Newsletter 10/14/2022: Website Phase 1 Engage!
From the Desk of Dennis:
Today I launched an updated website at www.looncallmedia.com featuring some amazing testimony from my earliest client, Ayoka Apothecary.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Sola Onitiri, a fellow Drexel Alumni, who owns her own e-commerce brand focused on promoting wellness and mindfulness through practices inserted in the packaging along with her amazing blends of organic teas and other products. Our successful partnership has seen her sales rise alongside her SEO rankings, and I can’t wait to see where she goes next! Try the Third Eye Blend, I can’t recommend it enough.
TGIF,
Dennis A. Wilson
This Week in Marketing and Technology:
Kotaku, “Nintendo Switch Price Cheaters Accidentally Rocketed A Game To Mass Audiences”
“…Due to the Switch’s regional pricing, the usually $24 game and DLC bundle was priced there at around $1.50. Obviously these weren’t genuine Argentinian sales, and Let’s Build A Zoo was the victim of price tourists, who use various websites to identify the cheapest location to purchase a game, spoof their IP or register a Switch account for that country, and then buy the game at its local rate.“
This is not an endorsement of price cheating with a VPN or other methodology, nor is it a recommendation to try to sell your game by letting people know they can get it cheaper by tricking the server into thinking they live in a different country. That seems really roundabout and ultimately, might give you a bit of a tax headache depending on how your accountant handles international sales. But this is far from the first time I’ve seen a story about a game jumping up the sales charts when its price is knocked down to $1 on the Switch - supply and demand curves seem to fall off extremely quickly when you introduce a higher price on an indie game, and publishers are always looking for a new angle to promote a discount.
The Inquirer, “Halloween costs are up in Philly, but the price of FOMO is higher”
“Consumers are acutely focused on attempting to ‘catch up’ with what was missed,” because they were denied opportunities during the pandemic, the report found.”
So prices are up as much as 20% for a piece of candy across the board, Eastern State Penitentiary costs a whopping $15 more than it did pre-Pandemic, and yet consumers are still chomping at the bit to spend so they don’t feel left out. I see this as a headwind colliding with our obvious peril in the macroeconomic sphere (Thanks a lot, Putin and OPEC…) that means the crash will be steep and painful, since nobody can apparently figure out that they should stop spending sooner rather than later. This gets reinforced on social media and will continue to be as stock market suffering trickles down to households - even if my own portfolio tanks, I’m going to be feeling pressured by all the influencers and product brands that are moving ahead as usual to maintain a “normal” level of spending.
New York Times, “Is This the Least Cringe Option to Get People to Your Party?”
“Partiful is far from the first digital invitation method, but it is vying to become the most relevant to young people. (One tech publication called the platform “Eventbrite but for Gen Z.”)”
Nothing is ever solved, everything can be rebranded and repackaged. Chase your dreams.
