Altec Vs JBL Marketing

In the early 80's Altec Lansing Marketing was very simple black and White photo of a model A-2 . Then all of sudden JBL installed in a Big Cinema a 4 woofer radiator column speaker with a Horn on top 5 of them and took a picture and used it in it's advertising every month.
Then came Mark IV with a blue and white picture of an audience sitting in the cold.
" Does your movie experience leave you cold ? You should think about renovating your sound system" In the bottom right corner a small logo with Altec's and EV Address .

The publicity ran every 2 months.

http://issuu.com/boxoffice/docs/boxoffice_0389

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http://issuu.com/boxoffice/docs/boxoffice_0189

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That's interesting because in the 70's Altec had some very sexy ads for their then new Altec Model-19's and Model-15's. And they were advertising in mags like Playboy and Penthouse..and of course other mags that actually had something to do with Audio.

Altec made a few blunders in those days; marketing boo-boz did not cause them to tank IMO .... Here are a few that come to mind:

1. No UHF tweeter to compete with 075, 077
2. No outstanding 12" bookself
3. Loosing the studio dominance of 604 to the other Lansing co.
4. Not developing drivers with higher power ratings for sound reinforcement apps- rock concerts
5. Assumming the movie houses would continue to use their stuff
6. Jumping into the arms of LTV which had known significant strategic risks

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MikeInNH

That's interesting because in the 70's Altec had some very sexy ads for their then new Altec Model-19's and Model-15's. And they were advertising in mags like Playboy and Penthouse..and of course other mags that actually had something to do with Audio.

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The Movie , Recording studio and Concert venues were Altec's and JBl main market. The home equipment came in second.

The home stuff could not have existed with out the industrial products.

Here is an aggressive publicity from 1984.

http://issuu.com/boxoffice/docs/boxoffice_0384

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by LICORNE

The Movie , Recording studio and Concert venues were Altec's and JBl main market. The home equipment came in second.
The home stuff could not have existed with out the industrial products.

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Probably true of Altec, but not JBL. From the very beginning, JBL established its name and had the greatest proportion of its revenue from the consumer market. In the 70's, Pro was considered the poor second cousin by those that worked there and felt they were always in the shadow of the Consumer arm. The first dedicated pro drivers were rebadged, exact duplicates of hi-fi drivers (i.e. 375/2440 LE15/2216). Pro greatly expanded their market share in the 80's and 90's when they were finally made a separate and equal division to Consumer. However, my understanding is that Consumer revenue is still higher than Pro to this day. While the margins on Pro products are likely higher, the sheer volume of JBL's mass market home goods produces sizable revenue.

If JBLs consumer revenues are higher than Pro, it must be sales in Asia since I have not seen a single JBL consumer product in U.S. stores for years.