give them traffic. But I’m not that petty!
As scooters go though. This does look like one of the better ones. But they all suffer from the hostile engineering that requires 2 hours of complete disassembly and glue peeling just to change a tyre!
With the marketing stuff. I think I am too attached to honesty. For example, I should be playing harder into the fact that I use offcut/recycled material in my frames. But I just feel disingenuous doing it when it isn’t 100% of the frame.
I find it hard to put myself in the consumers shoes as I don’t like being marketed to whatsoever. The moment I spot any form of subliminal marketing it turns me off even more.
I have been thinking about marketing because of all the discussions around shows. Especially in the MADE 2024 thread. I think we have some collective power to figure out some new ways to market handmade bikes. I would like to be part of it
I think that something that most makers figure out sooner or later is something that I heard from @earle.b , it was “Most people are buying the brand and the image more than the actual product. People want to be part of the brand’s community”
I think about that a lot. Whether a brand is big or small, they represent their ideals and personality either consciously or subconsciously through their actions and words, and even down to the types of bikes they build or component spec. It does seem like most frame builder’s brand is simply an extension of their personality, but not always. It can be useful to sit down and figure out the image you want to put out. I don’t think it’s enough to just make good product, there needs to be something for the customer to rally behind. The product should fulfill some desire of theirs or help them to fit into a category that you represent.
The hard part of all this is that whether you are intentionally crafting that brand image or not, people are making judgements on your every action (usually subconsciously) and deciding if that resonates with them at all. So it pays to be purposeful in the identity you want to portray.
Thanks for this. I think what you’re talking about is essentially along the lines of “don’t focus too much on the product” (when it comes to marketing and socials and stuff). Which is something I’ve been told a few times and I should try to remember it.
I guess as serious bike enthusiasts (nerds) an easy way to go about our marketing is just to do our bike thing, be nerdy, ride a lot and try to enjoy everything we love about bikes. And hopefully that will come through.
I suppose that’s what I do because it’s easier than faking it, just hope it’s enough? I can sleep easy knowing I’m not BSing anyone at least.
