As Black Friday 2023 sales kick off for the audio industry I thought this post would be appropriate. Tell me if any of these email headlines sound familiar:
- Sale Ends Today 👑 ALL Plugins by Grammy Winners
- Level up Your Mixes w/ This $99 Deal!
- Over 40 Plugins on Sale 🔊 Mastering Essentials
- Plugins Available On Our Rent To Own Plans
Deciphering The Fluff
Let’s decipher those subject lines to understand the subtext a bit:
- These plugins are used by Grammy winners so ipso facto you also will be a Grammy winner if you buy them. Your mixes will be imbued with the same june c’est quoi of these awarded engineers.
- Your mixes will automatically be better if you spend $99 with us.
- These are essential mastering plugins and you need them. Oh and what a coincidence they’re on sale.
- Can’t afford the plugin you’re drooling over? Not a worry, we want to take your money still and we’ll let you pay them off.
Subtext Is Everything
If you try to understand the subtext of marketing, something becomes clear: the logic is out of whack.
This sort of marketing isn’t evil but you need to understand what you are being persuaded to do. The products that these emails are selling are actually really great. I own some of them and use them to great effect.
The Takeaway: I’m not saying don’t buy a plugin, mic or guitar pedal (I just bought 8 in the last month), but work out what it is that provides a solution to an actual problem. When you see marketing and want to buy that bit of kit, ask yourself “Does this actually solve a problem for me?” or “Will this actually help me create more music”.
Maybe you need to go do an hour’s worth of trying out the plugins you have already or dusting off a bit of gear you haven’t used in a while. In reality, the return on that investment of time will be much higher.
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