This morning on the Cassie Tips List - Macrosystem executive Jorg Sprave replied to the post made by one of our colleagues recently:
"I understand that Loewe demands secrecy, but at our end it's rather
unsettling not to get any news about the company - even with Jorg Sprave and Eric Kloor in attendance at NAB just a few weeks ago. (If I missed an
announcement please let me know) Sort of like a ship on automatic control, there's no one in the pilot house....where's it headed?"
Here is Jorg's reply
"Well, beeing a part of a publicly traded corporation has many advantages (financial strength beeing one of them), but also some disadvantages. I can't really talk about details. But you may rest assured that we do have plans that make sense.
What I CAN talk about is what I saw at the NAB show, and I can also share a few plans we have, in general terms.
Let me start with the NAB experience. Me and Eric looked at all of the competitors that showed up (Apple did not). We are talking Adobe, Sony, Matrox, Avid, the likes.
First off, none of our competitors is addressing new users, at least not in Vegas. They all focus on their existing users, just like we do. There was NO presentation that showed "Adobe 101" or "Vegas for beginners". They showed their new features, some of them beeing as exciting as a scene function (which creates a new scene from a timeline part - big deal).
Second, most people that sat through the presentations have been older guys (and gals). That's right, few young people. Those youngsters who were there clearly want to go into film making (Hollywood style), and have no desire to become videographers. They use video because their bugdet does not allow film yet. They will eventually end up using mirror reflex cameras with high def video modes. A big hype, but if you ask me, not great cameras for wedding and industrial videos yet. Auto modes are poor, and the audio recording is next to useless at this point. They will come around, though. Anyway, it seems that few youngsters want to get into videography. Therefore, our target buyers remain older people.
Third, nobody focusses on the ease of use. Adding features means increase complexity. And they added features galore. You would not believe the amount of cryptical icons the programs have, and lots of mystical options in the huge drop down menu bars. Some guys had timelines that looked like a huge amount of bar code labels put together at random - for fairly simple editing jobs.
Fourth, I saw very few things our competitors can do better than us. Avid showed some great short films done with their systems, I really liked them. But the greatness was all in the shooting and acting. The clips could have been edited on a Casablanca as well. I did see some smaller things that we need to include into future versions, but nothing big really.
Fifth, I talked to some of our dealers, in person and on the phone. What they said makes an awful lot of sense. We do need a (third party) tool that makes photo montages easy and enjoyable, and we need to implement some other things too. Upcoming updates (like Arabesk5) are much needed, but in beta testing anyway.
Where is our niche? Schools are tough for us now. Apple dominates, and there is not much we can do about that. Apple mainly wants to sell units, and thus they can afford giving away their software for very little money. I learned at NAB that many schools pay a "flat rate" (site license), so they can install software like Final Cut on all their machines. We simply can't do that, our business model is entirely different.
We need to get back to our roots. Let's face it, we added many expert features over the last ten years or so, basically to make upgrades attractive to our users. That worked, but new users find our units fairly complex. We have mystical buttons and functions too, by now. I believe our systems are still far easier to use than competition, but the differences have gotten smaller and fewer.
We are currently re-defining the basic (non pro) software and will come out with that soon. I can't go into details, but in the future, a Casablanca without active pro option will be very easy to learn and be straight forward. Much like the original Casablanca 1. We will probably also bring out units that address newcomers that want an easy, affordable and uncomplex system. Those who visited Eric and me at our NAB hotel room saw a prototype already.
Marketing is a concern. We do have a marketing budget of course, but we are always under pressure to make money (which we currently do). We cannot spend a boatload of dollars on print magazine campaigns that have questionable return rates. Print ads used to work fine, but they don't anymore.
That is the part I missed in the Videomaker article - "What didn't work" is print video magazines. Even in digital form like VM is now, they, too, are becoming a blip in the history of video.
What we have been doing for some time is to work with a new type of journalism - semi professional video magazines that use youtube as their media, and forums to get attention. We sponsor them and make sure that there is a lot of Casablanca coverage. But there is also content that interests other users, too - camera reviews, add-ons, general editing and film making tipps. A good example is Holger Hendricks, long term Casablanca user and the owner of "Holgers Videotreff" on youtube.
(Sorry for the German - yes, we do need an English channel too)
The idea and concept for this new marketing approach was developed using my little "hobby" channel about slingshots. You may have seen it already, I have been running it for three years now (on the weekends only of course). Basically, I tested how much attention you can get on the web without any cost. Forums and interesting, short youtube clips work really well in combination. My little channel has almost six million views by now, 150 videos, all edited on the Casablanca by the way. The growth rate is stunning. Last month, I was the fifth most viewed channel on youtube Germany.
If we can bring video channels like Holger's to that amount of views, we will certainly see growing sales figures. We will focus on showing people how well our products work, and then we will be able to reach new users. Let's face it, people use the web these days to gather information when they need a new piece of equipment. They don't want to buy a magazine, but expect free info right in their web browser. We have to give it to them this way. A website is not good enough anymore.
What does that mean for you? Don't expect huge changes. We will pump out new software and new models every once in a while. We will continue to support our products and fix bugs that arise.
I loved to see people suggesting to go on youtube and vimeo, and spread the word about Casablanca! That is EXACTLY the right approach. If you want to run a channel like Holger does, contact me or Eric, and we will talk about what we can do to help you getting started.
Jörg Sprave - Macrosystem DE"
