How a good sound changes your lifestyle

Shelf speakers Arslab Old School Superb 90

In the 23rd edition of the Sound podcast, we talked with Andrei Kompaneyts, an expert in PR and marketing. We talked about how a good sound can change your lifestyle and attitude towards acoustics.

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Alina: Tell me a little about yourself. What is your professional activity? What is most important for you in your work?

Andrew: It sounds strange, but the salary is in second place, because the main thing is the pleasure of working. In this, few people understand me. Ten years of journalism are behind me, I have professionally and mentally reformatted into a marketer with PR functions.

On several projects that were not related to journalism - two coworking, one municipal, the second private (we launched it with investor partners), I worked out several technologies and enjoyed the fact that I came up with ideas and implemented them myself.

After that, I launched my own viral marketing project. It is called Keep It Ok and has been successfully operating since last fall. This is also an educational course for a wide audience.

Alina: An interesting point, you said that your main focus is marketing. How long did it take to master the topic of audio? It is different from what you previously did, and the field is new: music, technology. Is it fundamentally different? Or not?

Andrew:Good question, I was waiting for him. Firstly, the topic is not new. I am a monstrous music lover, which even some hate for it. I not only listen, but also sing. Good sound for me is a very important part of my life, as well as, of course, good music. Secondly, I have not yet delved into [this sphere completely], this process continues. I don’t know how long it will take, but I’m doing my best to make it as short and efficient as possible.

Alina: Is it possible to work effectively and constantly comprehend something new in this area?

Andrew: Of course. I go to the sales department, demand that they sell me something, listen to the speakers, leaf through the plates, read how the Hi-Fi and Hi-End equipment were created.

Alina:You came up with the thought that this is your hobby - not so much a technique as the whole musical “story” - and this is what you are interested in doing, including professionally?

Andrew: To the point. First, this is a kind of lifestyle component, when your work coincides with your aesthetics, with your requirements for what, in terms of style and culture, your life should be, with your understanding of the approach to quality and customer focus.

Another important point: Hi-Fi and Hi-End equipment is a market unknown to a wide consumer. This is a kind of challenge to a person who needs to promote a project in the media community in order to become interested in him.

If this is broadcast to me, a person who before joining the company did not know anything about the industry, for me the task looks like launching a new product on the market, speaking from the point of view of marketing. The buyer, who still does not know anything about this, but, according to our assumptions, may be interested in the [topic], it is necessary to present it interestingly.

I was also convinced that for me speakers are not only sound. Some speakers fell in love with me, an amazing speaker system, decorated with a Karelian birch, I liked it even before I listened to it. I listened to others - Arslab speakers - goose bumps. But aesthetic and visual love arose for the Penaudio floor speakers. Therefore, the visual, a little "feminine" view of these things prevails in me. It seems to me that in dealing with an inexperienced listener-consumer, emphasis should be placed, first of all, on this.



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Alina: Does the female look “decide” in communication with inexperienced consumers?

Andrew:There is a fraction of female hormones in the visual creative perception of any product, and the actions of the left hemisphere, which, as we know, are responsible for the creative component, cannot be ruled out.

Alina: You started talking about a hobby very interestingly. You said that for you the work came from your passion for music, and for you this was not a radically new sphere in which you do not understand anything at all. Before that, you were interested in music, you obviously already had some kind of audio equipment. Maybe your musical tastes have changed: expanded, deepened?

Andrew:Great question. It is worth saying what my passion for music consists of. Firstly, it is 80% of the classics, the further, the more complex and fundamental, the one that music lovers traditionally do not listen to. This, for example, Mussorgsky "Pictures from the exhibition", Bach, under which it is usually customary to fall asleep.

I listened to her for some reason, but it was absolutely not professional equipment. These were computer speakers and the most common headphones. And I suffered from the fact that sometimes in the subway I could not hear the headphones, 99% of the sound did not reach my brain. At the same time, I never had the idea that you can listen to music in a quality manner. This is the question of the fact that there is an audience that wants to listen to music, but does not know that there is such an opportunity.

Alina:I agree. This is also the question of the fact that when you come to a music store selling audio equipment, you are surrounded by very scary and rather arrogant people. And you don’t know how to turn to them, where to start, to start a conversation about your problem, you cannot formulate it correctly to be served.

Andrew: I agree with you. In terms of sales people, what is the problem of people buying speakers? Awareness of the problem comes at a time when a person hears quality speakers for the first time.

Alina: And when did you hear them for the first time?

Andrew:I heard them for the first time here. Colleagues showed. I was waiting for the usual goosebumps, there was no goosebumps, I listened - [as it felt] to an ordinary movie theater. It sounds good, powerful, voluminous, but it's not mine. I went to the second showroom, where colleagues turned on the Arslab Old School speakers in matt black, in my aesthetics, turned on the analog format, vinyl, and the chill ran.

Goosebumps mean that the speakers are mine, the acoustics “make their way through”. Of course, it is important to listen to music in its entirety [immersed in the process]. Tchaikovsky, for example, has a rich use of musical instruments. He was the first to use the “Nutcracker” ballet “Fairy Dance” with the metal plates he saw in Europe. His music has a lot of nuances, harmony, and to feel them with his whole body, you need to listen to music carefully.

Alina:You need to immerse yourself in music and take your time in deciding what to buy. How soon did the changes in your lifestyle begin - the way you listen to music at home or on the street? How quickly did you begin to change your environment due to new knowledge and new experience?

Andrei: I started to change quickly, but not the habitat, but my requirements for what should surround me. I began to test the headphones that are in the company and available. I began to listen to music on the subway with small headphones that fit in my ear and sound eight times more powerful than I used to listen to in headphones of this format.

I plan to install a speaker system at home, discussing it with my wife, who is not an audiomaniac, but loves to delight her hearing with good music. I also bring the headphones home and let them listen to their eldest daughter, who regularly listens to something on the phone. I am pleased to watch her admire the sound.

Alina: Quickly, did you begin to realize that the technique that you used before has ceased to suit you?

Andrew: Yes. This is not even a technique, but devices that accompany me in another non-musical technique, for example, speakers in a computer. I encountered some difficulty in telling my friends about my new job, a new kind of activity.

It was hard to tell my friend, who is more interested in music than I, what is the difference in sound so that he wants to come and listen. I could not find a simple answer to this question and began to look for images or technical explanations that allow, not being near the speaker system, to talk about the listening experience so that he wants to do it on his own.

Alina: Is this the difficulty in terms of PR?

Andrew: This is not a difficulty, it is a joyful challenge. It’s great to solve complex problems. I enjoy the PR and marketing "pieces." With the help of my colleagues, I managed to find some interesting images, semi-technical comments that would help my friends understand what happens when you listen to the speakers.

Alina:They were your first audience where you can test your hypotheses about PR moves and understand how to tell people about it?

Andrew: Yes. Feels like it should be approached somewhat easier than sellers in stores are used to doing. And you need to do it emotionally, because good acoustics are emotions. Selling emotions in technical terms is not possible — it is a failure.

I was convinced of this on one of the projects. People did not believe that there would be a drive - an unsubstantiated statement leads to the opposite effect. And for some people, not only aesthetic, but even tactile sensations are important.

I enjoy touching the speakers. I really like the Arslab matte column. She seems to have a slightly rubberized surface, it seems that you will begin to scrape and scratch, but at the same time it is not damaged.

You begin to associate yourself with this speaker system and broadcast outward your aesthetic principles and your culture. For example, you focus on quality by showing that you have a cool speaker system from Karelian birch. There is a feeling that this needs to be done somehow finer, easier, more emotional, more aesthetic, through second-order associations, not sound.



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Alina:When you started talking about this, I had an association that offering and selling people sound is as difficult to describe as explaining the intricacies of selective perfumery. How to describe in words what every person needs to try? This is an individual perception, this is subtle work, even art.

Andrei: If you turn to the topic of perfumes: you can describe the smell of lavender many times, but you need an association, for example, with the smell of the perfumes of your loved one - then everything will be clear. It is just like sound.

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