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lovelyirony · 5 years ago

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sweeter than honey (redux)

Pepper Potts did not exactly mean to become a criminal. Really, she still doesn’t think she is.

But here are the facts:

1.) She has broken several laws in pursuit of funds that do not belong to her.

2.) The FBI would like to talk to her about several things and potentially put her under arrest.

3.) She can no longer go to her regular coffee shop because the barista snitched and told them her name, as well as her occupation.

Pepper broke several laws because the company she was working for (Stane International) was technically breaking laws, but laws that do not apply to corporations because corporations do this thing called “funding campaigns” and also sometimes “doing favors.”

She decided to do the same and suddenly she is a criminal. Not her fault she redistributed money back into the community, and now they can’t get any of it back.

It’s just how that worked out.

She’s been staying at a hotel that serves many questionable individuals each month, and it has an indoor pool and a three-star rating on the latest travel website.

It’s nondescript, not her style, and she’s currently in the bathroom having a crisis because she most likely needs to dye her hair.

She’s vain. Pepper knows she is, has known it since high school when she trimmed her hair and cried. Her hair, by all accounts, is gorgeous. It’s a shiny strawberry-blonde that makes her look like an ice queen in winter and a mysterious fairy queen in summer.

She does not want to dye it. But here she is with an eight dollar box of dye and thoughts in her head.

And then her hotel door opens.

Not supposed to do that, but that’s what happens when you’re in a three-star hotel.

She is also in old athletic shorts that have most definitely seen better days and a tank top that was a last-minute buy from the nearest store, and it does not suit her at all.

Facing her is a man with an odd beard, tinted sunglasses, and a graphic t-shirt over a blazer.

“So. You pissed off Stane Industries,” he drawls. “I’m impressed. Usually they just sweep their little problems under the rug.”

“I’ll sweep you under one if you’d like,” Pepper offers, wondering how quickly a blowdryer can knock someone out. She’s not sure how well-made the hotel one is. Probably not very.

“I’m not here to kill you,” the man says. He takes off his sunglasses. His eyes are a nice shade of brown, not that you’re supposed to notice that about a potential enemy. Pepper is just that skilled.

“Then what are you here to do? Make me move to Florida?”

“No, the opposite. We’re staying here. I’m offering you a job position of helping me take down Obadiah Stane and the company itself.”

“Who would I be working with?”

“Anthony Stark.”

Pepper stills.

She read the news when she was in college, same time as Tony Stark. Went missing in the car crash, no one found his body. Temperatures were freezing, he was wearing a tuxedo. The chances were that he froze to death somewhere that they didn’t find yet.

Chances were. What an odd little phrase.

“So, you made it out.”

“Not as hard as people say it seems to be, Virginia.”

“Call me Pepper, my first name disgusts me.”

“Gotcha, Pepper. Call me Tony. You in?”

“Obviously. What do I need to do?”

“Meet the team.”

There is Rhodey, who was Tony’s best friend and sobbed on national television for two weeks until they forgot all about him.

“He’ll cry at anything,” Tony says with a laugh as Rhodey sends him a dirty look. “Just made him think about neon shoes and he bawled like a baby.”

“I did not,” Rhodey hisses. “I was a good crier.”

“You looked like a seal,” Pepper intervenes. “But you played the part quite well. Nice to meet you.”

“Right back at you, Pepper.”

She meets Happy, a man who is all serious and grumpy and “did not want to break the law before forty” but he also gets to watch Downton Abbey whenever he wants, so he’s not doing too bad.

He runs security and also tells Rhodey and Tony when they’re banned from ordering pizza all the time, and Pepper is inducted into the Healthy Eating Committee.

There’s Bruce Banner, who enjoys taking over corporations for fun, and this is his second one. His first was some sort of health insurance scam, and apparently that was just to finish up his thesis for his third doctorate.

“He has seven degrees, he’s weird,” Tony says.

“Oh like you’re any better,” Bruce says with a snort. “You learned twelve languages for fun. Including French, which is useless.”

“French is not useless,” Tony says. “It got us free food in Canada.”

“We would’ve gotten it anyway if we’d done it my way.”

“Stealing?” Rhodey asks.

“Yes!”

Pepper laughs.

Their job is a bit easier than anticipated. They found out from Pepper that getting into the building is stupid easy because no one likes their job and will do anything when bribed.

Tony struts in with a badly-made-employee-ID and talks about a copying machine and coffee and seeing someone next month for dinner. Pepper just keeps her head down and pretends like she’s meeting someone for something. Like usual.

Obadiah Stane is out of the country on a meeting, and his secretary is scared to death of him, so they’re allowed to poke around the office and find some interesting information.

The problem comes when someone recognizes Bruce outside (government watchlists: the most pesky things on earth) and suddenly there’s this huge fuss.

Tony pushes Pepper into an office closet and then promptly asks her if anyone opens the door, if she’s alright with him kissing her.

“Why would you do that?”

“People don’t like watching kissing, too intimate. Also, you have a lovely face and you’re quite funny, and I think it’d be fun and delightful to kiss you.”

“How long have you thought about that?”

“Not going to talk about that, just want an answer. If you say no--and feel free to, there’s no obligation in physical contact right now--it does complicate plans A to D. I suppose we could play the divorced couple route, but I’m not a gigantic fan about that.”

“I mean, I guess? It wouldn’t be bad, and I’m not exactly opposed to it, Would it mean anything later?”

“Do you want it to?”

“Let’s figure that out after we do it.”

“If we need to do it.”

Door swings open.

Oh, there’s a need.

Tony is a particularly nice kisser, Pepper thinks. The thought runs through her head that she’s only kissed two people before Tony, and one was in high school so that doesn’t count, but the other was a secretary at an old company she used to work for.

But Tony is nice. Soft and warm and he grabs her waist and that’s nice.

“Oh my god, sorry,” the employee mutters. “I just, I thought--”

“Occupied!” Tony says, not even stopping as he kicks out his leg and practically stomps the poor other guy in the stomach.

They get out, run, and Pepper laughs as she sees a bit of pink lipstick on the side of Tony’s mouth.

“So, how’d I do?”

“Send me a survey,” Pepper remarks. “Or a ranking.”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“Seven.”

“I was that bad?”

“How do you rank things? Do you put one as the best?”

“Obviously.”

“No, you’re an idiot. One is always the worst. You’re a nine. It would’ve been higher but we were in a corporate office and in a supply closet.”

“So what you’re saying is, I’ll have to try again?”

“Preferably over a couple glasses of wine and pizza. The good kind, though. Not the garbage Rhodey orders.”

They approach the car that Happy has, with Rhodey and Bruce already leading others on a goose chase.

“You two have too much fun,” Happy mutters. “Boss, you got lipstick on your side. Did you get the drives?”

“Transferred and set to release to every major news outlet tomorrow morning at six a.m.,” Tony says. “Interns are going to curse my name as they’re forced to rewrite articles.”

Pepper smiles.

That night, they have a couple of glasses of wine and Tony orders the good pizza, the kind that costs a little bit too much for what it is, but it’s all worth it in the end.

When Tony takes over the company after about six months of legal battles that would probably have drawn on for well over a decade if not for the fact that Tony is one of the most in-your-face-let’s-talk men she’s ever met, Pepper was kind of expecting things to slow down.

Of course not. That’s not her style nor is it Tony’s, although arguably a vacation or a nice spa day would have been nice beforehand.

“We have shit to do,” Tony says. “Rhodey, you need to help me revamp R&D. Pepper, I need to talk to you in the office.”

They’ve already hired a company to completely redesign the entire building and refocus the company’s outlook, starting with getting rid of the disgusting 1970s carpet and chairs. God, it’s ugly. Pepper cried when she saw the office chairs.

But she’s in Tony’s office, and she’s wondering if this is going to be directly related to workplace relationships or not. She’s already prepared an argument as to why she still wants a relationship and just how much professionalism she can exhibit in the face of hardship.

(That hardship being the fact that Tony looks quite good in suits but also has arms that are made for tank tops.)

“I have a problem with you,” Tony says. “And it’s that I want to make you CEO, but I don’t want people to think that you got it just because we’re dating. So we have an issue to cross.”

Pepper was not expecting this. She was expecting maybe head accountant, or head of the PR team. But CEO? That was something that was...wow. Pepper had had a fifteen year plan for working up from wherever it was that she would be at.

She also didn’t know they were dating.

“We’re dating?”

“Did I read the kiss wrong? Oh shit, was the seven secretly the bad seven?”

“No!” Pepper says. “You just never told me that we were dating, we didn’t have a communicative conversation about it.”

“Oh. Well, would you like to go on dates and things?”

“What’s ‘and things’?”

“You know. Sexy times. But I wanted to be a professional about it. But I am not that professional.”

“No, no you’re not. Which is why you offered me the CEO position and why I am accepting it. But I will also date you...and things.”

“Excellent. Have a dinner tonight while we discuss how to do Microsoft Excel?”

“I already know how to use it.”

“Pepper, you are the only woman for me in this lifetime and the next.”

“And the one after that?”

“I’m assuming you’ll get bored of me and marry someone who’s seven feet tall.”

“Seven feet tall? What, am I going to attend every NBA game for the next husband?”

“Maybe, I don’t know what you’ll do. I’ll probably be halfway into a grave over despair.”

Pepper chuckles, dropping a short kiss onto his temple.

“Well, I hope I don’t have to witness that. You want me to make some salad for tonight then?”

“Yes please! We also need to review the decor and see what chairs to order.”

Pepper nods.

“We need to ask Rhodey, he has opinions about design of those.”

“Of course he does, he hates standing too long. We’ll send him some of our options.”

She waves as she leaves the office.

What Tony misses:

Pepper pumps her fist as she leaves the office, nearly stumbles, and is quite glad that no security cameras were installed that day.

What Pepper misses:

Tony spins so hard in his office chair as a celebration that it topples over.

Yeah, they’re made for each other.

#pepperony #tony stark #pepper potts #love this one #i love writing pepper and i don't do enough of it #i really like it when it's clear that they both love each other #bc with a lot of fics it's like pepper being like 'well i guess :/' or she's cool about it #BUT I WANT PEPPER TO BE A NERD!#rhodey #lovelyirony writes

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laurelkrugerr · 5 years ago

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Four Simple Ways to Inject Humor into Your Local Marketing

“Humor is subjective,” is something we’ve all heard.

What’s funny to you might not be funny to someone else, sure. But subjectivity only refers to the effect of comedy, not the construction of it.

There are ways to inject humor into your marketing agency strategy that are almost certain to make people laugh.

If you’ve determined that your local business needs humor to make it stick in the minds of its target audience, then you need to know where to start and what to do next.

In this article I will present four different approaches to help inject humor into your local marketing agency:

The Irreverent Approach

The Meme Approach

The Meta Approach

The Satirical Approach

You might be wondering, “what do these terms mean?” And more importantly, how can they be used to make your local marketing agency campaign stand out from the competition?

Providing you’ve taken the relevant data into account (and determined whether or not this kind of approach will appeal to your best-fit user personas), humor can be a great route to go down.

So, without further ado, I present the four primary approaches.

The Irreverent Approach

To be irreverent you need to, to put it simply, be a little ‘weird’ and a bit edgy. The all-knowing wisdom provider known as Google defines ‘irreverent’ as: ‘Showing a lack of respect for people or things that are generally taken seriously.’

Your first thought when hearing this may be, “When would it make sense for a business to disrespect the people they are trying to woo?” In an age where nine out of ten customers research a business before buying from them, that’s the very last thing a business would want to do, right?

Well, being irreverent with your marketing agency’s humor can work if it’s done right. Look no further than the Twitter account of US-based fast food chain, Wendy’s. Their Twitter account presents itself as if it’s moderated by someone with zero professional scruples. But the important thing is, it makes people laugh and makes them remember the brand.

Of course, whether you can use this approach depends hugely on your target audience. If you are looking to engage younger audiences, and your products are not inherently “serious” (think YMYL websites), you can afford to have a little fun. In short: if you are selling burgers, irreverent humor can work. Pharmaceuticals, less so.

Source: Twitter

But despite the seemingly dismissive and immature attitude of Wendy’s’ Twitter, it gets excellent engagement from users (many of whom actually appreciate their irreverent humor) and millions of people eat at their establishments every day. It’s a prime example of how such irreverent humor can actually be long-lasting and financially beneficial for a business.

So, how did Wendy’s do it? Simple — it’s all about the attitude. Even though their Twitter posts and other marketing agency gimmicks may appear to be immature and even rude, it’s also clearly all done from a place of jest.

Now I’m not necessarily jumping in at the deep end and going full Wendy’s but, ultimately, this kind of irreverent approach could inspire you to take more risks with your humor and thus stand out from the competition.

Just make sure that you get the tone right, and remember this approach will depend greatly on:

a) your target audience b) your existing brand image and standing, and c) how well it is executed

As I’ve discussed, irreverent marketing agency works well with some groups, and less well with others. Try not to make light of a serious subject, but you can have some fun with products that your target audience knows and loves.

When it comes to local advertising, businesses have a real advantage in using this approach: your customers share knowledge of your area, town, or city. Gently poking fun at local landmarks, customs, or jokes can be a great way to show your customers that you are engaged in the local community and that you’re a true local.

The Meme Approach

The ‘meme approach’ is a highly overlooked marketing agency strategy by most businesses, even though there are several big brands that have used it to great effect. Memes are silly, of course, but they can have a pretty serious effect on your brand image if used correctly.

What is a meme? According to Dictionary.com, a meme is: ‘a cultural item in the form of an image, video, phrase, etc., that is spread via the Internet and often altered in a creative or humorous way.’

Here’s a classic meme, albeit one that is showing its age:

Source: Wikipedia

Today, memes come in all shapes and sizes, so you can easily find one that speaks to your audience. Because of this, memes can also be highly effective in local marketing agency, but in order to market memes successfully, you need to appeal to their target audience and understand their context. This will require an intelligent comprehension of the modern cultural landscape.

Let’s take a look at Netflix as an example because, while they may not be local, as a company they really understand how to use memes to position themselves as a contemporary brand. Their approach may not seem like a traditional outreach marketing agency strategy, but using memes as part of your overall marketing agency strategy can pay off when executed right.

Source: Twitter

Netflix’s meme knowledge and how they’ve used it to market their content is plentiful, but perhaps the shining example of their viral marketing agency style was what happened with the Sandra Bullock film, Bird Box. Memes centering on the apocalyptic plot of the film began popping up on social media in December 2018.

The impact of these promotional memes skyrocketed the film’s success, and even the Bird Box meme went on to have a life of its own in the ensuing months with the advent of the controversial ‘Bird Box Challenge’, where people blindfolded themselves like in the movie and then went about their daily business.

Additionally, rather than clamp down on overseas viewers and shared accounts, Netflix actually does the opposite – openly acknowledging the use of shared accounts and “Netflix VPNs” which circumvent content restrictions. The company’s use of memes on social media has such high engagement rates that it’s become a thing of legend, which other brands have sought to replicate.

If you want to market with memes, you have to understand them. Every meme has a joke at the center of it, and every instance of the said meme is a variation of that joke. Every meme is different, and to successfully promote your business with them, you need to know how they’re different.

You also need to isolate how the meme you’ve chosen relates to your brand. Know the brand, know the memes, and mix and match to find the best coupling.

Local businesses can adapt existing memes to reflect their geographical location. In fact, for local advertising, it is pretty easy to find a trending meme, and with a little creativity adapt it for local customers. In some ways, using memes in local advertising is easier than in national-level campaigns, because you know exactly who you are talking to, and the in-jokes that apply to your area.

The Meta Approach

If you are of sound mind, then you are aware that what you are reading right now is an article. Most articles hide behind the fourth wall of objectivity for the purpose of laying out information and facts in an orderly, educated, and formal manner that never goes off-topic in order to deconstruct itself.

marketing agency exercises this same approach most of the time. We tend to present the product directly and lay out the details and features in an informational fashion without calling attention to any promos as specific advertising.

If you choose to use a humorous approach in your local marketing agency strategy, flipping the script and using the meta advertising strategy may be the ticket to attracting your targeted customer base. A commercial that acknowledges itself as a commercial is a refreshing flourish of “truth in advertising” that’s been a growing trend in marketing agency circles over the latter half of the last decade.

One company that has taken full advantage of the lucrative potential of self-awareness is the UK-based Hosting Data, which specializes in building online identities for UK citizens. Its founder, Alex Williams, uses the informative and informal tone of his personality to fuel his company’s self-referential local marketing agency strategy.

What better way to sell the idea of selling yourself online than to sell yourself online using a tinge of dry, British humor (if you’re British, that is)? That’s exactly what Williams does with his humorous meta approach to his business.

For local businesses, using a meta approach means one thing: being self-aware of where you are based. If you are based in a small town, make your customers aware of the pride you take in being a small-town company. If you are from a large city, it can pay to integrate your location not only into your social media content but even your logo or brand name.

People love to buy local, as long as they feel that doing so is a way of boosting pride in their local community.

The Satirical Approach

Satire is neither for the small-minded nor the closed-minded. People can often miss the point or misinterpret the intention.

Most individuals with refined humoristic palates look upon such irrational reactions to satire with gleeful schadenfreude. The misunderstanding of satire has become an intellectual spectator sport where we scroll through social media sites, and read along with our jaws agape at comment threads where some individuals seem to think spam filters are found in the canned food sections of supermarkets.

But in these kinds of feeds, we also might find an ad for one of your agency’s clients where they’ve used a cheeky play on words. That may sound irreverent, but satire requires a particular execution of irreverence. If your local business client wants to use satire in their marketing agency or content, they need a clear line of sight on who they’re targeting, and the humor must be spun in a refreshing and innovative manner.

One example is the 2014 ‘Power of the Book Book Ad’ marketing agency campaign that was launched by the retail furniture company Ikea. This campaign took a satirical approach, targeted at another not-so-little-known company called Apple and their iPad technology.

youtube

Through this approach, Ikea promoted the release of its catalog as if it were a sleek, top of the line, blockbuster product, just like something that would be released by tech giants Apple. Ikea took all the sincere elements of an Apple ad and turned them upside down in an ironically backhanded way.

How do we know that this approach worked for Ikea? Simple — they keep doing it. A golden rule of marketing agency is that if something works and is giving you a good return on investment, keep doing it until it doesn’t work anymore. A business that actually calculates its ROI has a 72% chance that it has an effective marketing agency strategy.

But no one can accurately predict the final result, so you should always weigh the pros and cons of each considered approach before pulling the trigger on it.

To use satire in a local marketing agency strategy, not only do you have to know your audience, you have to know your rivals. A good company knows where their bread is buttered, so take a look at the content being used by your local rivals. You can then (gently) satirize their content, which will simultaneously indicate that you don’t take your own brand too seriously whilst giving your local customers a good joke to share.

The post Four Simple Ways to Inject Humor into Your Local Marketing appeared first on BrightLocal.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

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source http://www.scpie.org/four-simple-ways-to-inject-humor-into-your-local-marketing/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/07/four-simple-ways-to-inject-humor-into.html

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riichardwilson · 5 years ago

Text

Four Simple Ways to Inject Humor into Your Local Marketing

“Humor is subjective,” is something we’ve all heard.

What’s funny to you might not be funny to someone else, sure. But subjectivity only refers to the effect of comedy, not the construction of it.

There are ways to inject humor into your marketing agency strategy that are almost certain to make people laugh.

If you’ve determined that your local business needs humor to make it stick in the minds of its target audience, then you need to know where to start and what to do next.

In this article I will present four different approaches to help inject humor into your local marketing agency:

The Irreverent Approach

The Meme Approach

The Meta Approach

The Satirical Approach

You might be wondering, “what do these terms mean?” And more importantly, how can they be used to make your local marketing agency campaign stand out from the competition?

Providing you’ve taken the relevant data into account (and determined whether or not this kind of approach will appeal to your best-fit user personas), humor can be a great route to go down.

So, without further ado, I present the four primary approaches.

The Irreverent Approach

Source: Twitter

Just make sure that you get the tone right, and remember this approach will depend greatly on:

a) your target audience b) your existing brand image and standing, and c) how well it is executed

The Meme Approach

Here’s a classic meme, albeit one that is showing its age:

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Twitter

You also need to isolate how the meme you’ve chosen relates to your brand. Know the brand, know the memes, and mix and match to find the best coupling.

The Meta Approach

People love to buy local, as long as they feel that doing so is a way of boosting pride in their local community.

The Satirical Approach

Satire is neither for the small-minded nor the closed-minded. People can often miss the point or misinterpret the intention.

youtube

But no one can accurately predict the final result, so you should always weigh the pros and cons of each considered approach before pulling the trigger on it.

The post Four Simple Ways to Inject Humor into Your Local Marketing appeared first on BrightLocal.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/four-simple-ways-to-inject-humor-into-your-local-marketing/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/625041718475145216

0 notes

scpie · 5 years ago

Text

Four Simple Ways to Inject Humor into Your Local Marketing

“Humor is subjective,” is something we’ve all heard.

What’s funny to you might not be funny to someone else, sure. But subjectivity only refers to the effect of comedy, not the construction of it.

There are ways to inject humor into your marketing agency strategy that are almost certain to make people laugh.

If you’ve determined that your local business needs humor to make it stick in the minds of its target audience, then you need to know where to start and what to do next.

In this article I will present four different approaches to help inject humor into your local marketing agency:

The Irreverent Approach

The Meme Approach

The Meta Approach

The Satirical Approach

You might be wondering, “what do these terms mean?” And more importantly, how can they be used to make your local marketing agency campaign stand out from the competition?

Providing you’ve taken the relevant data into account (and determined whether or not this kind of approach will appeal to your best-fit user personas), humor can be a great route to go down.

So, without further ado, I present the four primary approaches.

The Irreverent Approach

Source: Twitter

Just make sure that you get the tone right, and remember this approach will depend greatly on:

a) your target audience b) your existing brand image and standing, and c) how well it is executed

The Meme Approach

Here’s a classic meme, albeit one that is showing its age:

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Twitter

You also need to isolate how the meme you’ve chosen relates to your brand. Know the brand, know the memes, and mix and match to find the best coupling.

The Meta Approach

People love to buy local, as long as they feel that doing so is a way of boosting pride in their local community.

The Satirical Approach

Satire is neither for the small-minded nor the closed-minded. People can often miss the point or misinterpret the intention.

youtube

But no one can accurately predict the final result, so you should always weigh the pros and cons of each considered approach before pulling the trigger on it.

The post Four Simple Ways to Inject Humor into Your Local Marketing appeared first on BrightLocal.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/four-simple-ways-to-inject-humor-into-your-local-marketing/

0 notes

racingtoaredlight · 6 years ago

Text

The Art of Recording

*Muscle Shoals Sound Studio

Welcome to the lab.

I credit my father for giving me insight into the world of recording, given that he did quite a bit of it professionally in his varied careers in radio, advertising, production and working on political campaigns, as well as it being one of his biggest passions. The world of recording happens behind the spotlights, the money and the fame, but it’s THE SINGLE most crucial element in how music exploded throughout the 20th century.

In about 20 years, we have become so utterly spoiled by how easy music is to access, thinking about days where we’d burn CD’s seems as laughable as thinking about societies that existed before electricity. We can literally pull up any music made throughout history by holding down a button on our phones and asking for it.

And absolutely none of that would be possible without the process of recording music. A process that completely changed the way music was not only distributed to audiences, but a process that completely changed how music was conceived and created. Not only that, but it changed the very idea of music itself...

No longer was music a temporary event, lost to time and memory. Now, musical events were forever preserved, something that’s such a subtly gigantic, world-altering change, you’d be forgiven to realize that the art of recording sound is responsible for everything from major political scandals that rocked the nation (Nixon’s tapes) to the method for any possible communication with extra-terrestrial life (SETI and Voyager’s Golden Record).

Recorded music has changed the industry to such an extent that it became infested with thet worst aspects of capitalism, rotten to the core...and combined with the explosive rise of streamlined distribution models, has created a grotesque musical oligarchy, where virtually the entirety of Western pop music is made by likely fewer than 200 people.

However, that same model created a world where anyone with a computer or mobile phone is able to record their own music, and use these platforms to distribute it themselves to an audience that previous generations would not be able to even imagine.

But we’re not going to talk about any of that...

***

*Capitol Records Recording Studio

Pretty good setup, right?

All that shit above is all fine and dandy, but I don’t really give a shit about that. I looooooooove recording. Fucking love it. I love going on tape under the pressure of having to lay something down real good. Doesn’t matter if it’s by myself, with friends, was a concert or rehearsal, for class or for a band making a CD for promotional use...that’s the environment where my adrenaline got pumping, and I felt like I was in my element.

It was an exercise in “how can I create the best sounding environment for my playing style?” As important as your playing and instruments are to your sound, so is knowing how to best work in a recording environment. The more you can fit your sound into the mix, the more control you have over what ends up on tape. And there’s an art to it.

When I’d go into a recording session, the first thing I’d do is know whether I’m going to be mic’d or go direct. Most of the time, I went through a mic when I played guitar. I hated the sound of guitar direct. But I always started here because either style has different sets of variables to account for.

***

*Rudy Van Gelder’s studio

Look at those fucking ceilings!

My dad still does amateur recording for fun. He was a Deadhead, and not just any Deadhead, but one of those weirdos that hauled like 60 lbs. of recording equipment to shows to make bootlegs for their collection. In the 100+ shows he went to, he easily must have recorded 75% of them...which I guess Kazzy can have whenever my dad kicks it.

Funny enough, I only ever really talked to my dad about recording in either a broad sense, or looking for validation for things I did on my own. When it came to guitar, the way I preferred to record was pretty much the same way he preferred it too, the only major difference being the distance I kept the mic from my speaker.

The only time I’ve recorded in environments with high ceilings like Van Gelder’s studio had, was when I’d record my guitar during jazz ensemble rehearsals before shows with guest artists. Empty concert halls with fucking fantastic acoustics, and I’d simply put a condenser mic a foot from dead center of a 12″ speaker (modified Fender Deluxe Reverb) so I could get more of the room and the band.

Space and the acoustics of the room are key variables to account for when you’re recording with a mic. But I liked that space in my sound, and when you’re recording something live...warts and all...having variables adds to the quality of the recording. The worst sounding live albums are those that sound as dry and stifled as a poor studio session.

Rooms like Van Gelder’s or Abbey Road or Muscle Shoals are legendary because their acoustics have such identifiable sounds...and so many historic albums were recorded there...that they’re easy to pick out. At the opposite side of the spectrum, Steely Dan often sounded extremely dry and compressed due to their creating music designed to be heard on hi-fidelity systems, rendering the room obsolete.

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*A&M Recording Studios “Studio A”

How fucking HUGE does this song sound? It sounds massive, full of a natural reverb that sounds 100% like it would be recorded in an environment with huge amounts of space for all those sound waves to fill up. Even when listening through laptop speakers, you can actually hear how much space is around those recorded notes...nothing choked or compressed about them. Those sound waves are given freedom to behave naturally in a controlled setting.

Now for the exact opposite...

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*The Village Recorder

Do you see any amplifiers in those pics? No. The amps are fed into a soundproof box with enough room for a speaker cabinet and microphone, and that’s only when they chose not to just go direct. There isn’t a sniff of reverb. Where the Ozzy example sounds huge and distant, this sounds immediate and claustrophobic.

That’s not to say I think the Steely Dan version sounds bad, by any means. It gets better the more quality system you listen to it on, but yea...it’s definitely not my preferred sound. Steely Dan sounds so direct because so much of it was recorded directly to the board, or so close that any variable caused by the room would be negated. Ozzy took the different approach and harnessed that huge sound of the room to enhance the musical thing him (likely his producers) were trying to create.

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*Abbey Road

I think this is a good place to stop, even though I didn’t really intend for this to be a series or anything. There’s just too much to tackle without this turning into a behemoth, and musical examples are better than pretty pictures anyways.

The art of recording is as much about manipulating acoustics and sound waves as music itself is, and that’s why I think it’s so fascinating. I love the process of recording, what you can do with it and how you can change sounds, and I think it’s interesting content fodder. If, for no other reason, than to find an aspect of some music you may be familiar with, a little more interesting.

#music #recording #the art of recording

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tencowsinc-blog · 7 years ago

Text

How I Achieved Little Success From Working With The Best

Note: This article was originally posted on Medium.com as ��Little Success From Working With The Best?”

For the past 4 years as a student at BYU Hawaii I’ve been working on different products and have really struggled to be profitable with them.

The frustrating part is that I’ve had really successful people who have been my mentors during all of this. Frustrating, because I have learned so many amazing things from them; they’re incredible people & entrepreneurs.

I figured if anyone would have a chance at succeeding in entrepreneurship it should be me! Their support and willingness to help me has been more than I could ever ask for.

Last night I was searching for answers as I usually do in trying to figure out this entrepreneurship thing. Again I was feeling so down and frustrated because I feel like I can’t get it together.

After many searches my last search query was “I’m a crappy marketer”. I’ve been coming to the conclusion for the last while that the lack of success I’ve been having must be attributed to my crappy marketing skills & wanted to see what I could find to help.

I found two articles in particular that were just what I was looking for. I learned so much from these articles and felt like it addressed exactly what I’ve been struggling with.

YOUR PRODUCT ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH The first article is called “You aren’t bad at marketing your product, Your product isn’t good enough!” Ionut Neagu in this article talks about how people had been approaching him to get advice on how to build their business/sell their products and were complaining that they haven’t been able to figure out the marketing for their products. They believed the reason they aren’t finding success is because they lack the money and/or marketing skills to promote it. He talks about how the lack of money or skills is not the problem but that the problem is with the quality of the product. He touches on 4 products that he has been successful with and how did it with little marketing. He says:

1.TRANSPARENCY REPORTS — WHY THEY WORKED “To be completely honest with you, I haven’t spent more than a couple of hours promoting our transparency reports. Usually, I’m just submitting them to ManageWP.org, and sometimes asking a few people on Twitter to take a look. Yet they still get mentioned at WordCamps, people talk about them on blogs, podcasts, and they have a really wide reach in the niche. Why? Certainly marketing isn’t the reason. I have spent waaay more hours/money trying to promote our other articles… The answer is the content quality on its own… unique insights that can’t be found elsewhere and that actually help people with ‘something’ will always work, and will always come on top of other content that might not be so revealing. 2. ZERIF LITE — OUR MOST POPULAR FREE WORDPRESS THEME — WHAT HAS MADE IT Before releasing Zerif Lite we already had 10+ themes launched, and I spent good money and time promoting all of those themes. However, when Zerif Lite landed, right from day 1 it generated 1,000% more sales and downloads than all of the previous themes combined! At that point, it wasn’t that hard. I reached out to some popular blogs, insisted they listened, and at that moment I wasn’t afraid to pay for their attention and for having Zerif listed everywhere I could. The theme was already way better than all the other free themes out there, so the promotion worked right away too. People started to write about it, it was much easier to promote it, and it felt a lot less like I was pushing it onto everybody. It all felt natural. 3. REVIVE OLD POST — WHAT MADE IT A MUST-HAVE PLUGIN Revive Old Post is our top social media plugin. It takes your content and shares it automatically to your various social media channels. It has been in the WordPress.org repo for 4–5 years, and we only acquired it around 2 years ago. The funny thing is that nobody does any marketing around it, yet EACH week (just Google it) there are blogs mentioning it, there are loads of people naming it their favorite plugin, and there are even videos on YouTube talking about it. Let me emphasize on this again; we aren’t doing anything to promote this plugin directly at the time of writing this, it seems to promote itself. Just like with the transparency reports, the idea and the way of approaching it is unique. It was the first plugin of its kind, it helps people, and it does it all for FREE. Building a product that is unique and helpful, or that’s 10x better than anything else on the market isn’t easy, certainly. However, if you don’t consider yourself a genius marketer then this is what you should absolutely do! 4. WHAT MAKES BLOG POSTS VIRAL THESE DAYS On the one hand, there’s so much noise that it’s really hard to surface with a new product/thing. But at the same time, if you build something that people consider amazing, almost no marketing is required, or the marketing work will become super easy. If a guy who hasn’t written more than 20 articles in his lifetime can get his post viewed by 100,000+ people and with 0 marketing, then probably you can do it too. Just focus on producing something awesome. And do it before you devote endless nights to promoting the thing… There indeed are people out there who are marketing geniuses, or who have loads of resources that they are willing to invest even if the return isn’t coming for a while. But if you aren’t one of them, your best chance is to focus on your product first.

HOW TERRIBLE COPYWRITING SKILLS MADE ME A SOUGHT AFTER MARKETER The 2nd and the last article I’ll mention here is from Bhavani Esapathi and is called “How my terrible copywriting skills made me a sought after Marketer” She says: “Growing up, I hated the word marketing I began to slowly warm up to the idea of marketing as I got older and that’s not only because I needed money for food, shelter(etc.)…. With the rise of…social media I saw another world of marketing, one that wasn’t…reliant upon shoving stuff upon people who probably didn’t care that much. In fact, to me social media marketing is the very opposite of shoving stuff onto those who don’t need it, it’s about carefully weeding out the ones who don’t need it and the ones who do I ventured into the fancy world of arts marketing…and as an entitled millennial, what do you mean I need an MBA to prove I know how to attract an audience? Doesn’t being raised by a technology qualify me somewhat as a birth right? I soon realized how wrong I was, not only was I a bad marketer but a terrible one in the best of my days. What kept me going was this streak of brilliance between extravagant moments of failure, something I couldn’t quiet put my finger on. After a good few years of being a miserable arts marketer who could deliver results with just as much odds as a kid in an arcade machine. I took it upon myself to find what bridges most of my successes. There must be a pattern that determines if one of my brilliant campaign or strategic ideas will take off or slowly disintegrate… I realized that most of the copy I wrote were evidently very fake and unreal thereby proposing mistrust than anything. Note to self: do not try to sell something that you don’t genuinely believe in… If you don’t resonate for the company/product you’re working with then you’re not going to be able to portray genuine likeness which often comes from being true to your audiences so being real and comfortable was a big part of the things that I succeeded at…you’re better off finding someone who’s not only interested in you but unusually excited which makes them perfect to market your products and services. …most industry-standard agency work demands strategic writing that can strip you of genuine emotions in an attempt to embed addictive ones. Because I’m a writer attuned to my sensibilities, because I know what I like… I need to find the right thing to write about otherwise I might as well be pretending to transcribe Ancient Greek…. I consciously acknowledge the things I could never promote or blog about so if you think you’re a bad writer or a not-so-great marketer, you probably just haven’t found the thing that makes you a good one yet. So the next time you’re stuck contemplating how to ‘market’ your work better ask yourself ‘why isn’t this work inspiring me enough to show off?’”

CONCLUSION: Both of these articles have taught me a lot and am still letting it sink in. For now, what stands out is to do what inspires you! Consciously acknowledge the things you could never promote or blog about or anything wouldn’t like doing, be honest with your self. I’ve learned that when you are true to what inspires you, the quality in your products, blogs or whatever your goal might be will come through. I’ve learned to start with being true to the light that inspires you and then the marketing/selling part will come much easier. I think with having this in mind, i’ll start on the right foot & have better success moving forward.

#entrepreneur #startup

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