New Rick Beato Gibson Signature

Roysterdoyster

chrisj1602 said:

lovestrat74 said:

prowla said:

I quite like his videos, but if you'd asked me two list 100 people likely to have a signature instrument, he wouldn't have been on it.

Marty Schwartz will be getting one next

That guy is stealing a living.

Hhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyy!  thats a little harsh!

axisus

I've always adored Yes's superb prog song Roundabout. I've been listening to it for about 42 years, but Rick enhanced it for me with his What makes this song great video. Top bloke!

WiresDreamDisasters

stickyfiddle said:

The man has 2m youtube subscribers, and probably double that in individual viewers. That's a chunky market.

In music tech we don't look at numbers that way. It's simplistic and from a marketing perspective, is a hail mary attempt trying to address a market in a quantitative way.

Maybe that's why Gibson are failing. Not clever enough with their marketing and still thinking it's the 1980's.

I guess I don't see the sense in this. His Youtube channel is not a guitar channel, it's an everything jack of all trades kinda channel. You can't assume that there is a pool of 2m people to attempt to sell a Gibson guitar to. Perhaps his audience breaks down into chunks of 100,000 people interested in a variety of things; composition, guitar, production, drums, mixing, etc.

May not be as much overlap there as you'd imagine. Then of the 100,000 which ones would look to buy a guitar anyway.... even if it's 20% (a very high figure when you actually look at historic trends relating to click-through-ratios and that kind of thing) that'd cut down each chunk to 20,000. And of those, how many would buy a Gibson?? Again.... even if you say 20%.... cuts it down to 4000 people per chunk. And of those chunks, how many are looking to buy a new guitar within the next 1-2 years? 20% again... cuts it down to 800 per chunk.

So total potential sales, 800 people per 100,000? So a slice of 16,000 people from the original 2m. Not really an impressive number. And that's just looking at the numbers in a simplistic quantitative way.

That's not what we do. We develop customer profiles, and user profiles, that take way more into account than just the total imagined pool of addressable people.

I guess from a marketing perspective, I don't see how Gibson benefit from this really. I'm sure Rick is very happy though.

WiresDreamDisasters

Oh, and the reason I look at it that way now is because I tried to do the same thing in 2016 - I tried to collect all of the figures on number of drummers, number of e-drummers, number of keyboardists, number of songwriters, number of guitarists, etc... and then tried to claim that this was my addressable market for drum software. Very easy to arrive at a 10million figure that way.

Obviously nonsense when you look at the actual number of sales within the drum software world. I needed to be clever and learn more about how these things are calculated and risk assessed.

Slash'N'burn

I'm waiting for the Johan Segeborn signature greenback

stickyfiddle

@WiresDreamDisasters I get that, and don't dispute your breakdown of the numbers.

But I don't think Gibson would want to make more than a couple of thousand Rick Beato DC Specials. They make about 170k guitars a year (according to 2018 reports), so I would be very surprised if any one model sells more than 10k per year - and that would be limited to LP Studios/Standards, SG Specials and boggo ES-335s - everything else must average way under that as they must have a good 50 or so models in total. 

Ultimately I don't think it's about direct signature-model sell-through as much as pure marketing. It costs fuck all to get RB involved in the release of a new DC Special (that lots of people would like anyway), and then you get a bunch of low-cost marketing for the whole brand. 

Loobs

Who is he though? 

WiresDreamDisasters

stickyfiddle said:

@WiresDreamDisasters I get that, and don't dispute your breakdown of the numbers.

But I don't think Gibson would want to make more than a couple of thousand Rick Beato DC Specials. They make about 170k guitars a year (according to 2018 reports), so I would be very surprised if any one model sells more than 10k per year - and that would be limited to LP Studios/Standards, SG Specials and boggo ES-335s - everything else must average way under that as they must have a good 50 or so models in total. 

Ultimately I don't think it's about direct signature-model sell-through as much as pure marketing. It costs fuck all to get RB involved in the release of a new DC Special (that lots of people would like anyway), and then you get a bunch of low-cost marketing for the whole brand. 

I think it's probably more sinister.

They're probably trying to fix their Youtube reputation after they totally shagged it with the "play authentic" campaign last year.

PolarityMan

prowla said:

I quite like his videos, but if you'd asked me two list 100 people likely to have a signature instrument, he wouldn't have been on it.

I think its a canny move that shows where ifluence really lies these days..not necessarily on stage but on youTube. 

lovestrat74

Granted, his youtube channel is very good, but who is specifically going to want a RB sig guitar? Unless (as mentioned above) the specs are different from what is already out there..

abw1989

Loobs said:

Who is he though? 

http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=rick+beato

stickyfiddle

lovestrat74 said:

Granted, his youtube channel is very good, but who is specifically going to want a RB sig guitar? Unless (as mentioned above) the specs are different from what is already out there..

You can't buy a DC Special outside the Custom Shop at the mo, so it's definitely interesting to many of us, irrespective of the name on (hopefully the back of) the headstock

AK99

Jim54 said:

I like watching Rick, really nice guy. 

Hmm.  I naively posted a polite comment on his Youtube channel that said his 'Quickest way to learn the fretboard' or similar was rather complex, and got a response calling me an 'A-hole' (sic) in return.

Fine as long as you keep telling him how great he is.

Jim54

AK99 said:

Jim54 said:

I like watching Rick, really nice guy. 

Hmm.  I naively posted a polite comment on his Youtube channel that said his 'Quickest way to learn the fretboard' or similar was rather complex, and got a response calling me an 'A-hole' (sic) in return.

Fine as long as you keep telling him how great he is.

What, by Rick?! If so, well out of order.

Philly_Q

I'm not a fan of his channel, his appeal totally eludes me.  But he's very popular - lots of you guys like him - and in this day and age a popular YouTuber seems to justify a signature model as much, if not more, than a guitarist in a band nobody's heard of (who can't tour and aren't selling any records).

The guitar's a bit boring though.  I like LP Specials but I hope it has some unique specs.

DrJazzTap

They made one for keifer sutherland.....I would have thought Rick would have gone for a PRS. 
More power to him, he's seems like a decent bloke. 

thegummy

I can't stand the guy so for me it's a very fitting brand match.

Re: the brand awareness thing; he has 2 million followers but how many of them aren't already fully aware of the Gibson brand? I'd guess 0%

Haych

The guitar looks interesting but not really sure in this case what the signature affiliation achieves, if Gibson released that guitar without his name attached I reckon it would sell in droves anyway.  

As for Rick himself, not a fan.  I did watch for a while but I find him a bit full of his own self importance.

eog

DrJazzTap said:

They made one for keifer sutherland.....I would have thought Rick would have gone for a PRS. 
More power to him, he's seems like a decent bloke. 

Kiefer once helped push my car when it was stuck in snow. Definitely deserves a signature guitar!

Andy79

Just managed my way through 30 seconds of one of his videos. 2 million people following that. I’m switching back to Marty