Need Gun Owners Opinion

[Turbinator]

HK:
HINT: Don't put the bullets in the magazine backwards.

Hint - don't call them "bullets".

Turby

[Dr Rockso]

Hint - don't call them "bullets".

Turby

Both the cartridges and the bullets are facing the wrong way. So there .

[sugi942]

I'll play:

Why do you own a gun?

Home defense, recreation (in that order)

How many do you own?

Uhhh... 4 revolvers, 7 pistols, 3 shotguns and 3 rifles.

When did you start getting interested in guns and why?

My family grew up on a farm so firearms have always been around.

Are guns something that is a part of your regular life or lifestyle, or something on the side?

Since they are mostly for defense and partly for recreation, I'd say part of regular life.

What about guns appeals to you?

The ability to protect my family and property (hopefully without firing a shot)

How much money a year on average do you spend on guns?

Maybe a couple hundred dollars.

Do you buy guns from a specific manufacturer? If so, why? If not, why not?

No. For me form follows function. Although I seem to buy a lot of Springfield Armory.

[Greg-Dawg]

Why do you own a gun? Why not own one?
How many do you own? None of your business.
When did you start getting interested in guns and why? 1983, when I first got a Marksman BB/pellet air pistol.
Are guns something that is a part of your regular life or lifestyle, or something on the side? Yes.
What about guns appeals to you? Reliable guns.
How much money a year on average do you spend on guns? $400.
Do you buy guns from a specific manufacturer? If so, why? If not, why not? Yes, because of reliabilty, popularity and effectiveness to stop a threat.

Answers in BOLD.

[M. D. Van Norman]

I think that rayra already covered this very well. If the goal is to sell self-defense handguns—Washington being a shall-issue state—to “young business professionals,” then the experiences and preferences of the typical firearms enthusiast will not be particularly relevant to such a marketing strategy.

You might want to look into MRI+, if available to you, for some demographic information.

[AlexBreya]

Why do you own a gun?
How many do you own?
When did you start getting interested in guns and why?
Are guns something that is a part of your regular life or lifestyle, or something on the side?
What about guns appeals to you?
How much money a year on average do you spend on guns?
Do you buy guns from a specific manufacturer? If so, why? If not, why not?


Thank you again for any and all feedback you provide, we appreciate your help!

1. Fun to shoot
2. 9
3. when i was 10 because i got an airsoft gun
4. regular life
5. accuracy, powder, recoil, looks, sound, shiny brass
6. Only had them for 1 year, so far, about $12,000 or so (including ammo/accesories)
7. buy local only so i don't have to deal with shipping, and you can see the gun in person first.

hope this helps

[Midian]

That name blows blue whale boner.

[Midian]

Ask yourself, "what would a straight man buy?" ...then look at the names of fighter jets, ancient weapons, epic battles, predatory animals, sources of natural power, and draw your name from there. Pistolet is an enormous turn off.

You're not selling wrinkle cream, your selling weaponry.

[JBBenson]

Remember everything old is new again. Classic Americana is always in style, now more than ever:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/182573

[JG87]

Ask yourself, "what would a straight man buy?" ...then look at the names of fighter jets, ancient weapons, epic battles, predatory animals, sources of natural power, and draw your name from there. Pistolet is an enormous turn off.

You're not selling wrinkle cream, your selling weaponry.

I'm actually gay, and know one or two gay gun owners. Sexuality doesn't play a role in my decision making or marketing choices in this project. From what I've seen so far, sexuality doesn't affect gun enthusiasts so much as a desire for safety and protection. But I agree that the name doesn't work as well for our product as the group thought, I'm going to bring it up with them tomorrow.

[rayra]

I suggest the name 'Bronson Arms' for a line of defensive pistols.

Also on the yuppie-business-defense, you should check the lines of Dayplanner lookalike gun cases, CCW Purses, maybe some photos of briefcase interiors, office clutter, a Blackberry, copy of the WSJ and such.

And also google up Paxton Quigley, you should find some image ideas in her marketing work.

/damn I better copyright that Bronson Arms idea for real. My first three pistol product models could be DeathWish I, DeathWish II, DeathWish III.

[7x57]

Sexuality doesn't play a role in my decision making or marketing choices in this project.

You're entirely missing the point. Your decision making isn't relevant: your customer's decision making is. The majority are straight. Quite a few want a gun because of (quite possibly justified) fear, rather than being "into" guns (indeed, your group does not know enough to market to those "into" guns, so in that sense your target market is well chosen). An effeminate sounding name is an enormous turn-off. Turn-off means no sale.

Your mentioned "jewelry," which is a huge tip-off that your group is mucking up the social cues. Guns are not, say, Rolexes. Rolexes do not protect you. Try this: would your name sell off-road vehicles? Would you go to a football-themed sports bar named anything like Pistolet? Would you hire a security guard whose nickname is "Pistolet?" Your guns are going to *be* someone's security guard. It might possibly be a status symbol, but only after it qualifies as sounding like *serious* protection.

I'm not sure I'm going to play the question game, as I'm not crazy about answering such questions, but I guess I will make more name suggestions in another post. It's not that the name matters so much as that it shows some misunderstanding of who you are marketing to and what they will respond to.

OTOH, suppose the name is not changeable. If you're a marketer you may have to design a campaign in real life for a poorly named product, and as a professional you must be able to overcome that handicap. So in that sense, it's a fair exercise to stick with the name. But to intelligently overcome it you do need to know why it was a bad choice.

7x57

[JG87]

In the point that guns are not Rolexes, I disagree. Considering who our fabricated audience is, we very intentionally chose to market our guns as something similar. Yes, we are marketing them for self-defense, but we're also marketing our product to people who will pay the extra money for a status symbol. That's what we're going for, so in this case yes, the gun is a Rolex, comparatively. Try this: does our target audience regularly frequent football-themed bars, does our target audience buy off-road vehicles? No. We're going after the metropolitan 20-something business professional. People who are more likely to take a taxi to work than a 4-wheeler. People who probably frequent more upscale, high-class bars after work or for business meetings. People who we can say "Hey, the city's a dangerous place. You need to have some form of protection because you never know what might happen when you're walking home to your apartment in midtown after work." We're not going for the enthusiast hunter angle here. We're going for high-class, upscale, metropolitan. Hence the jewelry idea. James Bond, however you want to describe it. Something that conveys class and elegance. I realize that this is not a marketing angle that would be chosen for the mainstream gun market, but we're trying to capture a very specific audience here that's not inside the normal gun industry.

[CapS]

A couple ideas in no particular order:
Be aware that the gun will be sold only in gun stores, by gun people, and reviewed in gun magazines by gun people.
These will be your primary audience, before you even get to the general public. Pay attention (as others have intimated) to what's going on in the gun market, not what's going on in the fashion pages.
After that, you'll be able to build an effective campaign that targets non gunowners.

If you've already thought this through, great. If not, give it some thought.

Good luck!

/Cap

[7x57]

I personally am not too thrilled on the name, but my group members wanted something French.

Did they want something French enough to be willing to go broke for it? You have to sell the intangible with your name. Now, first, the intangibles for guns are simply not the ones you get with "Euro-sophisticate" names. Second, of all the countries to choose, France? France? *Really?* Italy, *maybe*, there is Beretta (and yes, Italy's actual recent military record sucks, but we're working with what the cultural stereotypes give us). Fair or not, if you say guns and France in the same sentence you drag in the baggage of France's modern military image (historically, it was sometimes very different--but you're not marketing to long-dead people). You know the jokes:

Q: Why are the boulevards in France lined with trees?
A: So the German army can march in the shade.

"...you know frankly, going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind." (Famously said by an American deputy undersecretary of defense.)

ETA: French jokes aren't really my thing, but I feel compelled to point out that there is more research material here.

You also bring in France's, ah, less than stellar engineering image. You want European and guns, go with German. Germany has the right upscale image for guns. English isn't bad, but more for shotguns and all that sporting stuff, or heavy-caliber dangerous game rifles. German: scarily efficient, precisely engineered, well-dressed but deadly.

But: suppose you have to go with French; perhaps that is simply part of the marketing challenge. You might see if you can work with the one French military image that is as untarnished as the day Roland blew his horn for the last time: the Foreign Legion. People may laugh at the French in general, but I don't think anyone ever laughed at the French Foreign Legion.

Hmm, I can almost see a picture of an unshaven, dirty, scary-looking Legionnaire holding his assault rifle in one hand, bayonet fixed, as he looks hard-eyed at the horizon. Prominent on his hip is an incongruously spotless, gleaming pistol--a Pistolet, naturally. OK, that's probably over the top. :-)

BTW: an awful lot of legionnaires are in fact German. :-)

The idea we were going for was sexy, classic, timeless. Think jewelry.

Please, let's don't. I don't think you can market guns as jewelry. Totally different social cues.

We want to market to both genders, but the ideas we've come up with thus far seem more slanted towards a female clientele.

Hmm, Victoria's *real* secret is that she has more than silk under there. :-)

I can't say if the name will work for young professional women. In fact it might, but you need to ask some young professional women. Most Calgunners are not young professional women, though they very well may want to *date* young professional women. :-)

Either way, there will be no pink guns.

Thank the heavens! Try to avoid ivory pimp-guns too, please. The pearl-handled revolver is for your client's ninety-year-old grandfather, not your client.

We wanted something a little closer to the James Bond idea of classy and sexy.

Bond isn't bad, actually. Good civilized/deadly vibes. But...note that Bond carries a *German* Walther.

Enough about the name. I don't care if you change it--but you ought to understand why the vibes are bad, so you can design around them.

I'm no marketer, but let me try to play your game for a while. It sounds fun. I frankly suspect there is no business case for a start-up firearms manufacturer aimed at young professionals, but that won't stop me from seeing how much amusement I can get from it.

Let's not think of jewelry; people wear jewelry to show off their wealth, and for decoration. Jewelry is intended to be seen. Professionals who choose to go armed are pretty clearly going to carry concealed; there is nothing to show off. Their guns are *not* intended to be seen. So I doubt *public* vanity is the way to sell guns.

He *is* going to carry that gun for safety, though. He wants to believe the gun is absolutely dead reliable. He wants to believe it is as well engineered as a BMW or Mercedes. Even though he probably can't shoot better than combat accuracy (and doesn't need to), I suspect he wants to believe that the gun is supremely accurate ("your advertising copy should definitely tout "match-grade" barrels), because *his kind of gun would just be that accurate.* And also to appeal to his private vanity: he probably knows he isn't as good a shot as some of the unwashed hoi-polloi he's seen the few times he was at a public range (he has been making money instead of practicing), and privately that stings a bit. So he probably wants to believe that *his* gun is so well engineered that it will make him a better shot.

Above all, he wants the gun to make him feel safer. Remember Volvo's carefully engineered "boring but incredibly protective" image? That's not bad. The German auto makers claim something similar.

Hmm. *Where* are we going to advertise? I'm going to think of a glossy magazine, for no particular reason, though I'm not sure that any magazines read by professional men will accept an ad for firearms. Nor do I have any idea if it would be cost-effective, for that matter. Choosing the medium is your job, not mine. I'm only trying my hand at the parts that sound fun.

Anyway, here is a full-page glossy magazine ad: stunning woman in an evening gown and prominent, tasteful, but *very* expensive jewelry on the arm of a man who projects the ideal self-image of your customer: James Bond-ish and so on. Sophisticated, a lady's man, but square-jawed. In the background, a not-so-nice neighborhood, someplace you wouldn't want to wear jewelry. The caption: "I feel so safe when I'm with you." You could possibly try to pose it so his concealed Pistolet is just visible, but that is probably unnecessary and even a bit crude. The picture and the nature of the product should be enough to tell us that young James Bond here is packing heat.

She might instead be getting in a car (the nameplate had better be visible and had better be impeccable), not seeing the men across the street that her escort (your customer) is eying across the car roof with a confident but wary expression. The caption: "I wouldn't have dared park this far from the theatre alone."

The theme I chose was, of course, to appeal to the customer's sense of chivalry. He's not one of *those* people who carries just because he likes guns (that's a redneck thing, unless the guns involved are, say, London Best shotguns or double rifles in African calibers--guns are more socially acceptable if rednecks can't afford them) and certainly not because he's afraid (he is, but we're certainly not going to force him to admit this); but protecting a woman is a gallant and brave thing to do. We want to help him convince himself that he's not carrying because he's afraid, but rather for more virtuous and noble reasons. In the mirror we hold up for him, he is, like Lancelot, the meekest of men in court and the sternest of men on the battlefield.

To be brutally honest, I'm giving him permission to aspire to be the man he badly wants to be and fears he is not. That's why neither jewelry nor France "work"; they belong to the man he is afraid he really is, the man who would be helpless in a real confrontation. You need your cues to belong to the man he hopes he is. Very expensive whiskey, not wine.

I won't claim any of that makes any sense; I wouldn't give you two cents for my marketing ability, and I'm pretty sure those ideas are dreadfully over the top (that's why they were fun to invent). It's an amusing game to play anyway!

7x57