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Advertising and Marketing
Overpackaged CDs and tinned fictionPosted by Joel Martinsen on Thursday, November 16, 2006 at 5:08 PM
What does it take to sell a CD these days? Here's what the latest album from the Second Hand Roses includes: outside box, inside folder, promotional stickers, promotional cards, info sheet, and the disc itself.
Wang Xiaofeng, who took apart and labeled the contents of the record (image at left), mused on his blog about industry trends toward hefty CD packages:
Then there's this: a series of novels for teenage girls, each packaged in its own metal tin. Danwei previously looked at the practice of loading YA novels with "free gifts"; this series, published by the People's Daily Press, takes things one step further by making the packaging itself collectable. It's a good thing, too, since the free gifts included with this book are rather disappointing: a deck of cards, a cork-lined drink coaster, a password for some QQ service, a bookmark, and a calendar for the month of April, 2007. The 12 books in this series each match a zodiac sign; this one, Forecast for a one-way love trip, stars the "Prince of Cancer". Anyone who collects all 12 (total cost: 420 RMB) can turn in their bookmarks for a special 2007 wall calendar. Does the gimmick work? At 28 yuan per, they're just a bit more expensive than their cardboard-boxed competitors, and the newsstand clerk advised me that all of the titles she carries sell fairly well. And, unlike certain metal-tinned German techno dub CDs, these books won't be destroyed by their packaging. Links and Sources
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Comments on Overpackaged CDs and tinned fiction
Joel, this post brings back warm fuzzy memories of my vinyl buying days, when purchasing music was a blissfully physical process, like buying powertools or lumber, and not some kind of ethereal "virtual" experience. Not that the virtual approach doesn't have its charms, mind you. But something has been lost in the conversion.
Perhaps this is just showing my age, but to this day I look back warmly on buying Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" LP, with its luscious double album-style sleeve and its posters, photographs and other paraphernalia. (And when discussing that album, "paraphernalia" is an apt word.) Some years later when I bought the CD it was not nearly as satisfying. The CD came with...a CD. These days I guess you'd order it off of iTunes and if you're lucky you'll get a postage-stamp sized digital version of the album art.
This is my roundabout way of saying to the Chinese, "Right on, brothers! You cram those CDs all full of useless crap!" And to Wang Xiaofeng, despite a trenchant observation about "core" vs. "shell" capabilities in China, a hearty invitation to lighten up.
Maybe I was too harsh in this writeup - unlike your "warm fuzzy memories", what this brought back for me was a sense of embarrassment and frustration at the number of times I was seduced by packaging that masked the sub-par contents, even to the point of damaging whatever it was that I was buying.
I guess I have no problem with extra junk (actually, I still get taken in fairly often), so long as it's not an excuse to jack up the price beyond what's reasonable.
The reason, of course, is to differentiate the product from pirate versions. If you only get the CD, what's to stop you from buying an illegal copy for a fraction of the price? The stickers, cards, leaflets and what-have-you create a clear difference between the official and unofficial versions.