With David and Lighting Resi.
The first old face I got to catch up with, thanks Michael for the chat and the shade!
Comparing old man bellies!
LOL! Holy shit Sam. I only just found this via a social media tag: http://chongland.com/2019/02/16/get-the-fox-out/ – I love it! Thanks SO much Sam for letting me chew your ear off, for the ADVAN T, for getting me out of the house and back again!!!
NFSZEN.
Whilst I can’t quite say that we never compromise with all things ZEN, the truth is we quite often have to, but if we do have to we like to compromise with a little “c”, not a capital “C”!
It’s finally live. Why did it take so long for me to publish this case study? Who was I protecting? What was I scared of? This is a case study I wrote the day the Need For Speed NFSZEN project was done in November 2015. It’s now live: http://bit.ly/nfszen
Also on Medium: http://bit.ly/nfszenmedium
Spent Valentines supporting ZEN Sponsored Driver David Dalrymple who entered the WTAC ZEN Garage BNR32 in Round 4 of the Whiteline Tarmac Rallysprint Series at Sydney Motorsport Park. ZEN sniper Sam Law picked me up at around 3PM, we then sat in traffic on the M5 for a good 1.5hrs (get out of the house they say…) and then we realised we were going through this traffic to get to the… tip. Awesome! Over an hour in the car with me, in traffic?! Sam’s a quiet person and I absolutely talked his left ear off!
Sun was still up when we got there, and it was absolutely smashing us. I signed on as a photographer and got given a free meal voucher, what is this? This is unreal. The smell of brakes and tyres overtook the smells from the tip, and magic hour was fast approaching as the sun went down. The rally format had car after car flying past us in very quick succession making spectating pretty damn fun (especially since we were allowed basically anywhere on the circuit as photographers).
Panning? What’s that?! Sam… what shutter speed should I be using?! I took a few shots, but let’s be honest. I had no fucking idea what I was doing.
Links:
North Shore Sporting Car Club: http://nsscc.com.au
Whiteline: https://www.whiteline.com.au
Often mistaken, my stunt doubles Sam and Salim!
Happy B’Day Sam! 39! FEK! Cheers for keeping ZEN Garage afloat whilst was down in a hole.
To celebrate being banned off Facebook (twice now since I’ve been ‘back’) I thought I’d open up my drunken $600 eBay purchase, a genuine numbered copy of the 2010 Pirelli Calendar by my fave rock star Photographer, the one and only Terry Richardson. I’ve decided to shoot each page. Just a few teasers above, will post the lot soon!
I’ve mostly enjoyed marketing on Facebook over the past decade. With ZEN Garage (est. 2011) we’ve had high highs and low lows but right now, we’re at our lowest low.
When Facebook added us to their “recommended” lists, they showed us that we could reach millions of potential customers each week through this medium, but like many ‘too good to be true’ things, it all went pear shaped pretty damn quickly; the boosting came to an abrupt end which then forced us to pay to reach the larger audience we had acquired.
Transparency as a theme for life is still very much in motion for me. Lately I’ve been posting on the ZEN Garage business page in a more personal manner; as me, one person, and not as a brand, company or whatever entity that some people might expect us to be.
Some of our recent shared posts have reached over 40k people, our own original content is getting anywhere from 2,000–15,000 and the engagement percentages are high. It’s amazing how much feedback I’ve gotten from the diverse posts made. Considering we left Facebook for a year and have only just come back on in the past month shows that the medium still helps you to reach a lot of people.
Ideally I’d like to run ZEN in the same way I run my Facebook profile. To run ZEN more personal than business. What would happen if I shut the ZEN Garage Facebook Page and instead ran ZEN from my own personal Facebook profile? All of this got me thinking about how Facebook could actually be hurting my business in the following ways:
– Facebook takes traffic away from blogs and hosted sites.
– Facebook requires that you cater to your audience, rather than allowing you to shape your audience.
– Facebook has too much control over content and marketing.
– You’re building an empire on someone else’s land
– Facebook connects you/your business with people you don’t actually want to market to.
– Facebook fans consist of people who actually aren’t customers anyway.
– Facebook can create a negative brand image of you from people posting negative crap on your page.
OK, so the negative points above are pretty damn depressing, but in reality it depends on how you look at it and how you choose to make it work for yourself. Right now we’re gaining in traffic. People are liking, commenting, and visiting. We’re getting traction and that’s a good thing.
Also; I enjoy Facebook, so really, wearing my marketing hat whilst on Facebook isn’t so hard, especially since I’m not trying to be anything but myself!
In conclusion: So should we delete our Business Facebook Page?
Probably not.
We couldn’t care less for people who don’t get us.
If you were a fan before, but aren’t anymore, maybe we need a rebate bin or something so you can return your ZEN gear to us.
We’re much more keen on assholes unfollowing us and letting us post whatever we love, and sell what we want, whenever we want.
We are an anti brand, and always will be.
#itsokifyoudontgetit isn’t meant to be an attack on you, it’s simply saying that if you don’t like us it’s TRULY… OK! No pressure, no judgement! It’s all g! We ain’t forcing you to get us, nor are we upset that you don’t get us!
Capiche?!
If you’re a sexist, racist, homophobe or basically an asshole, don’t buy ZEN gear. We don’t care if you like us, we hate you.
