Category: Marketing / Advertising

This New Thing

Marketing / Advertising, Morons & Idiots

Probably the modern word I hate the most is this “influencer” tag.  Fuck me, every totty with some kind of EeewwwChoob / TikTwat channel is now suddenly an “influencer” because her views of makeup / clothing / (whatever fad the younger audience of today are obsessed with) seem to cause advertisers to swoon with delight, according to the number of “followers” they are supposed to have according to some impenetrable measurement method.

There’s nothing wrong with the latter, of course:  the Nielsen ratings were once the yardstick whereby advertisers could approportion their spending among the various TV stations and shows according to the shows’ audience size.

Or maybe it’s just sour grapes on my part, because these (mostly-brainless) girls are raking in the cash with their “content” — the latter being nothing but opinion (largely shaped, I assume, by the brands’ sponsorship of such).  And apparently, being beautiful with large breasts increases their allure (no idea why).

I find it interesting that male “influencers” tend to have more actual content on their shows;  the wonderfully-low-class Mat Armstrong, for example, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars (okay, pounds sterling) out of repairing crashed supercars — he’s just bought a house in England and another in Miami, so we can safely assume that his business is profitable —  while stalwarts like Garand Thumb (two guys with actual expertise, being former SpecFor and Ranger operators) skimp along, apparently, with sponsorships from various gunny-type companies (but have a lot of fun along the way).

I suppose that even I could call myself an influencer, judging by the number of (tongue-in-cheek) complaints from people over the years, wailing about how they were perfectly happy with their firearms until they came to this website and were compelled — forced, even — to buy yet another gun they didn’t know they needed until I spoke glowingly about its allure and excellent qualities.

Did I get any kind of remuneration from this “influencing”?  Don’t be ridiculous.

So yes, maybe I am jealous that today’s influencers make money hand over fist each week while I have made, at a rough guess, a few thousand dollars — over twenty years — from my type of influencing.

Of course, my own cussedness hasn’t helped, in that I refuse to take on advertising (I did, once, very briefly for a few months during the NoR days, until an advertiser complained that I’d said Bad Things about his industry and I told him to fuck off and pulled the plug on the whole thing).  Ditto sponsorships, mostly because gun companies don’t need me when they have “gun writers” to pimp their products via the various gun magazines, but also because I absolutely refuse to be tied to any kind of influence over my opinions on, well, anything.

It also doesn’t help that my “likes” are confined to a really small list of products and such, either.

So I guess I am and have been my own worst enemy in this regard.

Oh well.

Here’s an unsolicited (and unpaid-for) recommendation (link in pic):

It’s a pre-WWII Sempert & Krieghoff tube-fed semi-auto chambered in 8x60mm, and it’s so beautiful it makes me swoon like a schoolgirl groupie.   Okay, at $17,500 it’s not the cheapest gun you could buy, and good luck finding the obscure 8x60mm S ammo anywhere, which means it’s strictly for reloaders.

And its performance is pretty much on a par with its smaller 8x57mm Mauser cousin, which is plentiful and can be fired far more cheaply from rifles like this mil-surp K98k:

…which are sold everywhere and can be had for under $1,000.

But you have to admit, that one-of-a-kind Sempert sure is pretty.  If you do decide to buy it, mention my name to the folks at Collectors, which will result in nothing more than a “who?” from them and not a single penny of kickback to me.

Par for the course, really.

Marketing Ploy

Marketing / Advertising, The Gun Thing

Some time back, Reader Mike S. sent me this pic, with the comment:  “Marketing trumps Good Taste every time.”

My initial reaction is to agree with him.  Clearly, this rifle is not aimed at Grumpy Ole Pharrttes like him (or me, for that matter), but at some new genre of gun owner — my guess, a Gen Z person who wants to look cool and doesn’t want to look like his grandpappy (again, like Mike or me) with our old WinMar wooden-stocked “cowboy” rifles.

And yes, while I think that the tacti-cool thing in the snow pic looks like dog’s balls on a Noritake dinner plate, there’s no denying that it would work just as well as its predecessor — I mean, a lever gun is a lever gun is a lever gun, regardless of its cladding.

Also, in places that Must Not Be Named — places that ban “assault rifles” — there is no question but that Snow Gun would escape the baleful scrutiny of said gun-haters because it is, after all, just a lever rifle.

Finally, the marketing executive in me says that we Grumpy Ole Pharrttes are entering the Twilight Years — i.e. we’re not long for the gun world, or any world — so we are, to put it crudely, a shrinking market.  In that spirit, therefore, manufacturers should extend their product line to accommodate the tastes of a New Generation…

…as long as they continue to make traditional lever rifles, and not make it an “either/or” situation, because that would make me  fucking enraged  very sad.

But hey, considering that I had to change my sixty-year deodorant choice because the manufacturer decided to do the above, what the hell.  Let’s just join the in-crowd and get some ghastly new thing instead of a rifle that has served its users perfectly well for over a hundred and fifty years.

Update:  Panzer Arms has decided to get in on the  faerie  “white gun” trend, with its semi-auto 12ga:

I’m kinda interested how that thing is going to look after a thousand rounds has been put through it.  My guess is that it’s going to look as worn out as a Kardashian’s pleasure pit.  But I could be wrong.

Street cost is around $500.

And About Time, Too

Marketing / Advertising

Saith Reader Mike G (who sent me this little piece):  “I just read this and thought it might interest you…”

Diamonds and the prestige that they’ve held for literal millennia are starting to slip. And the reason why is an interesting mix of cultural shifts, economics, and technology. Let’s break it down.

Since practically the beginning of time, diamonds have been sold as something bigger than a luxury product. They held this image and idea of permanence, romance, rarity, and status. Heck, even royalty. But now that image is slipping big time.

Natural diamond prices have fallen sharply, and lab-grown stones have dropped even harder. Just to put it in perspective, a natural diamond now costs 26% less than it did two years ago, and lab-grown diamonds are now 74% cheaper than in 2020.

That’s not just a small dip. That’s a massive fall from grace.

And of course, the company that’s being hit hardest is… [drum roll]  my favorite corporation:

De Beers, the biggest name in diamonds, reported last month that it began 2024 with a huge $2bn stockpile of diamonds and had not managed to shift it by the year’s end. The company has cut production in its mines by 20%, and its owner, Anglo American, has put it up for sale.

Wait, wait…  [pause to let my howls of scornful laughter die down]

So their $2 billion has magically turned to… errrr what’s the price of gravel, again?

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of thuggish shitbirds, say I.  And how I really feel about all this?

For my earlier rants about them, go here and here.  Oh, and here.