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rrrofthevale · 4 years

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Prince of Flies (A Really Long Bullseye Playlist)

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Mostly inspired by TV, a little inspired by comics, all out of character. I hope it’s fun for one of the other five Bullseye fans out there in the world, at least. Catch top 10 banger “IN MY HANDS ANYTHING IS A WEAPON” on my album dropping Labor Day.

↓↓ See Below for Tracklist ↓↓

001 / Aesop Rock / Gun for the Whole Family

002 / Kid Cudi / Internal Bleeding

003 / Son Lux / Yesterday's Wake

004 / Type O Negative / I Don't Wanna Be Me

005 / Baroness / Borderlines

006 / Keaton Henson (Behaving) / False Alarms

007 / Ghost / From the Pinnacle to the Pit

008 / Jack Off Jill / Fear of Dying

009 / The Smiths / Barbarism Begins at Home

010 / Nine Inch Nails / Discipline

011 / Meg Myers / I Really Want You to Hate Me

012 / The Smashing Pumpkins / Bullet with Butterfly Wings

013 / Nicole Dollanganger / Flowers of Flesh and Blood

014 / clipping. / Shooter

015 / Roisin Murphy / Ramalama (Bang Bang)

016 / How to Destroy Angels / Too Late, All Gone

017 / Puscifer / Undertaker (Renholder Mix)

018 / Youth Code / For I Am Cursed

019 / Nine Inch Nails / Ruiner

020 / Have a Nice Life / Bloodhail

021 / A Perfect Circle / Pet

022 / Chelsea Wolfe / Feral Love

023 / HEALTH / NEW COKE

024 / clipping. / Club Down

025 / HEALTH / Hurt Yourself

026 / Garbage / #1 Crush

027 / Nine Inch Nails / Me, I'm Not

028 / The National / Cherry Tree

029 / Arca / Reverie

030 / FKA Twigs / Hide

031 / The Bravery / Split Me Wide Open

032 / STARSET / The Order

033 / Depeche Mode / Wrong

034 / Killing Joke / Love Like Blood

035 / Emarosa / Say Hello to the Bad Guy

036 / Lady Gaga / Judas

037 / Iggy Pop / Neighborhood Threat

038 / Royksopp / Rong

039 / Built to Spill / I Would Hurt a Fly

040 / Depeche Mode / Personal Jesus

041 / The Blood Brothers / Metronomes

042 / Daughter / Smother

043 / Jungle / Son of a Gun

044 / Sneaker Pimps / Black Sheep

045 / Depeche Mode / Behind the Wheel

046 / Soap&Skin / Sugarbread

047 / Cage / Eating Its Way Out of Me

048 / Nina Simone / Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

049 / Sevdaliza / Do You Feel Real

050 / Talking Heads / Psycho Killer

051 / The Doors / People Are Strange

052 / Tweaker / Movement of Fear

053 / Lauren Bousfield / Somerset Blather On and On

054 / Radiohead / Myxomatosis

055 / Muse / The Handler

056 / Nirvana / Smells Like Teen Spirit

057 / Man Man / King Shiv

058 / Mister Heavenly / Bronx Sniper

059 / Iron & Wine / Your Fake Name Is Good Enough for Me

060 / The Dillinger Escape Plan / One of Us Is the Killer

061 / Queens of the Stone Age / I Appear Missing

062 / King Woman / Burn

063 / Love and Rockets / Holiday on the Moon

064 / Giles Corey / No One Is Ever Going to Want Me

065 / Blonde Redhead / For the Damaged

066 / Melvins / Pearl Bomb

067 / Joy Division / Shadowplay

068 / Concrete Blonde / The Beast

069 / Gold Key / Creep in Slowly

070 / Radiohead / Fitter Happier

071 / Placebo / Meds

072 / Glass Animals / Mama's Gun

073 / IAMX / Animal Impulses

074 / The Stooges / Search and Destroy

075 / The Afghan Whigs / When We Two Parted

076 / Pixies / There Goes My Gun

077 / Leprous / The Price

078 / Nicole Dollanganger / Alligator Blood

079 / Brand New / Luca

080 / Cursive / What's Gotten Into You?

081 / Sevdaliza / Oh My God

082 / Thou / Something in the Way

083 / Have a Nice Life / Cropsey

#daredevil #bullseye #benjamin poindexter #playlist #i don't know what this is or where it came from #just over here vomiting garbage everywhere #i can't even imagine what kind of music he'd listen to #JUST the beginning of the album version of 'meat is murder' if i had to hazard a guess #I'll do liner notes for this eventually but alas i am tired #illustration is the cover of Bullseye 2

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candy-floss-crazy · 3 years

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Shooting Galleries, Tips To Win At The Funfair

Most people will have visited a fairground. Played on the games and lost, and been absolutely convinced the games are cons. The truth is, the vast majority aren't. They are set up to be difficult, and favour the operator. But they are not set up as charities, the operator needs to take more than he pays out. Bear in mind the following; According to the National Lottery website, the odds of winning the major prizes are: Lotto jackpot: 1 in 45,057,474. EuroMillions jackpot: 1 in 139,838,160 Yet no one considers them to be con tricks. Before we look at shooting galleries there is one thing to understand. The size of the prize on offer is directionally proportional to the difficulty of winning it. Look, if a giant teddy costs the operator £20 wholesale, he needs to earn at least £20 to cover the cost of it. But it doesn't stop there. There is also the costs of transporting the game to the fair, insuring it, paying for it, paying the ground rent, the diesel for the power generator, ammunition for the guns, maintenance and so on. Realistically before giving out a £20 prize, I would be looking at a minimum of £100 takings to ensure I actually earn something. So if it's £2 per game, you would expect on average to try 50 times before winning. Pellets Or Corks There are two main types of shooting galleries. The traditional air rifles firing pellets, and those firing corks. When it comes to corks there isn't much help we can offer, use the gun like a shotgun, point it in the general direction and hope for the best . There is a reason that no army in the world uses cork shaped bullets, and it's this, corks are not aerodynamic, they start to tumble in random directions as soon as they leave the barrel of the gun. That's why the army uses, well, bullet shaped bullets. Now, on the pellet shooters there are some tips that can increase your chances to win, so let's look at some of the myths you think are stopping you winning. The Barrel Is Bent Erm, no it really isn't. Contrary to popular belief a bent barrel doesn't make the gun fire somewhere different to where it is aimed. It just doesn't fire at all as the pellet will jam in the barrel. The gun below with a bent barrel does actually fire around corners, but it a special weapon built especially to do that. How To Shoot Around Corners The Sights Are Off Again no. Well, some probably are, but here is the thing. Military snipers are some of the best marksmen in the world. They spend hour upon hour firing thousands of rounds to hone their skills. They do however tend to use a personalised weapon. When they go into battle, they use the actual gun they have been practising with all this time. The reason being that guns can have minor differences in aim caused by manufacturing tolerances, scope mounts etc. The sniper will spend time zeroing in his/her weapon to their own specifications. They also tend to be set up for a particular range. What you wouldn't expect them to do, is pick up a totally strange weapon and fire with the same accuracy. So to win on a funfair shooter, you are going to have to do two things. The first is have more than one attempt. You will need at least one to sort the aim out. Another major issue is that most people don't actually know how to use the open sights on a rifle. Sure they watched all the war movies, and in their own minds they are all Carlos Hathcock, (A top US sniper in case you didn't know, his life story can be found in this great article), but they really don't know how to shoot. We can usually tell if a player knows how to handle a gun from his second shot. The first one might be off, but the following shots are usually on target. Aiming Off They do this by using a technique called aiming off. What you do is take a shot at the bullseye, or whatever the target is. You then pause to see where it has impacted. Lets say for a moment that the shot hit 5mm above where you aimed and 10mm to the right. What you would do on your following shots is aim off by the same amount, ie. aim 5mm lower and 10mm to the left. This should bring you back on target. The picture below should illustrate the method; How To Use The Aiming Off Technique Using this will give you a reasonable amount of accuracy and vastly improve your chances of winning on shooting galleries. Read the full article

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projectalbum · 6 years

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First 100 down. 96. “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” 97. “Ben Folds Live,” 98. “Songs for Silverman,” 99. “Way to Normal,” 100. “Stems and Seeds,” 101. “Lonely Avenue,” 102. “So There” by Ben Folds

I owe Nick Hornby for the introduction.

The High Fidelity author’s collection of essays on pop music, Songbook, made the case for Ben Folds’ contributions to the canon in a chapter on “Smoke.” Hornby writes so persuasively, in a deceptively casual style that I’m perhaps a bit too pretentious to ever approach with my own pop culture writing. There’s a lot of music covered in his book that I failed to investigate on my own. But that particular passage must have triggered something in the back of my mind, some residual impression of “Brick,” perhaps, which sent me to the Web for those first BFF tracks (none of which were “Smoke,” by the way, though I agree with Hornby’s appraisal of its lyrical strength).

It quickly became a total fandom— I now have all the official LP’s, band and solo, and the EP’s are floating in the digital ether of hard drives and burned discs. I even bought the soundtrack to the little-remembered Dreamworks quirky CG animal picture Over The Hedge, to which Folds contributed several original tracks (a soundtrack that marked his most recent collaboration with William Shatner, a pairing that also yielded a full-length, Has Been, which is a simultaneously ironic AND unironic great listen.) No one is going to bestow the crown of ultimate Ben Folds fanboy on my head— I’ve ONLY seen him live twice, and neither time was even with a symphony orchestra! Nevertheless, I’ve been following his output for a good decade, and my record is solid.

His records are also solid (as is this excellent segue), exploring the outer limits of musical flavors available to a largely pop-oriented guy with a piano and an ear for harmony. Rockin’ the Suburbs (#96), his first post-Five record (exempting Fear of Pop: Volume 1, an experimental doodle from the era of the Messner recordings, which I only mention to smugly show off my bonafides yet again), incorporates synthesizer squeals, a Korn-parody guitar breakdown, treated keyboards, and strings, but his ivories are still at the forefront. His lyrics here are the ultimate template for the rest of his career, featuring: the irreverent humor of a class cut-up (like “Rockin’ The Suburbs’” self-aware chorus or the climactic, harmonized shout of “Motherfucker!” that ends “Fired”), the incisive character sketches of a short story author (“Fred Jones, Pt. 2” is a mini-masterpiece of well-observed details, but I think “Carrying Cathy” is downright shattering), and the delicate balance of sentiment any memoirist must strike (“Still Fighting It” hits the bullseye, but “The Luckiest” is a bit too goopy for me).

I have always had a big soft spot for Songs for Silverman (#98), which has been painted by some critics and BFF fans as a turn into mopey adult contemporary. There are a couple of skippable tracks, for sure, but it doesn’t sound as far from the old days as the doubters believe. After handling most of the instruments on Suburbs by himself, and doing a quite literal solo tour- just the man and his Baby Grand- as documented on the superb Ben Folds Live (#97), Folds missed the sonic chemistry that came from having a band in the studio. Though Jessee and Sledge had followed their own paths (the former touring with Sharon Van Etten, the latter adopting an existence of a lower key than the music business), Folds assembled a more than capable bass/drums duo to pump up the jazzy breakdown in “Bastard” and the chorus of “You to Thank.”

“Landed,” even without the orchestral strings that he later decided overwhelmed the melody, has rightfully earned its place in the classic Folds firmament. Hearing the introductory notes at my first Ben Folds show was enough to conjure a lump in my throat. Seemed weird for me to get unduly emotional about it: the chorus is upbeat (complete with signature “Ba-ba-ba-ba”s) and the story of a man emerging from a controlling relationship is not something I’ve experienced or even witnessed, so I can only interpret this as a reaction to the beauty of hearing a masterful pop song.

As the Web became more of a presence in daily life, and piracy was taking huge bites out of the music industry, Folds ably kept pace with the evolving relationship between an artist and his fans. That included embracing the nascent social media networks- which by the mid-2000s meant MySpace- and posting new music before it hit the streets. During my first couple years of college, I had one of these tricked-out profiles myself. This may have been the way I first heard, in 2008, the “fake” tracks.

Alternately crude and tremblingly earnest, they were a collection of “leaked” songs ostensibly from Folds’ forthcoming album, Way To Normal (#99). There was “Bitch Went Nutz,” a 1st person narrative about a Republi-bro scandalized in front of his peers by his Anarcho-Socialist fuck buddy that plays like the most profane “Weird Al” Yankovic pastiche ever. And “Cologne (Piano Orchestra Version),” a stunningly pretty concerto-ballad that gets absurdly overblown with a chanting male chorus and a dozen keyboards playing at once. And a handful of winkingly self-serious social justice ballads. All written and recorded, it was later revealed, in about a day, and launched into the bootleg blogosphere as a prank.

These were eventually officially released on Stems and Seeds (#100), alongside alternately-mastered versions of the “real” songs. The legitimate tracks found on the official LP are only slightly more tasteful, with a somewhat explicit Divorce Record vibe on kiss-offs like “You Don’t Know Me” (with Regina Spektor lending her magic) and “Brainwascht” (about the battle lines that can be drawn between mutual friends of split couples). When the lyrics are slightly regrettable (like the stereotype-mining “Bitch Went Nuts”), the melodies usually carry it. Exceptions would be the intentionally-grating “Errant Dog,” and the limp celebrity satire “Free Coffee” (skippable on record, but in live shows, Folds illustrates how he gets the treated piano sound by placing Altoids tins on his strings, which is a bit of nerdy fun).

Things came pleasingly full circle when it was announced that Folds was co-writing an entire album with Nick Hornby. The mutual appreciation society of these two artists had become a collaboration outlined right on Lonely Avenue's (#101) cover art: “Ben Folds Adds Music and Melody to Nick Hornby’s Words.” It’s a magical working relationship mirrored in their biographical tribute “Doc Pomus,” about the irascible musician who penned classic rock standards like “This Magic Moment” and “Save The Last Dance For Me” alongside Mort Shuman. This sense of pop history permeates 70’s-influenced arrangements like “Password” and “Belinda,” the latter about a Manilow-esque crooner reflecting on the love that inspired his greatest hit, who he callously abandoned for a fling with a flight attendant sporting “big breasts, a nice smile, [and] no kids, either.”

My 2 favorite tracks are a study in tonal opposites: “Claire’s Ninth,” a delicately affecting portrait of a young girl in the middle of a chilly but courteous divorce, and “Saskia Hamilton,” a gleefully nerdy ode to the most phonetically pleasing poet’s name ever. Their musical commonality is that neither one is a slow-tempo plaintive ballad, which have their place, but are the Folds tunes that I tend to skip in his later releases. “Claire’s” chords are jazzy and gently driving, with gorgeous vocal harmonies in the chorus; “Saskia” is frantic, driven by old school Moog synthesizer, with quirky flourishes like the female opera singer making a vocal cameo in the breakdown— it feels like a mutual homage between the song’s authors to “Weird Al”’s more esoteric original compositions.

So There (#102), while technically reaching full-length status with the inclusion of a real-deal “Concerto For Piano and Orchestra,” feels oddly slight. It was hyped by the artist himself as a unique new collaboration: pianist and new classical ensemble making pop songs together. He had experience with performing full-orchestra arrangements of his older songs (as on the excellent DVD “Ben Folds and WASO Live in Perth”) and overdubbing strings on new recordings, but this he advertised as a from-the-jump co-written project with yMusic, a sextet of players bringing strings, woodwinds, and brass. The Chamber Pop tracks that result have their delicate beauty, but the album resists falling into a snoozy easy-listening trap by alternating the ballads with the kind of sprightly, pazz and jop numbers that similarly kept Silverman moving.

It’s all just so… pleasant, and it seems to slip out of my mind and soon as I’ve heard it. If you were to strip-mine it for a Ben Folds playlist, I would pick out the title track for one, with its trilling strings, burbling brass, and father/daughter harmonizing. The instrumental section after the first chorus- what it might be appropriate to call the 2nd Movement- gets closest to fulfilling the promise inherent in the album’s Chamber Pop experiment. I might sound overly harsh on this release— re-listening to it while writing this post, there’s nothing that’s a huge turnoff, or a waste of time (except maybe the metaphorically one-note novelty track “F10-D-A,” which, granted, doesn’t outstay its welcome, running a second under 2 minutes). However, nothing there really sets my heart on fire like the first time I heard the swirling arpeggio of “Zak and Sara” (first through the raucous solo piano version on Live, then the filled-out studio recording on Suburbs), or the chorus of “Landed,” or first “ba ba BA ba ba ba!”ed my heart out as a human “Army" trumpet in the crowd of my first Ben Folds show.

#Ben Folds #benfolds #cdcollection #cdcover #pop music #piano pop #Nick Hornby #Zak and Sara #Landed #Annie Waits #Rockin' The Suburbs #Songs for Silverman #yMusic #classical #chamber pop

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itsworn · 5 years

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Metalworking Boot Camp Part 1: Metallurgy, Hammers, and Dollies

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of traveling to the headquarters of Classic Trucks magazine to give a private workshop for Ryan Manson, the editor, and his assistant, Christian Arriero. I’ve been teaching people metalworking skills for over 20 years, and I always enjoy helping people to improve their metalworking knowledge and abilities. The plan was to cover some of the most fundamental metalworking tools and processes, and follow up with a series of articles so our readers can advance their skills and knowledge, too.

Metalworking is a huge subject, and I think the best way to start is with a brief overview of metallurgy. I know the vast majority of our readers don’t have a background in science or engineering, so I’ll keep it simple.

Metals are used for car and truck manufacturing because they combine high strength with excellent workability. This is a result of the attraction between the crystals, or grains, that form the structure of metals. We’re all familiar with materials comprised of crystals—sand and salt are two examples—but neither of these have much attraction between the crystals, so they can be poured like water. With metals, there is a very strong bond between neighboring crystals, and this is what gives metals their tremendous strength. If you want to make a fender or a frame for a truck, however, you need a material that can be shaped. This is where metals like steel really shine because they can be reshaped with ease. Steel has excellent formability because the bonds between the crystals are flexible enough to allow some movement, while maintaining the metal’s strength.

Steel is made from iron, but pure iron does not have a great deal of strength. Tiny amounts of carbon are added to iron to make steel, and in general, the more carbon that’s added, the stronger the steel gets. Most steel for bodywork has less than 1 percent carbon, but even that tiny amount is enough to bring a huge increase in strength, while still allowing workability. The steels used to make parts like gears have even more carbon (plus other exotic alloying materials like vanadium and molybdenum). These steels are engineered to have enormous strength, but they have very limited workability.

At room temperature, the iron atoms in steel arrange themselves as a Body Centered Cubic. To visualize this, imagine a cube with an iron atom at each corner and another atom right in the center of the cube. See above illustration.

Many years ago, I got some excellent pointers in metalworking from Scott Knight–the first person I found who taught classes in metalworking–and he described metal as a matrix of BBs held together with rubber bands. While this is not a perfect analogy, it’s an easy way to visualize how metals can have both strength and workability.

Let’s talk about the hand tools most commonly used to work sheetmetal: hammers and dollies. There are a vast array of weights, shapes, and styles of hammers made, but we’ll focus on the ones that I find most useful. Hammers are often named for the “peen” end (the portion of the head opposite the face). Some common types are pick, vertical chisel, and cross peen hammers. While the peen end has many uses, in this article we’ll be concentrating on the face. The most common autobody hammers have a round face between 1 1/4 and 1 9/16 inches in diameter, with a weight between 14 and 18 ounces. You will find some hammers with square faces, or other unusual configurations, but we’ll focus on the more common types.

Many body hammers have a face that looks flat, but truly flat faces are not ideal because if you strike with the hammer at even a slight angle to the metal, only the edge of the face will hit, leaving a “smile” in the metal. I consider 12 inches to be the ideal radius for the face of a general-purpose body hammer. I sometimes use hammers with a 4- or 2-inch radius face. These are used for working in tight concave areas, or when I need to stretch the metal a lot for a particular application.

I always like to “ease” the edges of the face on a new body hammer. The faces on most hammers have a relatively sharp edge, which is prone to marking the metal, so I routinely sand a 1/16-inch radius around the edge of the face.

Another favorite tool is a slap hammer, which has a large face with a very low crown, and this is ideal for doing the final smoothing on metal panels.

Dollies come in a huge range of sizes, shapes, and weights. A dolly needs to weigh at least 3 pounds to be most effective. There are some dollies that are lighter, such as the low-profile dollies used where clearance is an issue. These can be very helpful when you need to slip a dolly between a body panel and an inner reinforcement.

Dollies work best when their curvature closely matches the shape of the panel being worked. Usually you select a dolly with slightly more curvature than the panel, since a dolly that doesn’t have sufficient curvature will only touch at the edges. That’s why low-crown and medium-crown dollies get the most use, since very few body panels on cars and trucks are high-crown. There are several dollies made that combine low and medium-crown surfaces. It’s also good to have a dolly with a large, flat face, ideally with a second flat face intersecting at 90 degrees so you have a nice corner to use for making or straightening flanges. My personal favorite is an “egg” dolly but everyone will eventually find which dolly is best for their own style.

There are body tools made with textured surfaces, called “shrinking” hammers and dollies. I have tried these, and in my view, they are no better at shrinking than smooth-surfaced tools. I don’t recommend using any tools that intentionally put marks in the metal.

You’ll find a wide range of pricing, and quality, with hammers and dollies. If you buy good-quality ones and give them reasonable care they will last a lifetime. The least expensive hammers and dollies are made from inferior materials. These get nicked and dented easily, then these defects on your tools will transfer to the metal you’re trying to hammer smooth. I recommend starting with just a few good-quality hammers and dollies, and you can broaden your collection as the need arises.

The photos illustrate the most important points in this article. Tune in next time, and we’ll show you how these tools can be used with precision, and some of the great work they are capable of doing. You can also check out my YouTube channel for a lot of free, in-depth instruction on metalworking and welding.

Steel is comprised primarily of iron atoms, arranged in a Body Centered Cubic pattern. There is one atom at each corner of a cube, with one more atom positioned in the center. This BCC pattern expands in all directions to form the crystals (or grains) of the metal, which have strong but flexible bonds between them. This is what gives steel its impressive combination of strength and formability.

These are the hammers I find most useful. From left to right, we have a light pick hammer, a cross peen hammer, a “dinging” hammer (with one square face), a general-purpose pick hammer, and a curved cross chisel hammer.

Here’s a close-up view of the heads on two of my favorite hammers. The face of the hammer on the left is 1 9/16-inch diameter. The square face on the other hammer is 1 3/16 inch across, and the round face is 1 1/4-inch diameter. There are situations where larger and smaller hammer faces will be beneficial.

Here are some other hammers used for special applications. On the left is a “long reach” dinging hammer, in the center is a high-crown “linear-stretch” hammer, and on the right is a doorskin hammer.

The curvature on the face of the hammer is quite important. For general-purpose work, I like a hammer with a 12-inch radius.

This hammer has a 4-inch radius face. While not used as often as the previous hammer, it’s helpful for getting into small concave areas, or when I want to stretch the metal a lot.

This hammer has a 2-inch radius face. It can fit into very tight recesses but must be used with care, since it can stretch metal very quickly.

Most new hammers come with a fairly sharp edge of the face, which can leave marks in the metal. I sand a 1/16-inch radius on the edge of my hammer faces, like the hammer in the foreground.

A slap hammer is one of my favorite tools for doing fine-quality finish work. The one in the foreground is my own personal design, while the one in the background is shop-made from surplus metal.

These are aluminum-headed hammers, sometimes used when heat-shrinking metal.

The Bullseye Pick is another great tool. When you squeeze the handle, the pick on the lower arm strikes the metal right in the center of the “gunsight” on the top arm. This tool is ideal for raising tiny low spots, giving you pinpoint control.

These are my favorite dollies. Left to right, in the front row is an egg dolly and a low-crown dolly. In the back row is a general-purpose dolly, a toe dolly, and a heel dolly.

Some people favor the general-purpose dolly because it has variety of shapes, and it also has a nice handgrip built into it.

My all-time favorite is the egg-shaped dolly. This dolly can be used with any panel from flat to as round as a basketball. This covers the vast majority of contours found on the bodies of cars and trucks.

You should have at least one dolly with two flat faces that meet at 90 degrees, like this heel dolly. This is great for straightening flanges and other specialized operations.

Next month I’ll give you some in-depth instruction on how hammers and dollies are used to do top-quality bodywork. You may be surprised about how much control you have once you learn to use these tools properly.

The post Metalworking Boot Camp Part 1: Metallurgy, Hammers, and Dollies appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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gokinjeespot · 6 years

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off the rack #1227

Monday. August 27, 2018

I noticed that the leaves are starting to change already. It seems early this year. Change is on the horizon and it's the only constant if life as they say. I seem to be more anxious as I get older when my comfortable routines are disrupted. I'm okay if I get fair warning to prepare myself but find that I freak out a little when something gets sprung on me. I used to be able to just go with the flow but avoiding even minor annoyances is what I most desire now. Maybe I'm turning into a clam. Thank god for family and friends who get me out of my shell.

Silencer #8 - Dan Abnett (writer) Patrick Zircher (art) Mike Spicer (colours) Tom Napolitano (letters). Hell-iday Road part 1. Honor's mission to kill Talia runs into some unexpected resistance. I love the surprise department of Leviathan that pops up to complicate things and the Freaky Friday twist. It's rare that a brand new character strikes my fancy and this one does.

Old Man Hawkeye #8 - Ethan Sacks (writer) Marco Checchetto (art) Andres Mossa (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). Eye For An Eye part 8. This issue features a stupendous battle between Bullseye and the Winter Soldier. It sets up the face to face next issue for Clint and Bullseye that I've been waiting for.

The Life of Captain Marvel #2 - Margaret Stohl (writer) Marguerite Sauvage (art flashbacks) Carlos Pacheco (pencils present day) Rafael Fonteriz (inks present day) Marcio Menyz (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). There's a lot of family drama to slog through before any action happens. Next issue should be more exciting with the super powered alien landing on Earth and going on the hunt. I'm guessing that Carol is the prey.

West Coast Avengers #1 - Kelly Thompson (writer) Stefano Caselli (art) Triona Farrell (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). Please welcome the latest team of West Coast Avengers to the racks with a big hand of applause. I liked this a lot but it's not quite standing ovation material. Kate Bishop assembles a team of super heroes to keep Los Angeles safe and they sure are a fun bunch. The core is made up of Kate/Hawkeye, her boyfriend Fuse, America and part-timer Clint/Hawkeye. The new members are Gwenpool and Quentin Quire ex-X-Man. I'm glad that Stefano Caselli is back on the racks. I was a big fan of his art on Ultimate Spider-Man. This book centered around Hollywood means that there are major media and pop culture references which makes things fun. It's the attack of the fifty foot woman as a giant sized Tigra menaces Santa Monica. I can't wait to find out more about B.R.O.D.O.K. next issue. I'm adding this to my "must read" list.

Sandman Universe #1 - Neil Gaiman (story) Simon Spurrier, Kat Howard, Nola Hopkinson and Dan Watters (writers) Bilquis Evely, Tom Fowler, Dominike "Domo" Stanton, Max Fiumara and Sebastian Fiumara (art) Mat Lopes (colours) Simon Bowland (letters). Man, how I've missed these characters. Lucien the librarian, Mervyn the pumpkin-headed janitor, Matthew the raven, Tim Hunter the boy magician and all the other fascinating inhabitants of the Dreaming. I don't remember Dora so she might be new. This $4.99 US anthology will introduce you to four new comic books based on Neil Gaiman's wonderful creations. The Dreaming #1 hits the racks on September 5. House of Whispers #1 on September 12. Lucifer #1 October 17 and Books of Magic on October 24 which Ottawa's own Tom Fowler will be illustrating. Sandman fans should be very pleased.

Die Die Die #2 - Robert Kirkman (writer) Scott M. Gimple (co-plot) Chris Burnham (art) Nathan Fairbairn (colours) Rus Wooton (letters). I haven't read a comic book with this much explicit violence since The Boys. It's a sign of a good comic when you can tell the origin story of three maybe four identical brother assassins in two pages. There's a lot of sibling rivalry which makes this story very interesting.

Punisher #1/LGY #229 - Matthew Rosenberg (writer) Szymon Kudranski (art) Antonio Fabela (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). World War Frank part 1. Frank has gone through many changes recently. He's the Cosmic Ghost Rider now for instance. My favourite incarnation has always been the gun toting vigilante going after the bad guys and surviving every single attempt to stop him from killing. Matt brings back that bad ass to the racks and I'm happy. Frank fights Baron Zemo, Hydra and the Roxxon Corporation in this relaunch and it's just as bloody good as Die Die Die. The death of a major super villain here was a big surprise.

Action Comics #1002 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Patrick Gleason (art) Alejandro Sanchez (colours) Josh Reed (letters). Invisible Mafia part 2. I like a good mystery thrown into a comic book to keep me interested and this issue has two. The cloudy demon is one because Superman is vulnerable to supernatural things. The surprise reunion on the last page is the other. This is the first time that Brian Bendis has given me that gotcha feeling in his DC work.

Avengers #6/LGY #696 - Jason Aaron (writer) Ed McGuinness & Paco Medina (pencils) Mark Morales & Juan Vlasco (inks) David Curiel (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). "Planet of Pathogens" will give you a hint as to how the Avengers cure the Earth of the Horde infestation and defeat the Celestials. Boy, that was a close call. Next issue promises the origin of the Spirit of Vengeance, the very first Ghost Rider. I'm not a fan of Ghost Rider being on the team. I also don't like the new version of She-Hulk either. If it wasn't for the awesome art I would bench this book.

Mr. & Mrs X #2 - Kelly Thompson (writer) Oscar Bazaldua (art) Frank D'Armata (colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters). Love and Marriage part 2. The newlyweds team up, albeit reluctantly, with Deadpool to protect the egg. First of all, how did Deadpool wind up in space? Never mind, it's a comic book. They have to keep the egg out of the hands of Technet, a team of bad guys. How do they just happen to be out in space too? I love Oscar's art so I'm going to ignore all these silly coincidences and find out how this story ends.

Amazing Spider-Man #4/LGY #805 - Nick Spencer (writer) Ryan Ottley (pencils) Cliff Rathburn (inks) Laura Martin (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). Back to Basics part 4. One look at the cover and I was thinking "didn't Marvel learn from the Clone Saga?". That was one of the most panned Spider-Man storylines and here they are doing it again. I am happy to report that this split isn't going to last as long and hopefully the Isotope Genome Accelerator will be mothballed for good after this. If they merge Spider-Man and Peter Parker back together in a dumb way I will not be very forgiving.

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thepromometrovista-blog · 7 years

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5 Tips for Creating a Brand Logo

A company’s first brand logo design is hardly ever its last. The progression of design is reliant upon skepticism. Frustrating? Of course. Rewarding? Ultimately, yes.

Designing a logo is as daunting as writing a cover letter for a new job. The only difference is that instead of having an entire page to describe yourself, you have one image to capture who you are as an entire company.

A brand logo not only has to properly speak for who your company is, but what your company does for your consumers. This can be done with strategy and a bit of psychology. Color combinations and images that invoke human emotion can help sell your brand through your customer’s senses.

You should not be able to separate your logo from your brand. They are one in the same and cannot exist without the other.

How can you make sure your brand logo is fulfilling its strategic purpose and its emotional purpose?

Here are 5 things to keep in mind when designing a brand logo:

1. Know your purpose and your audience’s purpose.

Why was your company created? Your logo should spark your consumer’s interests and therefore their desire to buy into your brand. Your consumers need to see themselves in your logo because they understand your purpose.

A brand logo should communicate your brand in the same way words do. With that said, everyone interrupts words differently. How can you make sure people are “reading” your logo correctly? By offering a clear stance on your services.

Consider The Swag logo. The Swag is a company that makes reusable containers for produce that are not only natural but extend the freshness of groceries. The font of the logo is inviting and simple, much like natural products are designed to be. The illustrated vegetables suggest the purpose of the Swag bag being for those who live a healthy lifestyle, those who grocery shop, and those who cook.

The Paint Manager, a residential painting company, created their logo to be reminiscent of a professional painter’s pallet. The multi-colors of the pallet are easily identifiable with The Paint Manager’s painting services and creative liberties.

2. Know who you’re designing for.

Who benefits from your brand? Who is your demographic? When you know who you want to react most predominantly, design a logo for their senses. Just like any other type of content creation you need your consumer to experience your purpose through emotional response. Your logo should not do any less.

Disney does this with the Cinderella castle outlined behind the text. The fantasy of the castle evokes childlike happiness, imagination, and fond memories of Disney in every capacity. Nike’s whole logo is shaped like a feeling, like an experience. Nike’s logo elicits the “swoosh” factor of speed and athleticism.

Physicians Weight Loss’s logo represents the feeling of meeting the goal of their business and their patients. They execute this by having an indistinguishable person, making it clear that their patients can be either men or women, as the main figure. However, around the figure’s white silhouette is a wider green silhouette. This shows the progress of weight loss to a happier self as indicated by the victorious up-reach of the arms. The green in the logo represents growth in their journey partnered with Physicians Weight Loss.

Tostitos uses their brand logo to suggest what their consumers should use their products for- enjoying life with food and company. The two T’s in their name resemble two people sharing a Tostito chip and salsa together. Tostitos successfully appeals to many audiences feeling of social interaction and fun- there aren’t that many people who don’t want to enjoy good food and good people!

3. Know your industry but be different.

Logos should always represent a direct correlation to your brand and your industry. In addition to your industry as a whole, a brand logo needs to serve as a contextual association between your company and what you offer to your consumers.

Consider Target’s famous bullseye logo. Not only is it recognizable without any supporting text, the bullseye represents how Target is different from other competing stores like Walmart and Kmart. The bullseye, like playing darts, suggests to their customers that no matter what they are looking for, Target is your bullseye destination. No matter what you need, you’ll hit the bullseye and find it at Target.

Target’s customers can associate Target’s bullseye with all their needs being met. I buy it.

Amazon presents a similar idea. Amazon’s logo is an arrow reaching from the ‘a’ to the ‘z’ of their name. Consumers naturally associate the arching arrow with a smile. While this is an appropriate interpretation, the stretch length of the arrow is just as important. Having it reach from the ‘a’ to the ‘z’ is supposed to suggest that consumers will find “everything from a to z” on Amazon.

4. Know simplicity is adaptive.

Logos, as a part of your branding, need to be easily adaptable to fit any product, image, or content your company produces. With that said, simplicity should be the foundation of designing a brand logo.

Norah by Earth, a naturally-derived shampoo for dogs with skin irritations, chose a very simple design for their product line. They created their formula for a Golden Retriever suffering from unrelenting hot spots. They used the silhouette of the Golden Retriever to tell their story of origin wrapped in a leaf that represents their philosophy of natural ingredients. The logo is small and simple enough to be placed on their bottles, branded images, and other merchandise. The image is also compact due to the genius use of the negative space created in the leaf. Simple, small, and effective.

5. Know how to stand the test of time.

A good brand logo is timeless. Successful logos like Coco-Cola and Mercedes both have changed very little over the past 100 years. Not only does a classic logo design defy the lifespan of expiring trends, it creates a familiarity with your company. Familiarity, as you know, evolves into brand trust. Brand trust is the foundation of customer loyalty. Without customer loyalty, your company doesn’t have a reliable source of continued prosperity.

Think to yourself:

Does your logo tell the story of who you are and what you represent?

Does your logo elicit an emotional response from your targeted consumer?

Does your logo stand apart from others in your industry?

Does logo transcend evolving generations?

If you answered “no” to any of those questions consider our graphic design services. Our designers know how to make any brand come alive!

Helping you create your identity is what we do. You have the company, let us help you brand it!

0 notes

metrovista-blog · 7 years

Text

5 Tips for Creating a Brand Logo

A company’s first brand logo design is hardly ever its last. The progression of design is reliant upon skepticism. Frustrating? Of course. Rewarding? Ultimately, yes.

You should not be able to separate your logo from your brand. They are one in the same and cannot exist without the other.

How can you make sure your brand logo is fulfilling its strategic purpose and its emotional purpose?

Here are 5 things to keep in mind when designing a brand logo:

1. Know your purpose and your audience’s purpose.

2. Know who you’re designing for.

3. Know your industry but be different.

Target’s customers can associate Target’s bullseye with all their needs being met. I buy it.

4. Know simplicity is adaptive.

5. Know how to stand the test of time.

Think to yourself:

Does your logo tell the story of who you are and what you represent?

Does your logo elicit an emotional response from your targeted consumer?

Does your logo stand apart from others in your industry?

Does logo transcend evolving generations?

If you answered “no” to any of those questions consider our graphic design services. Our designers know how to make any brand come alive!

Helping you create your identity is what we do. You have the company, let us help you brand it!

5 Tips for Creating a Brand Logo was originally published on Metrovista Blog

0 notes

aion-rsa · 7 years

Text

DC Comics Pulls Ahead of Marvel in March’s Direct Market Sales

March 2017 had 6,635,631 units in the top 300 comics list, an increase of 309,340 units from last month putting the month around 10,000 units below average. DC accounted for 40.73% of the units for the top 300 comics. Marvel accounted for another 38.9% of the units. Image had 8.14% of the units for the top 300 comics but did have over 10% market share both by units and dollars. The market share reported by Diamond includes all invoices sales for comics, trades and magazines while the breakdown of the top 300 comics only includes the top 300 comics. The gap between DC and Marvel in the top 300 comics was 120,967 units in favor of DC and was much wider this month than the narrow gap of the past two months.

RELATED: Amazing Spider-Man Tops Direct Market Sales in March 2017

Only two comics were over 100,000 units and everything outside of the top 10 comics was under 62,000 units and only the top two dozen items were over 50,000 units.

Sales were up a little from last month for all of the premiere publishers except Marvel which was down 29,562 units from last month.

If we zoom in a bit on the delta chart, we can see Dark Horse was up the most with around 106,337 units, followed by Image with 81,837 units, DC with 74,317 units, the aggregate of the non-premiere publishers with 49,115 units and IDW with 27,296 units. Most of the gain from the non-premiere publishers came from Valiant Entertainment, Dynamite Entertainment and Archie Comics which more than compensated for the losses by BOOM! Studios, Titan Comics, Aftershock Comics and Oni Press. Below the line, with a loss in sales for Marvel of 29,562 units. The net result is an increase of 309,340 units over last month.

As should be expected, the bulk of the sales came from continuing titles which lost sales. I say that should be expected not because continuing titles should lose sales but because the generally do. Whichever publisher can solve that problem and maintain stable sales on the majority of their titles will find themselves with a huge competitive advantage over the other publishers.

Continuing titles gaining sales added 173,027 units in sales over last month.

Three dozen titles gain sales in March. “Amazing Spider-Man” #25 gained 51,891 units with the over-sized issue and Stuart Immonen taking over as artist. This was the largest issue-to-issue gain and the largest month-to-month gain in March. The issue had the regular cover, a Johnson Venomized variant and a Christopher action figure variant which retailers could order a many as they wanted of each if their orders of the regular cover exceeded 90% of their orders of “Amazing Spider-Man” #22, a 1-in-25 classic incentive cover, a 1-in-50 Immonen incentive cover and a 1-in-1000 remaster piece incentive cover. Given those sales promotions, it is highly likely “Amazing Spider-Man” #26 will drop back down to the 64,000 to 75,000 unit range the title has been selling recently.

“All New Wolverine” #18 was up 29,255 units. It had a Bengal-illustrated connecting variant cover which retailers could order a many as they wanted of each if their orders of the regular cover exceeded 90% of their orders of the regular cover of “All New Wolverine” #13, and a Mattina-drawn Venomized variant retailers could order a many as they wanted of each if their orders of the regular cover exceeded 90% of their orders of the regular cover of “All New Wolverine” #15. “All New Wolverine” #17 only had a regular cover and a Bengal connecting variant cover which retailers could order a many as they wanted of each if their orders of the regular cover exceeded 90% of their orders of the regular cover of “All New Wolverine” #12.

All of the Marvel titles in this category, down to and including “Captain America: Steve Rogers,” have a Venomized variant cover. While that isn’t the only factor causing the increase, it is a common factor, indicating slapping a Venomized cover on a random Marvel title can cause a noticeable bump in sale. This is nothing new; back when Marvel was starting up the themed variant covers with the Marvel Zombies variant a decade ago, we saw the same sort of sales bump. Of course, back then it was a larger bump because themed variants weren’t a monthly occurrence for the majority of Marvel titles.

“Action Comics” #975 had an increase of 5,670 units on that issue and a drop of only 536 on “Action Comics” #976 resulting in a 9,469 units increase for the month on that title.

Continuing titles releasing more issues this month added 43,278 units in sales over last month. March was a five week month allowing a few titles to get an extra issue in during the month.

The second and third issues of “Justice League of America” shipped in March but only sold 8,359 units more than the first issue sold in February. The second issue drop of 42.94% dropped sales from 93,494 units down to 53,349 units which fell another 9.08% on the third issue to 48,504 units. “Justice League of America” #3 placed at rank 25 so those aren’t bad sales.

Continuing titles with relatively stable sales, losses over no more than 250 units for the month, removed 1,792 units in sales compared to last month.

Unfortunately, a slow attrition in sales can be a problem. “Earth 2: Society” has drifted down in sales from the launch around 41,000 units down to 13,653 units of the series finale this month. Potentially the end of this series might pave the way for a return of the Justice Society on the mainstream DC Earth.

Continuing titles releasing fewer issue this month removed 130,113 units in sales compared to last month. A half dozen titles which released two issues in February only released a single issue during the five weeks of March. Generally speaking, it cut the sales for those titles roughly in half. “IvX” #6 and “Deadpool the Duck” #5 were the final issues of those miniseries so there was no other issues to release in March.

Continuing titles with dropping in sales removed 404,898 units in sales compared to last month.

“Batman” lost 6,132 from last month which isn’t much but this is the first month since the New 52 launch in September 2011 “Batman” hasn’t sold over 100,000 units.

The average second issue drop was 35.38% in the top 300 comics for March. “Star Wars: Darth Maul,” “Super Sons,” “Elektra,” “Bullseye,” “Wild Storm,” “Kingpin,” “Planet of the Apes/Green Lantern” and “Old Guard” all had second issues released in March resulting in a net loss of 208,208 units.

Some of the drop is retailers and readers sampling first issues but a lot of what appears as a second issue drop is really an inflation of first issue sales with heavy marketing promotions. That might seem like a semantic difference. The distinction is between regular issue to issue changes in sales because of the content of the issues versus changes in sales caused by things other than the contents such as the number of variant and incentive covers geared specifically at increasing the sales of a specific issue. Sales based on the story contents of an issue are much more likely to translate into sales of the next issue than sales based on the comic gimmick for an issue which rarely translate into sales for the following issue.

New titles added 806,274 units in sales over last month.

“Iron Fist” #1 with 89,652 units was a strong launch. “Iron Fist” #1 has a 1-in-25, a 1-in-50 and a 1-in-100 incentive cover and a variant retailers could order a many as they wanted of each if their orders of the regular cover of “Iron Fist” #1 exceeded 200% of their orders of the regular cover of “Daredevil” #14. Using the average second issue drop from this month we can guesstimate sales of around 57,933 units for “Iron Fist” #2. We could be pessimistic and use the 55.51% second issue drop on “Man-Thing” #2 which was the largest second issue drop for a Marvel title in March and guesstimate sales of around 39,886 units. Or we could be a lot more optimistic and use the smallest second issue drop on a Marvel title in March of 31.32% on “Kingpin” and guesstimate sales of about 61,572 units. If we average those three guesstimates we get around 53,30 units.

A couple of the items in the category were one-shots such as “X-Men: Prime,” “Inhumans: Prime,” “Clone Conspiracy: Omega” and “Jughead: The Hunger” among other. Eventually my number crunching system will be able to identify some or most of the one-shots and move them into the annual/specials category.

Returning titles added 485,688 units in sales over last month.

“Dark Knight III: The Master Race” returned to the list in March after skipping January and February bringing back 107,892 units to the top 300 comics list.

“Silver Surfer” returned to the list having last been seen in November. It was down 135 units from the previous issue so it would not have been enough to close the gap between DC and Marvel last month.

Suspended title titles removed 291,142 units in sales compared to last month.

“Slapstick” fell into the suspended category because the sales of “Slapstick” #4 which shipped on 2017-03-01 fell under the radar of the top 300 comics. “Slapstick” #1 sold around 33,088 unit in December. “Slapstick #2 dropped 67.32% down to 10,813 units in January. In February, “Slapstick” #3 dropped another 42.53% down to 6,214 units. The top 300 had a floor of 4,812 unit meaning “Slapstick” #4 sold fewer units than that. Even at 4,812 units, that would be a drop of around 22.56%. Apparently being in “Deadpool” and “Deadpool and the Mercs for Money” in 2016 wasn’t enough of a launch pad for a solo “Slapstick” series in 2017. Or maybe the problem was too many other member of the Mercs for the Money team also got a series at the same time.

Defunct title titles removed 448,1568 units in sales compared to last month.

A lot of these items are things like the “True Believers” one shots from Marvel accounting for 139,886 units or Rebirth one shots from DC which accounted for another 126,047 units. Of the remaining 182,223 units lost by ending titles, “Clone Conspiracy” with 48,780 unit was the most notable title.

“Solo” from Marvel ended last month with 4,903 units. “Foolkiller” #5 was down 20.74% ending that series at 6,573 units. Both of these titles also spun out of “Deadpool and the Mercs for Money”.

“Karnak” launched in October 2015 with 63,672 units and concluded the six issue run last month with 17,004 units. The lengthy gaps in released didn’t help the story momentum or sales of the series.

Annuals and Specials added 87,395 units in sales over last month. As soon as I can figure out a way to identify the other one shots, I’ll rename this category to one-hosts and put them here which should clean up the new titles and defunct titles categories a bit.

“Green Lantern/Space Ghost Special” #1 was the best selling of the DC Universe/Hanna Barbera crossovers with 25,149 units. “Suicide Squad/Banana Splits Special” #1 was close behind with 24,834 units. “Adam Strange/Future Quest Special” #1 sold around 18,134 units and “Booster Gold/Flintstones Special” #1 sold 15,795 units. DC has solicited another round of these specials for release in June so presumably DC is happy with how they sold.

The various Monsters Unleashed tie-in issues from Marvel have not done particularly well typically selling well under sales level for those titles. Apparently many readers are considering the Monsters Unleashed issues to be non-essential reading. The “Monsters Unleashed” #5 ended the miniseries with 33,205 units. An ongoing series launches in April.

Reorder volume was down 10,221 units compared to last month.

Perhaps the most interesting thing with the March sales is what isn’t there: any sort of clear rallying point for DC, Marvel or any other publisher near the top of the list. There is no major title readers seem excited about. Maybe that will change with “Secret Empire” from Marvel. Maybe “The Button” storyline will kick the Rebirth meta arc into full swing and get readers excited. Don’t get me wrong, there are a number of great titles being published right now. But none seem to be the sales giants they used to be. Even “Batman” is slipping in sales. DC and Marvel need more titles selling over 50,000 units.

But instead of trying to create than next blockbuster hit title, the publishers and creators should focus on improving the titles they are working on. Tell slightly better stories. Make issues a little more accessible to new readers. Make each issue so good there isn’t a question of if it is worth the cover price or not. Make each issue matter to the characters and those issues will matter to the readers. For an issue to matter to a character, it has to have impact and consequences to the character. Those don’t have to be life changing, nothing will ever be the same again sorts of consequences. Each issue need to matter enough that it is worth reading. Good examples of this are “Saga” and “The Walking Dead” both of which had trade paperback which topped the trades lists by a wide margin over the third best selling trade.

For a more in-depth discussion of the sales data, check out the Mayo Report episodes of the Comic Book Page podcast at http://ift.tt/13EeU1f. The episode archived cover the past decade of comic book sales on a monthly basis with yearly recap episodes. In addition to those episodes on the sales data, every Monday is a Weekly Comics Spotlight episode featuring a comic by DC, a comic by Marvel and a comic by some other publisher. I read around 200 new comics a month so the podcast covers a wide variety of the comics currently published. If you are looking for more or different comics to read, check out the latest Previews Spotlight episode featuring clips from various comic book fans talking about the comics they love. With thousands of comics in Previews every month, Previews Spotlight episodes are a great way to find out about new comic book titles that may have flown under your comic book radar.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me at [email protected].

The post DC Comics Pulls Ahead of Marvel in March’s Direct Market Sales appeared first on CBR.

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impactcomicscbr · 7 years

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NEW STUFF FRIDAY 7th APRIL 2017

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samiam03x · 7 years

Text

5 Online Marketing Tactics I Learned From My Previous Startup

As a co-founder of an eCommerce startup in a highly competitive industry, I quickly realized that we had to move beyond the basics of marketing optimization and test some advanced techniques to improve our ROI.

After much trial and error, we found few tactics that were really effective. Although our startup did not survive, the learnings I took away from our extensive experimentation and optimization were priceless. In this post, I will cover some of the techniques that worked really well for us.

Before I share these tactics, I would like to point out that it is crucial to achieve a high level of alignment between your marketing, engineering and product teams. Your engineering team should understand marketing and your marketing team should understand the technology. In today’s world, technology plays a significant role in marketing optimization and it is important for your teams to have that common perspective.

Tactic 1: Customize Website Experience Based Upon Visitor Personas

All marketing channels are not equal. Visitors from different channels (or campaigns) are typically in different stages of purchase cycle and have different aspirations.

For example, visitors coming from your affiliate channels that focus on coupons are more likely to be interested in exploring discounted products. On the other hand, visitors coming from Display channels such as Facebook might need some inspiration and education before you barrage them with pricing and transactional information. Many marketers spend a good deal of time optimizing the initial landing page to make sure it is relevant to the campaign that brought the visitor.

But what about optimizing the rest of the website based upon the visitor’s context?

We found that making subtle changes to the entire website content based upon visitor’s persona (associated with the marketing campaign) resulted in over 20% increase in conversion rate. For example:

Automatically changing the product sorting algorithm on category pages based upon the type of the campaign that brought the visitors (e.g. automatically showing highly discounted products on top of category pages if the visitors came from “deals & discount” focused campaigns).

Automatically “injecting” dynamic content through out the website based upon the visitor persona (e.g. Showing “Trendy” and “Lookbook” content to visitors coming from Lifestyle oriented Display FB campaigns).

Dynamically updating the homepage banner sliders based upon the visitor persona (e.g. if the visitor came from “discount” focused campaign, automatically show the “Sale” focused homepage banner as the main banner).

You don’t need to invest in a highly sophisticated personalization technology to implement these dynamic capabilities. In our case, we used Google Tag Manager to setup above rules to update dynamic content throughout the website. Here are some steps to implement dynamic content for your website visitors using Google Tag Manager:

Come up with 4 or 5 distinct personas that represent your target customers. (See example below)

Once you have the personas defined, tag every campaign and Ad Set with the appropriate persona. For example, if you use UTM tracking for your marketing campaigns, you can pass an extra variable in your URL such as “utm_persona” which provides a better context about the visitor.

Then in Google Tag Manager, you can setup rules that dynamically update certain predefined content zones on your website based upon the visitor persona.

You can even use JavaScript in Google Tag Manager rules to automatically set a different sorting order for your products (based upon the User persona).

Within the same rules, you can also fire a special Google Analytics event so that you can track the conversion rate improvement associated with these dynamic rules.

Sample personas for an online fashion retailer.

Think about your website as a smart salesperson who is able to understand the context of your customer, and speak the language that resonates the most with the customer. There is a lot of information that can be inferred about the visitor by using the referring campaign’s targeting criteria. Take advantage of this information and personalize your website and landing page content to better manage the visitor’s journey on your website.

Tactic 2: Make Your Campaign Hierarchy as Granular as Possible

Many websites run large monolithic campaigns that target multiple demographics and interests. If you are running Facebook ads, create as granular ad sets as possible so that you can easily spot the best segments that are resulting in greatest performance. For example, my current startup targets early stage entrepreneurs who might be looking for branding help. In this case, breaking the ad sets in the following way allows us to get much better insights about which segment is delivering the best performance:

Yes, managing your ad sets at a much more granular level can lead to additional overhead but it can definitely pay off in the long run. You will be able to find hidden gems much more easily and avoid wasted spend on the segments that are not delivering a strong ROI.

When you are optimizing the ad sets, change one thing at a time and measure results. For example, do not change the ad copy, targeting criteria and bid price at the same time. You will never know what led to the improvement (or deterioration) of your campaign performance.

Keep a log of the changes you are making for optimization so you can refer to them. Once you have documented your changes for 30-45 days, you will start seeing interesting trends such as: ads which include a specific time limit (“only 5 hours left”) result in much better CTR than those with generic messaging (“Sale Ending Soon”).

Did you know? With Kissmetrics, you can track the effectiveness of your online advertising. Optimize your marketing by knowing which campaigns perform and which don’t. Check out our infographic to learn more.

Tactic 3: Smartly Segment Your Retargeting Audiences

Retargeting is a great strategy to convert some of your recent visitors to buyers. A little bit of segmentation can go a long way in optimizing your retargeting campaigns.

First, it is generally safe to exclude all those visitors from your retargeting campaigns who bounced after seeing your initial landing page. It usually means they were not interested in your product or service. Don’t feel bad. It happens. Maybe they landed on your website accidentally, or they realized that your offering is not a good fit for them. Whatever the reason, I have seen a significant ROI increase by excluding those people who bounced after seeing the initial landing page, or those visitors who spent less than 60 seconds during their visit.

Second, always focus on the lowest end of your funnel as the starting point. This is your bullseye. Customers who left your website from the final payment or conversion step might just need a little bit of push to purchase. Those who left from a page that is higher up in your purchase funnel might need a bit more convincing. Create separate segmented lists that correlate to different steps in your purchase funnel. Your bidding strategy should correlate to audience belonging to these steps. Always bid highest for those visitors who abandoned from the final step of your funnel.

Don’t forget about time-based segmentation. Generally, you will see a much better outcome from your recent visitors compared to those that visited your site, say, 7 days or 30 days ago. When you are setting up time-based lists, pay close attention to setting correct exclusion rules. For example, in your 3-day list, always exclude those who belong to 24 hour list. This way, you can ensure that there is no audience overlap in your 24-hours and 3-day lists.

In Google AdWords, you can setup these exclusion rules by using Custom Combination lists.

One more thing – please set some frequency caps to make sure you are not following your audience till eternity. Showing your ads too often can actually turn off your potential customers. I would recommend setting a frequency cap of no more than 5 impressions in a day. However you can test different caps to see what works best in your situation.

Tactic 4: Consider LifeTime Value (LTV) While Optimizing Campaigns

If your website focuses on multiple product categories, you might find that the lower priced or discounted products deliver the best conversion rate. You might be tempted to spend more on those campaigns that are delivering the best cost per conversion. However, this is not always a good thing.

If you analyze your revenue and profitability from these campaigns, you might find that the most profitable campaigns are those where the customers are purchasing higher value products, and where the customers have a greater probability of making a repeat purchase.

To illustrate this, consider the example in the table below. At first glance, the campaign with conversion rate of 3% and cost per conversion of $20 seems to be the most effective and you might be tempted to allocate more marketing spend towards this campaign.

However, once you bring in the revenue, order value and LTV data, the picture changes completely. With the additional data, you will notice that the campaign that targets men on iOS devices seems to be delivering the best overall margin as well as LTV.

Assuming your goal is to improve your bottom line, your marketing spend allocation should be based upon an overall ROI metric which takes into account the LTV of customers acquired from that campaign. Consider building your own custom dashboard (or use an analytics tool like Kissmetrics) to monitor marketing effectiveness, taking into account your internal profitability metrics such as margin and LTV.

Tactic 5: Make Use of Automation

There is a great deal of automation available in platforms such as AdWords that can help you optimize your campaigns on an ongoing basis. Don’t get me wrong – I am not suggesting you put your campaigns on “cruise control” and expect that the automation will handle your optimization for you. However, there are some fundamental levers that you can set up which would allow you to focus your time and resources on more strategic optimization.

Here are few examples of what you can automate in AdWords:

Raise bids automatically to top of page bid if the keyword is delivering a strong ROI. Let’s say your target Cost Per Conversion goal is $25. In that situation, your goal should be to maximize the impressions for those keywords that are delivering conversions below your acceptable threshold. You can setup rules to automatically increase the bids to top of the page bid in order to maximize the impressions for these keywords.

Automatically lower bids if your keywords are not giving a strong ROI. You need to allow enough time and impressions before you start reducing your bids. However, let’s say you expect your keywords to deliver a Cost Per Conversion of $30. You could set up rules to automatically reduce max bids by 20% If your keywords have already generated few hundred clicks, but are delivering a Cost Per Conversion of $40 or higher.

Setting these rules will allow you to automatically optimize the “extreme” outliers so that you can focus your time and effort on other aspects of your campaign.

Automated Rules in Google Adwords

Conclusion

Marketing optimization is an ongoing journey. There is no finish line. Even though the above tactics worked well in our situation, you might find that they don’t work in your case. That’s ok. The key is to continue to experiment and test. As long as you take a focused and structured approach in experimenting your ideas, you will collect significant insights over time that work well for your business. As architect Buckminster Fuller rightly said:

“There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”

About the Author: Darpan Munjal brings over 19 years of ecommerce experience in technology and digital marketing with companies such as Sears, Kaplan as well as venture backed startups that he co-founded. Currently, he is the Founder of Squadhelp, a crowdsourcing platform helping startups engage branding experts for their naming and branding projects. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

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marie85marketing · 7 years