Advertising

[Uncial]

It strikes me as a little strange that - as far as I am aware - no pen company advertises their fountain pens through main media outlets. I've heard radio adverts for Bic's and various types of pencils. I've seen, perhaps less than five adverts in magazines for the likes of Montegrappa and Montblanc ballpoints and fineliners and there are still plenty of adverts for pens and pencils on television, the most recent being for the Bic four colour pen (the one with the blue and white body), but I don't think I've ever seen or heard and advert for a fountain pen. I presume that this is because when the ballpoint and biro became ubiquitous the impetus to advertise your latest fountain pen took a back seat in the marketing department, but that was then and this is now. The market seems primed to receive fountain pen adverts once again, but I haven't come across a single one. Is there an obvious reason for this I'm missing, or have you come across a fountain pen advert in the wild?

[Bo Bo Olson]

Advertisement costs, cut into the bonus.

Most of the pen companies belong to some conglomerate; and are small twigs on that tree, so get no loving care.....again, cutting into bonus money.

 

Production management is not practiced outside of Japan, and China anymore(Toyota sure does)....in that is cylindrical, it endangers a steady bonus. Resource management; cutting labor instead of increasing production; is what accountant/lawyer management has been trained to do....since WW2, to insure bonus..

...Once a couple of generations ago, there was some weird thing called a dividend that meant something with a P&E of 12/14 or when bad 16...........Coke had been a 14 is now a 60....in only sixty years one gets back the money invested in the stock.....and Coke is still good stock.

So with dividends worthless....once management got sweetheart stock option deals. Now no one would be so stupid as to take that................bonus is the only way to make money as a manager, and the banks don't like risky production management.....in some company that owes them money....in that being cylindrical cuts into the bank managers bonus. (In the last bank Crash, VW and Mercedes coduldn't get a loan from the banks....they were into production and market share.)

 

With free money at no interest banks only play roulette. Good companies at least in Germany have here and there to sell stock through the newspapers. Banks no longer train anyone to rate businesses that produce things and want a production loan. That takes years to make the same money that can be made in a fraction of a second having bought and sold something six times in that second. With free no interest money....or well under 1%.

 

40 years ago, the stock market went between 700&900, then it broke 1000. Now it's 25,000 which tells you how much inflation has happened.....why the word dividend was used by Merlin and not since.

Also explains why US members pay so very much more than a used pen is worth, in the States.

 

 

Pelikan to some Malaysian Billionaire's family. I don't know why they don't advertise; they could afford it. But does their business manager want to turn Pelikan into a cylindrical production and have it stomp MB??? Or why rock the boat and advertise.

 

I do remember advertisement of fountain pens on B&W TV around Christmas; (Left the US before we could get a RCA in Color (Made phono, radio and tape decks too). (Zeinith was as big back then as Sony is today....before Congress was bribed to allow Sony to be sold for less in NY than in Tokyo.) And major magazines, Look, Life, Esquire....even Playboy.

I just lucked into three 1970 Life magazines,

May '70 & 71 and Oct of '70. It's odd with all the tobacco and booze ads.

Somethings remain the same, the VA was underfunded then and now.

Antique things like an Instamatic....a camera with a flash cube. (Bell & Howell too)

And a Cadillac was still full sized....German Opels being sold as a Buick Opel.

Short nosed Tricky Dick was still president. Reagan Governor.

The 240Z was a WOW, Japanese car.

PAM still was.

Dick Cavett was big, for those who wanted a bit more intelligence than the Tonight Show. (That's OK, I remember Jack Parr...before colorless Johnny Carson...)

 

 

Finally in the third mag, Oct.1970......Introducing the new 'Silver Imperial' Sheaffer. .....I don't have one of those....dam. (Hadn't bought my P-71 yet....and it defiantly gave it a run for the money. But I never saw it.) I had given up on Fountain pens..when in 1971 I was mugged by the P-75 brothers.)

 

:lticaptd:Liquid white out ...Liquid Paper slip stick....pen..................Typewriters could be a 'B' if one made a mistake...........and I was so glad with printers came in......and spell check.

Saw lots of white out....don't remember the pen.

Sadly don't have November or December with more Pen advertisements.

Edited December 13, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

[ParkerDuofold]

Hi Uncial, et al,

 

Your post threw me for a loop... then I realized you live in Ireland... apparently, things are quite a bit different in Europe than the United States.

 

I haven't seen a pen or a pencil of any kind advertised on TV in well over 30 years. I think the last print ad I saw for a pen... that wasn't a MB... was in the late '70s/early '80s, for the Pilot Razor Point... made out of glittered plastic... so retro.

 

The only exception that comes to mind is a very brief stint a while back when PaperMate released their "Joy" Series' pens.

 

These days... advertising is considerably more expensive than it used to be... it's never been cheap,... but it used to be a lot more feasible... now of days,... you really have to throw the money where it will do the MOST good.

 

The real point of advertising is to get your brand name on people's minds and lips... the product, per se, is secondary... there are A LOT of pens out there,... but only one Brand X... and it's the brand that counts.

 

Get people thinking about your brand and your other products will follow suit... but you always pitch what has the broadest appeal.

 

Be well and enjoy life.

 

 

- Anthony

[bobje]

It’s not reallly advertising, but there’s a huge amount of retailers and manufacturers engaging with consumers through media. It’s a niche market, and niche social media channels seem to be able to locate this niche community.

[ParkerDuofold]

Its not reallly advertising, but theres a huge amount of retailers and manufacturers engaging with consumers through media. Its a niche market, and niche social media channels seem to be able to locate this niche community.

Yes.

 

Social media is the avenue of choice... especially for "not ready for prime time" products... such as our beloved avocation.

 

It's a lot more cost effective... and it targets the prime demographics.

 

 

- Anthony

[Uncial]

It’s not reallly advertising, but there’s a huge amount of retailers and manufacturers engaging with consumers through media. It’s a niche market, and niche social media channels seem to be able to locate this niche community.

 

That's very true. Social media seems to be where the advertising is at, but in a sense you're already preaching to the converted. I recall the bad old days of the 1980's recession and remember an advert that showed a plane in a storm with the voiceover saying something like 'In a storm you don't shut off the last remaining engine that's keeping you up' - meaning advertising. Social media reaches the likes of us, but it doesn't hit the mass market where it would seem to me to need to hit because they will be the ones who convert to using a fountain pen (even if they only buy one once) that will ensure the survival of this type of pen into the future. It just seems very odd to me that there is no attempt at all to do this.

[kronion]

Lamy ran a campaign, before the Aion came out. I encountered ads in the mobile app of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ, one of Germany's major newspapers). I do not remember ads in the printed version. What I do remember is that the pen looked way better on the picture than in real life.

 

And FAZ is running large ads in the paper for their FAZ-edition fountain pen made of Elm wood and with a metal section:

https://shop.faz.net/selection/schreibgeraete/fuellfederhalter-aus-ruesterholz

Well, the pen does certainly not speak to me...

 

Seems like they assume that the relatively conservative readership of FAZ is using fountain pens and has too much money. At least the first part is true in my case

Edited December 13, 2018 by kronion

[senzen]

Beyond what fountain pen brands might conceive as marketing, advertising is dead: the media they used to run on have dwindling audiences, and new web media has not picked up the pace; even worse for advertisers, ads and PR have been tuned out by consumers, who are finding more relevant info among themselves, so even if you do advertise on a site or app with millions of viewers, your ad will be an annoyance. So I wouldn't expect to see more ads, and good riddance!

[Cordovian]

The only Montblanc ads I've seen on TV were for their colognes. Seems like they stick to print ads for their writing instruments and leather goods.

[miwishi63]

Your post threw me for a loop... then I realized you live in Ireland... apparently, things are quite a bit different in Europe than the United States.

 

I haven't seen a pen or a pencil of any kind advertised on TV in well over 30 years. I think the last print ad I saw for a pen... that wasn't a MB... was in the late '70s/early '80s, for the Pilot Razor Point... made out of glittered plastic... so retro.

 

 

Ditto. But now I'm going to be on the lookout for print advertising. I frequent office supply and craft/hobby stores and have seen dedicated displays for new writing instruments, but can't recall seeing any ads in any other media.

 

-Mike

[peterg]

About two years ago the underground passage from South Kensington station to the museums (1/8 mile?) was largely lined with Parker posters.

They were also in newspaper magazines pushing their new range of pens. It must have cost them a fortune.

[Runnin_Ute]

Don't know if you could really call it advertising, but it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck then it must be a duck....

 

A jewelry store near my house on it's electronic sign out front often has an image of a pen. Visconti if I recall. The image varies and may or may not be of a fountain pen. But that is the closest I have seen recently.....

 

Must be a duck!

[bobje]

Youre a fountain pen manufacturer. You sell a finicky product that has been surpassed in reliability and trouble-free care for at least 30 years. The people who buy your product are eccentric collectors, hobbyists, or artist-calligraphers. In comparison to users of ballpoint and rollerball pens, they are not very many fountain pen users. Advertising is not common for any stationery product, and the media that run advertising are in decline. Its your decision. How do you communicate and persuade buyers and potential buyers of fountain pens? Where do they live?

[jmccarty3]

I remember print ads for Sheaffer and Parker fountain pens in almost every issue of magazines like National Geographic back in the '50s and '60s. This was back when the market was much bigger for FPs, and there were few alternatives to print. It's hard for me to imagine anyone but Montblanc advertising in the current "luxury" magazines, and then they would be hawking their watches and leather goods.

[bobs51]

Using 2015 numbers, the New Yorker magazine, an upscale, classy publication had a printed copy circulation of approximately 1, 350,000 copies.

 

The universe of fountain pen users, probably high in this particular audience, might be an optimistic 10%, but when you buy an ad, you have to pay for the whole circulation.

 

Hardly cost effective, and very expensive to boot for a niche product with a limited appeal to a limited audience, even for the expensive models. Television would, of course, be even more expensive and more wasteful.

[Cordovian]

Looks like MB did some TV ads a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoZA1u5cOuA

https://youtu.be/MzpmUgwB7Qs

Now I know why they don't do them anymore.

[BaronWulfraed]

I recall seeing some ads this year for some gel pen (I think pushing quick drying ink)... But these are disposable pens sold in mass-market outlets, available practically anywhere (grocery stores, drug stores, maybe even convenience stores at gas stations).

 

But advertising high end pens? Unless the advert is customized for viewing market to provide information for purchasing such, it isn't cost effective. The higher grade offerings at Staples and Office Max are still consumer pens in the $20-50 range. Barnes&Noble has Lamy Al-Star as the highest end offering. I actually don't know of a local store that carries the good stuff.