Album sales are down. Record labels are tanking – the only way they can make money these days is to sue middle-aged women whose kids illegally download a couple Britney Spears songs. More people listen to music than ever, and yet all labels can think about is how to suck  every goddamn penny out of every re-hashed and recycled sound-a-like band that they can until people are just fed up with it. We’ve come to and surpassed the corporate-arrogance tipping point long ago, and yet they keep piling up fresh insults, rubbing more salt into the wounds of the kids who fund their expense accounts.

White hot rage!

Nowadays, there are so many tools out there at your disposal as a musician that you don’t need a label, a marketing company, $20,000 to record an album, or half a million to promote it. You can rely on good old fashioned word of mouth. Except today it isn’t just word of mouth – it’s word of mouth on steroids. So why is it that bands who are still unsigned, have no shows booked, and have no major accomplishments to date are in such a hurry to place a gatekeeper between them and their fans? That’s right – I’m talking about deflecting me to a manager. I’m not trying to book you for a show, or sign you to a label. I just want to tell people that you probably haven’t reached out to before how great you are.

We’re not the oldest music site on the internet, or the most widely read. But in our few short years of existence we’ve amassed a fairly sizable following; we have a couple thousand people that visit our site on a regular basis and trust us to recommend music to them because we’re honest rock ‘n’ roll enthusiasts. So when all I want to do is tell the thousands of visitors we have per day on our website about how much I love a particular bands music, it’s not a bad idea to send a quick email saying “Thanks, here’s a .zip file with our music and a couple pictures to include in a post.” We’re not asking for anything besides what you’d gladly give a major magazine or blog, and the only difference is that we won’t embarrass you with stupid questions or try to psycho-analyze your music. And this isn’t just with unsigned  bands who should be taking every opportunity for free promotion they can get – the problem is even more intense with mainstream bands that I have adored for the last 10 years and given up gas money, food, clothing, and just about everything else I can think of just to buy their album or go to their shows. If you’re a mid-size band with loyal fans, you should either be responding to tweets directed at you, including an email address on your website, or (at the very least) making sure your record company is responding to blogs that request information (that is a separate blog post for a different day – my main man Oswald Hobbes could surely wilt your boner with horror stories about attempting to contact “punk rock” record labels to -*gasp*- promote their bands).

All I want to do is tell the small audience I have amassed in 2 years of blogging that I’ve found a cool band you’ve probably never heard of and that you probably should check out, and here’s why they are awesome. Simple.

So why on earth do you not respond to countless emails, tweets, phone calls? Not even, “Sorry, we’re not touring so we’re not doing interviews,” which I would accept as an answer. Not even “Sorry, but you’re not big enough to cover us.” The best fucking part is that sometimes bands do respond to us and they then tell us to email their manager.

I’m sorry. I told you I was going to do a 300 word write up on you on my blog, not a cover shoot for Rolling Stone followed up with an acoustic set with Hayley Williams and Travis Barker. Answer my 5 questions and take 10 minutes to email me about your upcoming shows and albums, and I will tell my small army of music fans that your show is worth attending.

The thing that pisses me off most is that there are bands that are successful, that have been around for a long time, that have never had legit mainstream success, but have always been SO close to breaking out and taking over the world. The one thing they’re inevitably missing is that final push to get them over the tipping point. The thing they’re missing is those lifelong ambassadors, the superfans who have been with them since the beginning and who are still fighting for them.

Why? Cause you shut down their fan club. You ignored their emails. You didn’t release an album or have any fan interaction for years on end, and you failed to be human.  You gave them press releases.

In “Third World” Timmy’s fantasy universe, the almost-big time bands would still interact with their fans. (Exhibit A: Hayley Williams of Paramore does this right. See also: Ted Leo, definitely among the world’s five greatest Tweeters.) If fucking Paramore has the time to interact with their fans amidst their grueling touring schedule, I’m pretty sure that four guys who just made it out of the basement last month can return an email without too much disruption. I’m not asking you to leave your girlfriend for me or invite me to your family reunion; just a quick response, some token participation to show that you take this shit seriously and that you actually want more people to hear your music.

The unsigned bands would stop fucking worrying about playing big time and answer my two or three emails and not forward me to a manager with a fucking Yahoo! email address because I mentioned the word ‘interview.’

I shit you not, this is an example of the kind of shit I have dealt with in the (recent) past:

Hey you guys are great! Heard your single somehow/someway and saw you live and thought it was even better! I’d love to do a quick write up, or maybe ask you a few questions about the band, and link to anything you’ve got in the works, and possibly put you in a larger round up of up and coming punk rock groups.
-”Third World” Timmy

The band’s response

Hey thanks for the kind words! We’re definitely excited to get something going on your site. Could you possibly contact our manager? He’s a better person to talk to about this stuff.

I’m sorry, a better person than the band themselves? What’s he going to do, exactly? Give me permission to ask you questions after I already asked you? Ask how much traffic our website gets? Find out if we’ll hand out flyers for you? I really just don’t fucking get what else he could answer for me that you can’t answer in a 10 sentence email. The manager’s response, from a Yahoo email address:

Thank you for expressing interest in our band. The reason behind you contacting me is that I handle all media including any kind of interview. The band is excited to be on your website, and feel free to contact them to further your write up of the band. If you have any questions or concerns contact me at your convenience.

Gee, thanks. As soon as you start putting more layers of abstraction between yourselves and your fans, you look stupid. (Hey, guys – Oswald here. Just wanted to point out that not only is the manager’s response superfluous and high-handed ["feel free" to talk to the band? I'm not trying to set up an interview with Fidel Castro over here], it’s also retarded. Since I don’t know what would possess an unknown band to waste money on a manager, I’ll go out on a limb and guess that it’s because you want a veneer of professionalism and class to impress people. This band obviously chose the wrong dude.)

Another question I’ve been asked many times when I’ve expressed interest in sponsoring young bands struggling to make a name for themselves: “So, what does this mean you want to sponsor the band? What do they have to do exactly?” My response: “We want to give them free stuff. That is all. Maybe let us snap some photos of the band while they’re on stage. That’s about it.”

98% of the bands I’ve been in contact with are awesome. This isn’t a perfect world, and not everyone knows what the rules are so, in an attempt to appear as professional as possible, they’ve made themselves look like assholes. Next time you’re trying to negotiate a record deal, or a sticky PR situation, by all means consult your manager, or your PR person. If you need a tour planned, by all means, a Tour Manager is the way to go. But for fucks sake, we’re basically music fans who spend a bit of free time writing about bands we like. (Oswald again: I think what Tim is trying to say here, through his thick red screen of rage, is this: Act like a person. It’s that simple. We are a few guys that work our asses off running a blog that aims to share the gospel of rock with people on the internet; we’re not slimy industry insiders. Before you give us the brush-off, take a look at our site. Spend a few minutes to understand what we do here, and the amount of space we give away – this is called “free promotion” – to up-and-coming bands that we find by going to shows and scouring the internet. If you honestly don’t want to be a part of it, then say that; we won’t get offended. But have the decency to check us out and then respond like normal people instead of turning us away like we’re diseased and it’s catching.)

I’ll close this out with a quick passage of what I read from Seth Godin’s interview on Derek Sivers’ blog

“Get over the idea that your success is equated with selling the right to listen, or selling control over when people listen. Relinquish the opportunity to make money by controlling who can listen and when. That’s gone. It’s over. It would be like a bakery selling the right to sniff the fresh bread or a wine maker selling the right to look at the cool label. It’s now a public good, something you see as you walk by.What you can sell, what you better be able to sell, is intimacy. It’s interactions in public. Souvenirs. Limited things of value. Experiences. Memories. People will pay for those things, IF: your art is actually great and if you make it possible for them to buy them. If it’s great, let it go. You’ll do fine. If it’s not great, figure out what great is and do that.”

Also: don’t give a middle-finger to people who are trying to help you; don’t be arrogant. You’re not Fall Out Boy yet, and with a shitty attitude, you never will be.

OMG! I found a band I’ve never heard of that I might like.

I want to take their music with me and listen to them, but their MySpace only has 4 songs, and their full album is $9.99 on iTunes…

These are the kinds of thoughts I have everyday when I sort through all the music on MySpace, iTunes, ReverbNation, Twitter, and everywhere else you hear of new bands. 98% of the time I either disregard a band for aesthetic reasons or I listen to one song for 20 seconds and then pass on them. So – what is your only guaranteed shot at winning me over as a fan?

In the words of Martin Atkins:

Free is the new black.

Give a special album away for free–but not entirely free. If you want to know the best way to win over a “connector,” give them your album for free by collecting their email address for your mailing list, and then send them a free download link. The music will always be on their computer, and you’ll always have a way to get in touch with them to remind me of how awesome/nice/talented you are later.

It shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be your full length studio album that you spent all your money on.

It can be one single, a few b-sides, rare songs, acoustic songs, or even some bootleg live recordings.

If you’re just getting started you need all the fans you can get, and the value you can get from them is their email or contact information to tell them when you have a live show coming up.

I Fight Dragons did this–now they’re shows are jammed with people

Kid You’ll Move Mountains did this–now they’re getting radio and television airplay.

Trent Reznor did this–now I can’t even get into the presale for one of his shows.

Mathletes did this–now I’m bound by blood to go to their shows (as soon as they update their tours on MySpace.)

Empires did it–And they’re one of my favorite local acts that I still buy music from.

Enter Shikari did it–They’ve got over 1,000,000 plays on their MySpace.

The Swellers did it on Reverbnation–and now AssaultBLOG is officially a Swellers superfan site

The inner accountant in the head of all musicians is probably thinking…

Why won’t people pay the $10 for our full length album? Doesn’t anyone want to help out a small struggling band? Is it too much to ask to pay for something you enjoy that took lots of hard work? We don’t want fans that won’t support our $10 album.

If you’re just starting out,  you don’t have what people in the advertising business refer to as “brand equity.” No one knows you.

They know all the shit they hear on the radio.

They know all the drivel that iTunes puts up on their featured section.

They know the bullshit they occasionally see on what used to be MTV.

The only advantage you have over the bands that are getting heavy airplay is that you’re giving it away for free. Google does it and crushes everyone because what they have rocks. If your music rocks, and you can give some of it away for free, you can bet that you’ll get more people at your shows, more people buying your merch, and with a few years of hard work you’ll have a loyal fan-base that will kill baby unicorns for you if you ask them to. Think of your free album as your trial run – if you want the full upgrade, pay the price by buying the full length album, going to our shows, and buying our merch.

It works in every other industry. Why not the music industry?

It’s not too often I get an email from Twitter telling me I have a new person with a high follower count following me. When they do, I tend to look into what they’re all about on their profile.

9/10 times it’s someone who follows twice as many people as they have following them. 10/10 times said person is a “social media power user”.

I’ve been experimenting for months with Twitter. As a proof of concept, I setup my personal account as my “garbage” account where I follow everyone who follows me back. Lo and behold, I  amassed 2,700 followers of which I follow 2,685 back. I don’t read the news feed, I don’t respond to messages, I don’t care about anything that any one of my fellow “Twitter power users” have to say.

After three months with my two twitter accounts I have discovered two major points which I think will help shut everyone up who brags about their twitter follower count.

• If you can’t mobilize your followers for feedback, links, retweets, or an opinion: they’re worthless.
• Twitter is a vehicle for word of mouth, but offline word of mouth is always better than online word of mouth.

Stop worrying so much about how many, and think more in terms of quality. My meager 700 followers on the Assault Official Twitter account give me better feedback and more interaction than my 3,000 followers on my garbage account. Twitter “friends” or “fans” are way more valuable than a mass of zombie followers.

Have a different opinion? Leave it in the comments.

If you’re struggling to crack 100 fans or even 1,000 on your Facebook or fan page, or Twitter account, or RSS subscribers, then you’ll be glad to know that sometimes 1,000 TRUE Fans is all it takes to make it. I’d like to ask what all of Assault‘s RSS subscribers and newsletter subscribers are up to then because Mr. 51% and I should be rich!

A memorable quote from the same 1,000 TRUE Fans article:

I’ve been scouring the literature for any references to the True Fan number. Suck.com co-founder Carl Steadman had theory about microcelebrities. By his count, a microcelebrity was someone famous to 1,500 people. So those fifteen hundred would rave about you. As quoted by Danny O’Brien, “One person in every town in Britain likes your dumb online comic. That’s enough to keep you in beers (or T-shirt sales) all year.”

The article touches upon something I discuss with freelance clients and friends trying to monetize their startup businesses is the success of the micro payments, or “micro-patronage” business model where the payment is small enough where it’s as if it’s a stick of Wrigley’s gum at the super market, and more of an impulse buy than a thought-through purchase.

Another business model that’s briefly discussed is another one now popularized by the somewhat mainstream company Topspin. Unlike the limited choice of chunky spaghetti vs. the non-chunky spaghetti sauce, it’s well known that having 40 different options of sauce is way better than just having two styles is better for the average consumer–hence the, “endless options of chunky spaghetti” method where you offer endless choices of a product all the way up to getting a guest mention in the liner notes of a song or a guest appearance on the next album.

One other inspiring tidbit:

In 2004 author Lawrence Watt-Evans used this model to publish his newest novel. He asked his True Fans to collectively pay $100 per month. When he got $100 he posted the next chapter of the novel. The entire book was published online for his True Fans, and then later in paper for all his fans. He is now writing a second novel this way. He gets by on an estimated 200 True Fans because he also publishes in the traditional manner — with advances from a publisher supported by thousands of Lesser Fans.  Other authors who use fans to directly support their work are Diane Duane, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, and Don Sakers. Game designer Greg Stolze employed a similar True Fan model to launch two pre-financed games. Fifty of his True Fans contributed seed money for his development costs.

Read the rest of the 1,000 True Fans article here.

I recently wrote this post as a guest blogger on, How To Start a Clothing Company, for my friend Jonathan Kruse of Mediocre Clothing, and figured I’d re-post it here on my site for anyone who’s looking for a Lehman’s explanation of SEO, or search engine optimization.

One of the major things that has helped me with my t-shirt brand, Assault, since it’s inception in late February of last year was optimizing my site for Google and other search engines. I’ve worked as a SEO consultant and developer the past 7 or 8 years for various companies, and our list of clients contain some of the biggest names and brands in the world.

I’m not going to add to the gigantic list of of great SEO resources and basic SEO 101 strategies that you can easily find all over the web. Instead, I’m going to go over a few secrets that I have developed specifically for my online store, Assault Apparel, that will help those of you who are like me and don’t have any sort of money to use for marketing and PPC like some of the other t-shirt shops around town.

Assault's URL structure with CSS disabled

Think like a robot – Link Text, Title Text, Content Keywords, Landing Pages

A search engine spider uses a lot of information about your site to determine your search engine rankings. Using links with system text pertaining to your search term is a big factor. Using landing pages with specific keywords in your page title, as well as throughout the text in your actual page is another thing that gives you proper keyword density pertaining to the page titles.

Disable your sites’ stylesheet to get an idea of what a search engine is seeing when it comes to your page. The link text and text position on the site is very important. Be sure to have your links near the very top of the page, and to carve out your sites’ links by putting rel=”nofollow” on your anchor tags associated with pages you do not want spidered. This cuts down on the number of links on the page, thus giving you more weight on your pertinent links.

My links to the right all use the word t-shirts as well as link to my landing pages with the same keywords sprinkled throughout the content. I would say that about 2% of your pages content should contain your keywords. Anymore than 2% is overkill.

Think like a human – Keyword Choices

One of the most important tools I have used to determine naming conventions for my pages, shirts, and images is the Google Keyword Tool. Everyone uses this tool, and everyone who’s good at SEO is following the standards as laid out by Google in their SEO Starter Guide pdf, but what most places aren’t doing is choosing the high volume search keywords that aren’t being target by everyone.

For example, you’re never going to show up in the first 10 results for the keyword t-shirts, or tshirts, or even shirts. If you’re just starting out, there’s no point in trying to compete for this word. It’s already dominated. The words you should be trying to get in the top ten for, are other searches with the word, “t-shirt” in them. Assault‘s top keywords besides searches related to “Assault” are things like

• zombie t-shirt
• band apparel
• graphic t-shirts
• skull t-shirts
• rocker apparel
• chicago t-shirts
• band shirts

You get the idea. These are the keywords you need to use throughout your internal and external links to your pages as well as your actual physical file names. The way you work your way in the top ten is to carve out your niche in other t-shirt related searches and over time you will finally begin to sneak into the top results for other one word searches. Currently we’re between 5 and 9 for the keyword “Assault“, and we never even used to get into the top ten.

Register your brand with local search results

We registered our business as a local business with Google and we’ve seen a significant increase in traffic from “chicago t-shirts” related searches. This is what gets you in the local results up near the top of the search results page.

Link backs are incredibly important to move your site up

The number one thing that determines your page rank on search results is link backs. (This isn’t a proven fact, but we’ve seen our best results from a precision link back campaign) This means if you want to get in the top results for t-shirt related searches, you need to start exchanging links with popular websites, and sites that show up in the search results for t-shirt searches.

A couple of my tips/tricks to get high quality link backs

• Start an Ebay Blog. There aren’t any rel=”nofollow” on your links back to your own site. This is the best quality link juice you can get
• Flickr Photos with links back to your site. This also gets you top quality linkback text to your specific site
• Provide the exact linkback text to your link exchange partners so that it uses proper link text pertaining to your site.
• Forum links – participate in relevant forums and generally your links will not have the rel=”nofollow” on them.
• Start a Public Facebook Fan page. These are showing up in search results now as well.

Myths and irrelevant techniques

While everything I’ve said are examples of things that have worked for me, I should precede all of these things with this statement:

Google’s search algorithm is constantly changing. Last year it changed over 300 times, and no one is 100% how it actually works. Don’t fall for the companies out there selling expensive “black magic” to get your site in top results. Most SEO boutiques are full of shit. I’ve done SEO campaigns for small and big time clients, and independent SEO boutiques trying to scam business off of them gave our SEO work an F grade… no joke. Be wary of SEO marketing companies. There are about 50 techniques, and everyone is doing them. Any SEO company is probably on the verge of spamming if they’re overpromising results.

Google, Search Engine Watch, and the Search Engine Round Table are about the only 3 places I really trust.

Google does not use meta keywords, some search engines do, but I wouldn’t waste too much time on this.

Loading up 30 character file names and 40 word alt descriptions on images is a waste of time and resources. “SEO Experts” like Acronym may tell you to do this, but the time wasted doing this could be used somewhere else and you may get flagged as trying to game Google.  While it is important to use alt tags, and to name images appropriately, overdoing this by using 40 word alt tags, and 30+ character names for your images is a bit of a waste of time and you run the risk of being flagged as loading your image and alt tags.

Don’t use hidden text to fool Google. They’ll find out and you’ll get penalized.

Make an XML sitemap and submit it to Google, and update it constantly.

Don’t overdo keywords in the title. Be specific, but don’t be a total spammer.

Use Google Analytics, and setup E-Commerce tracking. You’ll be amazed at the value of the information you get from this tool. I get 70% of my sales from organic search results, and plenty of that comes from Google Image search related to finding my product images with quality names and alt tags. Like I mentioned before, it’s important to use proper, specific names, but overdoing file names and alt tags is a unneccesary.

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If you liked this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed, follow me on twitter, and don’t forget to check out the Assault BLOG and online t-shirt store.

In the past few weeks I’ve taken over responsibility of our Twitter account from Craig with the goal of networking with as many people as possible in our industry whether it’s bands, t-shirt bloggers, designers, and web celebrities. Thankfully there are quite a few lists of designers, and t-shirt bloggers who are on twitter and there are even great utilities like Mr Tweet that help you find friends to follow in your industry. The one list I have yet to see (and maybe it’s cause I just didn’t look hard enough.) Is a list of bands that actively participate in Twitter. This is my attempt to list all the ones I have found so far:

The Glitch Mob
16Volt
CombiChrist
Words Now Heard – Also known as Chris from Merchspin
Bella Morte
Henry Rollins
Genitorturers
Dizmas
Sean from Harvey Danger
Atomic Love Bombs
Seven Day Sonnet
Bloc Party
Jimmy Eat World
Colin of The Decemberists
Jeff Finley
John Roderick
Band of Horses
Brian Eno
Andrew Bird
Bjork
Bonde Do Role
The Cardinals
Questo of the Roots
Kristin Hersh
Shaquille O’Neal – That guy from Shazaam, the genie.
Coldplay
Common
Rivers Cuomo
Dananananaykroyd
Duke Special
Snoop Dogg
Funeral For A Friend
Josh Haden
Hadouken
Calvin Harris
Imogen Heap
Tay Zonday
Hot Hot Heat
Dave Matthews
Muse
Oasis
Amanda Palmer (The Dresden Dolls)
Pearl Jam
Jack Penate
Peter, Bjorn and John
The Raconteurs
My Brightest Diamond
Q-tip
Jay Reatard
Trent Reznor
Soulwax
Britney Spears
Regina Spektor
Guy Sebastiam
Sonic Youth
The Streets
Willie Nelson
The Subways
The Teenagers
Ani Difranco
Tokyo Police Club
Timbaland
Jason from Mates Of State
Roger McGuinn / Lead singer of The Byrds
Tom Waits
Lil Wayne
Weezer
Patrick Wilson
The Wombats
We Are The Physics
Broken Records
Nick Cave
Roots Manuva
Kanye West
Boom Bip
Robert Smith (The Cure)
AC/DC
Erykah Badu
Lily Allen
Port O’Brien
Ghostface Killah
Gnarls Barkley
Bondo do Role
Chris T-T
MC Hammer
Ocean Reid
Jonathan Coulton
D.A. of Chester French
Manchester Orchestra
Cathi Bruns
Razorlight
Air Traffic
Beastie Boys
Mos Def
Sean Lennon
Sigur Ros
Panic at the Disco
Interpol
Death Cab For Cutie
Anberlin
Bad Religion
Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear
Dave Allen of Gang Of Four
Ben Kweller
John Vanderslice
Ingrid Michaelson
Wendy and Lisa
Yoko Ono
John Tesh
Soulja Boy
The Cab

Thanks to these guys for helping with the list:

• Musicians you should follow on twitter, and some you shouldn’t
• Gen from Genitorturers

Seven Day Sonnet @ The Fuel Room in Libertyville, IL

After going to a great show this weekend by a local Chicago band called Seven Day Sonnet, I realized a few mistakes that all indie bands make, that they should avoid at all costs. Besides having actual talent, of course, there are a few other things that I think you should or should not do:

Don’t Sell T-Shirts

Nearly all the bands at the show had merchandise of some sort that I don’t think anyone would have bought unless it had a “Budweiser” logo on the side of it and was drinkable. Despite probably being broke, all the bands at the show were still trying to sell some sort of apparel. Now I know that the company I run is geared towards “rockers” and t-shirts so shouldn’t I be trying to peddle my shit to them? I suppose that is true yes, but if I was in a band, and was working some shitty dead end job, there’s no way I’d hand my hard-earned money over to some t-shirt printer to put my logo on some silly hanes beefy t-shirt. Save your money, stay away from the shirts for now.

Don’t Use Friend Blaster

Most bands run their own PR these days, primarily through MySpace. As much as I hate MySpace, it can be used for good, but most of the time new bands use it to spam the HELL out of everyone who’s got a public profile.

I understand it’s tempting to use those Friend Blaster programs when you first start, simply because you can’t get anyone to listen to you, but there’s no quicker way to get everyone to ignore you than to yell louder and louder. As an alternative, I recommend using Myspace as an outlet for networking with other bands, as well as to act as a vehicle for your fans/friends to contact you as opposed to a way to spam anyone who has ever friended you.

$200 bucks towards an identity can go a long way

If you want to look a bit more legit, buy yourself a cheap domain at Godaddy, and try out a service like Crowd Spring to help you with a logo and a simple design. $200 dollars there will get you a lot further than $200 bucks on hanes beefy t’s. If you have enough money leftover, use it to get the best instruments/equipment, not some crappy apparel that only your mom and groupies (girlfriends?) want to wear.

Use your time and money creatively/wisely

I know that it seems weird to defy the predefined rules of rock, but you can party once you’re headlining your first venue. For now, you should try running your band like a business. That means calling up local venues, and putting yourself out there.

Have a simple demo CD, (or better yet a cheap USB stick loaded with music) and make sure to only give it to people who have expressed some sort of interest in your band.

“Bravery is all about people being willing to take a chance on themselves and their ideas: Are you willing to put yourself out there and risk seeing something you invented die?”

-Seth Godin

You’re going to have to put yourself out there, and email venues and other reputable rock periodicals. You’re going to have to stalk the local House of Blues owner, but putting yourself out there is going to pay off ten fold as opposed to handing out flyers outside of the local rock venues.

Strangely enough, I’m sure you can find some good PR people to friend on MySpace–Send them a friendly, personal message and see what they think of your band.

Assault custom guitar pick

No flyers, try custom guitar picks

One of the best things we’ve ever done for Assault was to giveaway free guitar picks with our logo on them. People are alot less likely to throw  those away, and they’re alot cooler than some stupid flyer. Surprisingly, custom printed guitar picks are cheap. I’m willing to bet if you spend about $200 bucks like we did you can get around 1000 picks and they cost about the same thing as a 5×7 post card. (Around .18 cents)

Do you know why we sometimes find ourselves excitedly buying things we don’t really need?  I came across this outline from a book by Dan Ariely called, “Predictably Irrational” that had some incredibly insightful information about people and why we at times seem to act completely irrational. It covers giving away  things for free, putting high price points on products to create demand, and even the benefit of arousal!

The Truth About Relativity

• When Williams-Sonoma introduced bread machines, sales were slow. When they added a “deluxe” version that was 50% more expensive, they started flying off the shelves; the first bread machine now appeared to be a bargain
• When contemplating the purchase of a $25 pen, the majority of subjects would drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7
• When contemplating the purchase of a $455 suit, the majority of subjects would not drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7

The Fallacy of Supply and Demand

A good portion of what you may have learned in your high school economics class may not necessarily be true. By piggy backing on other brands and setting a unique price point and targeting a higher class of consumer you may find that you can put yourself in the same class as the greats:

Savador Assael, the Pearl King, single-handedly created the market for black pearls, which were unknown in the industry before 1973. His first attempt to market the pearls was an utter failure; he didn’t sell a single pearl. So he went to his friend Harry Winston, and had Winston put them in the window of his 5th Avenue store with an outrageous price tag attached. Then he ran full page ads in glossy magazines with black pearls next to diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Soon, black pearls were considered precious.

Supply and demand doesn’t necessarily pertain to products either, we’ve all seen that club that’s got a line out the door every Friday Night. (that’s probably devoid of any chicks on the inside.) The illusion of demand creates demand.

The Cost of Zero Cost

When we first started Assault, we charged for shipping. After realizing that that was a huge part of what kept people from buying our product we decided it would be good to try giving our visitors free shipping to simplify the process. We were amazed to see that getting hit with a shipping cost was a huge stopping point for most consumers and we’ve never looked back. Ariely noticed similar things with some of the tests that he tried on students:

• Ariely, Shampanier, and Mazar conducted an experiment using Lindt truffles and Hershey’s Kisses.
  • When a truffle was $0.15 and a Kiss was $0.01, 73% of subjects chose the truffle and 27% the Kiss
  • When a truffle was $0.14 and a Kiss was free, 69% chose the kiss and 31% the truffle
  • According to standard economic theory, the price reduction shouldn’t lead to any behavior change (relative price and expected pleasure should be equal between the two experiments)
• The same experiments were conducted with Kisses going for $0.02, $0.01, and free…and free again made a huge difference.
• Ariely’s theory is that for normal transactions, we consider both upside and downside. But when something is free, we forget about the downside.
  • “Free” makes us perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is
    • Humans are loss-averse; when considering a normal purchase, loss-aversion comes into play
    • But when an item is free, there is no visible possibility of loss
• Ariely conducted a variation, where people were offered a choice between items.
  • He gave kids (and students) 3 Kisses and offered to trade 1 Kiss for a small Snickers, and 2 Kisses for a large Snickers.
  • The subjects overwhelmingly chose the large Snickers (which is rational, given the weights of the candies)
  • When he instead offered to trade 1 Kiss for a large Snickers, or let the person take a small Snickers for free, the subjects overwhelming went for the free offer.
  • The zero price effect applies even when money is not involved.
• In the real world, this effect was demonstrated by Amazon’s free shipping.
  • After Super Saver shipping was introduced, Amazon saw sales increases everywhere except for France
  • It turned out that the French division offered 1 franc ($0.20) pricing instead of free pricing.
  • When this was changed to free, France saw the same sales increases as elsewhere

The Influence of Arousal

Another astonishing piece of information was the interviews of people when they were “sober” and after in which they had “aroused” themselves. People’s minds  function entirely differently when under the influence of… well ya know. (We didn’t have to tell you that sex sells. That’s why our site is absent of pictures of Craig and myself on product pages…)

Ariely and Loewenstein conducted an experiment on Berkeley undergrads (Ariely tried to do this at MIT, but couldn’t get the necessary permissions).  They asked them a series of questions.  Then they had the undergraduates stimulate themselves to a state of sexual arousal, and asked them to answer the same set of questions.

• Some of the results from their experiment:
  • Can you imagine having sex with a 60-year-old woman
    • Sober: 7%
    • Aroused: 23%
  • Could you enjoy having sex with someone you hated?
    • Sober: 53%
    • Aroused: 77%
  • Is just kissing frustrating?
    • Sober: 41%
    • Aroused: 69%
  • Would you slip a woman a drug to increase the chance she’d have sex with you?
    • Sober: 5%
    • Aroused: 26%
  • Would you use a condom even if you were afraid that a woman might change her mind while you went to get it?
    • Sober: 86%
    • Aroused: 60%

A few other interesting pieces of information

In 210 BC, Xiang Yu led an army against the Ch’in Dynasty.  While his troops slept, he burned his ships and smashed all the cooking pots.  He explained to his troops that they had to either fight their way to victory or die.  His troops won 9 consecutive battles.  Eliminating options improved the focus of his troops. We feel compelled to preserve options, even at great expense, even when it doesn’t make sense.

Companies that try to market based on social norms (“like a good neighbor…”) but fail to follow through (e.g. imposing nuisance fees) end up in a worse position. Consumers take personal offense when a relationship framed as a social exchange turns out to be a market one.

If you think you need to play rough, don’t waste money making your company the fuzzy feel-good choice. State what you give and what you expect in return–it’s just business.

A salary alone will not motivate people to risk their lives. Police officers, firefighters, soldiers–they don’t die for their weekly pay. It’s the social norms–pride in their profession and a sense of duty–that will motivate them to give up their lives and health.

Money, as it turns out, is very often the most expensive way to motivate people. Social norms are not only cheaper, but often more effective as well.

Some of this information is invaluable to you when you’re planning the little things on your site or company that you may have never thought of. Free shipping, pictures of pretty girls wearing your product, offering coupons everywhere you can, picking your price point–all of these irrational behaviors have alot to do with the way humans have been wired weather it’s social pressure, or some sort of marketing pressure. I highly recommend reading the book outline of Dan Ariely’s book, checking out his official website, or go look at the Predictably Irrational website.

Feel free to arouse yourselves and go buy some of our shirts.

Just the other day I did a blog post entitled, “5 Resources & Tips to help get your T-Shirt company off the ground.” In it I gave a few tips on how we got our store’s traffic flowing after getting our site online and getting our shirts printed. What I did not go over, however, was all the steps in between deciding to start a company, and actually opening our doors to the public. (Our virtual doors, albeit)

As some of you know, at Assault we rarely push other peoples’ products because we want you buying our stuff–that is unless we fully endorse what we are pimping. For instance, the Heelys that I’m wearing on my feet right now.

With that I’m happy to point you in the direction of an e-book from Fuel For Design called How to Start a Clothing Line. If you’re someone who’s been wanting to break free from the man, and start your own clothing line this is a great resource to get you started.

After a few long weeks months of starting of a business (and all the complications that go with it), I have finally made myself available to come here and post. I’m not good with technology. I’m not good with marketing. I don’t know what it means when Timmy yells at me for trying to transfer him a 4.7MB .bmp file. And I certainly am not good with blogs. BUT, I am good at running a business and its operations. Timmy sucks at that stuff. But he’s good at what I’m bad at. Unfortunately, Timmy is good at 4 things whilst I’m only good at 2. I’m mainly making this post to appease him, so if you were stupid enough to read this far, I recommend that you stop reading now.

With Assault, my main job is going to be the handling of orders. I don’t know how I got lucky enough to get this task, but I did. In doing this, my goal is to implement a system that will allow me to leverage my skill sets thus, making me more efficient. Assault is an enterprise that cares. With direct lines of communication to the owners, we have enabled our customers to communicate directly with us….and this has NOTHING to do with the fact that Timmy and I are the only employees. This simple fact is a result of us streamlining our organization to a horizontal structure. We want to get things done. We want to think outside the box. We want to be dynamic. We want to synergize. We are the next generation company. We are building a client-centric brand….oh ya, we also wanna sell some shirts and stick it to the man. Now watch this cool video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5zRe8wa4pM