Reply To: IK MixBox – $19.99

[Peter DeLegge]

On Brian said

Well Sampletank has been on the market for at least 20 years- I know because I have owned it for at least that long.  I think it was the first VST I ever bought, to use with Band-In-A-Box, before I got into regular DAWS.  I can understand why publishers retire stuff- especially for Apple, as they don’t really care about providing any backward software compatibility of their new hardware.  Totally off music topic, but (maybe?) on marketing.  I went to Walmart today for household essentials and saw a cardboard display for “Dunkin’” deodorant.  I would never have thought up donut scented deodorant.  There’s a challenge for you @Peter!  🍩🙋‍♂️

I also bought SampleTank with version 1. Back then, I loved it. I know I bought it a long time ago because I wrote songs about my son right before he was born and when he was an infant, and I used a bunch of SampleTank libraries to do so. To think, in those twenty-plus years they’ve only had 4 versions. So anyone who thinks I’m merely defending IK, that’s not at all it. I’m just stating the basics of brand management. For a small company, IK has a lot of brands, and many experts would say that they may have too many brands / product lines to manage effectively, considering their human and financial resources. Look at how long in it is between versions for SampleTank. I think version 1 to 2 was more than a decade, wasn’t it? Or am I thinking of 2 to 3? For a software product to go that long between major versions, it’s surprising. But then we do have other examples in this industry, like XLN’s AD2 and BFD3. But the top tier in the sample library world moves much faster than IK can keep up with at that pace. NI does a new major version every year, right? That’s what moves many of us to update Komplete every year (during the Summer sale!). For me, the least surprising IK product line for them to close out would be SampleTank, because they wait so long in between releases, and the product gets so far behind the competition — and the fact that they recently worked with a partner to sell it for a dollar. Of course, the product line isn’t focused on being state of the art,  but it always falls so far behind the competition that it’s no longer a serious player. It’s not going to be in the consideration set for the serious composer anymore. I mean, that’s fine. It’s clearly for the amateur market. But then you still have retailers offering the price for close to what superior competitors are asking, and the biggest sign that it’s not selling is IK selling through Humble Bundle — which is really a bit of a last resort for products that aren’t selling — for a buck. That would never happen to a successful product. Once a company lets that happen, that low price becomes the perceived value of that product line. So, even if they have ST 5 in the wings. It devalued that brand. I would never do it. I’m sure the brand or VP marketing rationalized it by thinking “we’re putting the product in a lot of hands and that establishes a marketing relationship with those consumers.” On one hand that’s true. but it does so much damage to that brand, it’s simply very unlikely to pay off and far more likely to harm the brand’s ability to command a fair price in the future.

With small companies, the reality is, very often, that they’re just not very strategic. They’re reactionary. But otherwise, overall, if a small company has a lot of brands — and even NI is a small company — and the new product takes off, brings in a great deal of revenue (relative to their other brands/product lines) and the margins are as good or better than other product lines, of course, they’re going to allocate more resources to that product / product line and that will likely mean that they will have to make cuts with lesser peforming product lines. Clearly, when they’re selling SampleTank for a buck, the entire SampleTank family of products is likely not their best performer or even a good performer. Right now, with their hardware products, new much more competitive lines like Pianoverse and their guitar line of software and hardware like Tonex, that looks clearly like where they’ll focus their resources. If ToneX is thriving, it would be an easy choice to allocate resources (human and financial) towards that product line than to invest them in an old, stagnant and neglected line that is seeing sales decline (which is clearly the case for the eliminated products and SampleTank overall) and would  need to be re-invigorated. Cutting the SampleTank product line extensions make me suspect that IK could be contemplating other really difficult decisions, like cutting the entire SampleTank line (again, they could go in the opposite direction and be looking to re-invigorate the brand). It appears rather obvious that they simply have too many brands and product lines to manage for their company size, and if they can’t afford to add the staff required to manage all of it, they need to make cuts or sell off the lines to other companies, if they’re valuable enough for that. It really seems incredibly obvious that what they’re doing is allocating their resources towards the new lines like Tonex, which, if sales are good and there’s a lot of potential for growth, is likely a very wise decision.

On a deodorant note. Back when I was actively writing my online publication on marketing and branding strategy, the PR agency that handle Axe deodorant contacted me, trying to persuade me to write about Axe body spray or some product line. The contact shared with me that the brand management team thought the product smelled awful, but it tested really well with teenage boys. But Dunkin’ Donuts scented deodorant? That’s different. I don’t know. But if there was Cinnabon, I’d be all over it! Haha.

Okay, I woke up in the middle of the night after dozing off really early, and what do I do? Write a long post on marketing and branding strategy. Isn’t that what everyone does? And yeah, I realize, most of you aren’t looking for that here! But for the few who find it interesting, here it is! This is basically the kind of writing I used to do on my marketing and branding strategy publication. Basically, it’s exactly it, only this is focused on the audio production market, which, as you can see, interests me a great deal.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

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