Before I discuss what went ‘wrong’ with the first wave of Fushigi Marketing, I will begin this post by clarifying my values. These are personal guidelines, but I think that many people here would agree.
Quote:
I support the widespread popularity of contact juggling. This is a beautiful artform that should be shared with as many people as possible. I support quality educational media to serve the contact juggling community, be it paid or free. I support juggling vendors that provide recommendations and retail of a wide range of contact juggling balls.
To demonstrate this (for new users who don’t know who I am), I have shared this art with many people as a performing artist (and videographer) ; I have worked with retailers to help develop products (commercial DVDs) to sell balls (In Isolation/Beard Juggling LTD) ; and I have assisted in the development of many educational efforts (Multiball Contact by Drew!!, running workshops across Canada / Eastern Europe, countless essays on this site.)
I think Fushigi has created a problem for all of us, and it requires some 'damage control' to re-assert these values I've described. This post is a reminder that we are not just arguing about small issues like ‘a new vendor in town’ or ‘not liking the ball design’ or ‘not thinking the educational material is good enough’, but a larger problem surrounding meaning. Dube Juggling has asked "Fushigi, Death of Contact Juggling?" .. and should be required reading for those who do not yet understand the issue facing us: http://www.dube.com/blog/?p=765
I've certainly battled with keeping calm in the face of a very real 'impact' on my own work and how it is perceived. Anger and defeatism have been a big part of the last 6 months since the commercial appeared on our forum, and I have seen thousands of posts here from angry contact jugglers all over the world who are offended by this companies actions. I have seen many many examples of ‘rising above’ the problem; participation in intelligent dialogue with the involved members of the Fushigi company, the creation of informative videos which disspell some of the Fushigi myths..
I realize that it is hard for the new members of the site to understand the extent of our frustration with this company. Here is a summary of what the ‘problem’ is, and how the very principals I outlined at the beginning of this post were complicated by the initial efforts of the Fushigi Company.
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By renaming the artform and showcasing it as a childrens toy, Fushigi is not supporting the widespread popularity of contact juggling. The simplification of the Fushigi Ball message has lead to a public becoming confused, disinterested and miseducated about the artform. The public in now expressing less interest & curiosity in the activity, as witnessed by many buskers and stage performers using contact juggling in the US and Canada. Fushigi has removed the artform from the context & history that gave it meaning.
By renaming the artform and holding the educational material behind a paywall, Fushigi is not creating quality educational material to serve the contact juggling community. Fushigi is not the result of an effort to develop a clear pedagogical method for teaching ‘Fushigi’ to their intended audience, rather they launched the product and now are scrambling to make up (borrow?) some educational content as an afterthought. Fushigi has created a newer, younger branch of the contact juggling community, and they deserve more age-appropriate learning material which targets their specific motor-reflex development at a young age.
By targetting a beginner market, but not recommending a standard durable/safe stageball, and only providing a few options for (fragile) ball types, Fushigi has not provided good recommendations and do not retail of a wide range of contact juggling balls. The use of a Fushigi as beginner prop for young people will impede their progress, and the off-centre inner sphere teaches bad technique when training isolations.
Currently, all we can do is voice our opposition to their efforts and hope that things change or they just go away. Initially I responded with optimism to the Fushigi!!! efforts, but over the course of 6 months I’ve seen a great deal of damage done, as well as a series of ‘incidents’ that further put the integrity of this company into question:
In the process of marketing this product, the Fushigi Ball company has also [the NSFW stuff that enrages us further]:
Spoiler:
Hired the jugglers from this forum to film the original commercial, but did not tell the forum users what product they would be advertising until the showed up to the shoot. The first person on our forum to express concerns about the negative impact of the commercial was Mako, one of the participants in the commercial. Because Fushigi chose not to use professionals, they knew that the amateur performers from this site would have no defense if their image was used in a way they disagreed with. Source
Falsified a duplicate of the http://www.sphereplay.com website and hosted it at http://www.sphereplay.net but changed the text to suggest that Fushigi Balls are the best ball for use in sphereplay, as well as provided links to purchasing Fushigi Balls. The offending site has been removed because of legal actions from Try Out Toys (Michael and Jennifer, forum members here at DotOrg) but Fushigi continues to use the ‘sphereplay’ term in their google ad keywords so they can re-direct sales from the Try-Out Toys market. First reported on DotOrg
In the original Fushigi!!! thread, John Cammarano (head of ZoomTV) came to the site to engage us in a dialogue and ask for our suggestions. Many valid solutions were discussed, but generally the forum users were left feeling ignored as John continued to take offensive action and simply disregarded all valid critisism John's 1st User account John's 2nd User Account
The Fushigi ball company has been spamming hundreds of pages promotional material on the internet every day in an effort to manipulate the search engines and outrank other competing voices. In many cases, this spam content is poorly worded and full of mis-information (sites saying Fushigi is great, it really floats!, it is easy, etc) Reference
The Fushigi Ball company has been accused of selling all their customer information to aggressive telemarketers. Everyone who purchases a Fushigi ball finds that they immediately begin receiving phone calls from several companies. Several users have also complained that their credit card had multiple purchases on it after the ordering process, in some cases people were being charges for multiple balls when they only received on, and in other cases they found $1 charges showing up on their account from multiple unrelated companies. Source Source2 Source3
So what happens next? I guess we just wait and see what happens with the next commercial, and continue to spread the name of 'contact juggling', while correcting all the people who say Fushigi. I hope the next commercial at least names our art for what it is, and labels the ball for what it is. If this happens, and the old commercial fades away into the archives of youtube history, then maybe we can get back to our normal state. Applause to those who have been involved in the battle so far.
One good thing is that fushigi has finally picked up retailers to sell the product, this will AT LEAST quiet down the info-mercials ( that was already said .. ) and make it easier for anyone ( possibly ) interested in our artform to have a quick and dirty exposure to it.
An example of this would be, Duncan and/or Yomega yo-yo's you can get those at Wal-Mart and other stores like Toys-R-Us *ahem* but if "you" decide you want to expand your art, your desire will quickly supersede the skill allotment the "store bought" brand will allow for. Which in turn will cause the QUALITY skill toys to be ordered from reputable online vendors.
...I have been distracted some, but hopefully you can see what Im getting at.
_________________
You are not controlling the flow, and you are not lost in it. You are the flow.
so does this mean we are having a filler episode with flashbacks, then next week the main storyline will pick up again. like episode 15, so it's in the middle of the series...?
_________________ With fushigi, Contact juggling gravitates like an Ungody Sphereplay nose fight inside a post box full of oranges
Joined: 28 Jun 2010, 15:39 Posts: 198 Location: CT, USA
Ryan wrote:
Falsified a duplicate of the http://www.sphereplay.com website.... ...The Fushigi ball company has been spamming hundreds of pages promotional material
Didn't John claim all this is unauthorized action by third parties? Do we know he was lying about all that or just suspect he might have been?
Tobias Greenich wrote:
Perhaps clarify that we happily welcome those who come to us from hearing about Fushigi, and we're more than happy to help them learn to cj?
so does this mean we are having a filler episode with flashbacks, then next week the main storyline will pick up again. like episode 15, so it's in the middle of the series...?
More like, we just finished episodes four through six and now are somewhere in one through three...
_________________
You are not controlling the flow, and you are not lost in it. You are the flow.
Falsified a duplicate of the http://www.sphereplay.com website.... ...The Fushigi ball company has been spamming hundreds of pages promotional material
Didn't John claim all this is unauthorized action by third parties? Do we know he was lying about all that or just suspect he might have been?
look, fushigi hired these affiliates to do exactly what they do.
it's not like they didn't/don't want these services.. or else they wouldn't have paid for it in the first place. they were and are fully aware of how they were going to go about google spamming fushigi ball everywhere. look how stingy the company is, it wasn't even willing to pay a professionals normal wage through an agent for the people it used in the original commercial, you think it would fork out for services it didn't want... ever.
yes.. john did claim that. more blatant BS if you ask me
_________________ With fushigi, Contact juggling gravitates like an Ungody Sphereplay nose fight inside a post box full of oranges
Joined: 28 Jun 2010, 15:39 Posts: 198 Location: CT, USA
Colin wrote:
google spamming fushigi ball everywhere
The Sphereplay theft is a different issue, but for the Google spamming, thinking about it more, can we really fault them for...advertising? Which is what Google spamming is. If they weren't saying "magic ball" and trying to rename CJ, would we hold Google spamming against them? Isn't it the content that's objectionable, not the advertising mechanics?
Joined: 20 Aug 2010, 00:19 Posts: 227 Location: Orlando, FL
That is a good recap I think, without personal bias taking credibility from it. Great post.
edit: I never read the thread Mako made until just now. He is a RL friend of mine and I do recall him talking about the shoot at the time, but I didn't really remember he was in the commercial for some reason until it came up in convo the other week.
The thing I find funny is that most of the "first impressions" in that thread where basically exactly the sentiments that I was feeling when I re-registered for the forums. Some of the people that came out so hard against my posts, had previously expressed nearly the exact same opinion at the start of the campaign. I find that fact slightly amusing. It would have been a lot easier to convince me of your points with something like "here look at this post, I felt the same way, but not this is how I feel" instead of the butting heads type posts. Interesting.
Some of the people that came out so hard against my posts, had previously expressed nearly the exact same opinion at the start of the campaign. I find that fact slightly amusing. It would have been a lot easier to convince me of your points with something like "here look at this post, I felt the same way, but not this is how I feel" instead of the butting heads type posts. Interesting.
Joined: 25 May 2010, 22:19 Posts: 15 Location: Maryland
Ryan wrote:
The Fushigi Ball company has been accused of selling all their customer information to aggressive telemarketers. Everyone who purchases a Fushigi ball finds that they immediately begin receiving phone calls from several companies. Several users have also complained that their credit card had multiple purchases on it after the ordering process, in some cases people were being charges for multiple balls when they only received on, and in other cases they found $1 charges showing up on their account from multiple unrelated companies.
Wow. Now CJ is not only going to be associated with a cheesy commercial and the latest manufactured fad, but with fraud and identity theft. I'm surprised no one's taken legal action yet.
Joined: 24 Mar 2005, 17:44 Posts: 57 Location: Fryeburg, Maine
jasonks wrote:
Ryan wrote:
Falsified a duplicate of the http://www.sphereplay.com website.... ...The Fushigi ball company has been spamming hundreds of pages promotional material
Didn't John claim all this is unauthorized action by third parties? Do we know he was lying about all that or just suspect he might have been?
For the record, sphereplay.net was bought by the company who owns lunarlandowner.com. The person who owns lunarlandowner.com is also the Vice President of Business Development for Lucky Web Design, the marketing company hired by Zoom TV. What can I say...I did some research.
I want to avoid saying too much in a public forum, but the above is fact. Therefore, the sp.net problem was not some random affiliate putting up a random site. Because Zoom hired Lucky Web, they also had the power to tell them to remove the offending website. And whether it was because we asked or because we have a lawyer and a legitimate claim regarding our trademark rights they did take it down. Then, once the site was down, I had to point out that if Zoom had the power to tell the company they hired to take it down, then they also had the power to tell Lucky Web to stop using sphereplay™ as a tag too.
I guess I wrote all that because I agree with Colin
Colin wrote:
jasonks wrote:
Ryan wrote:
Falsified a duplicate of the http://www.sphereplay.com website.... ...The Fushigi ball company has been spamming hundreds of pages promotional material
Didn't John claim all this is unauthorized action by third parties? Do we know he was lying about all that or just suspect he might have been?
look, fushigi hired these affiliates to do exactly what they do.
it's not like they didn't/don't want these services.. or else they wouldn't have paid for it in the first place. they were and are fully aware of how they were going to go about google spamming fushigi ball everywhere. look how stingy the company is, it wasn't even willing to pay a professionals normal wage through an agent for the people it used in the original commercial, you think it would fork out for services it didn't want... ever.
yes.. john did claim that. more blatant BS if you ask me
So all the spamming and tagging is part of their marketing plan. I've also noticed that they are using the word sphere more frequently on the f-ball site and now it looks like Toys-R-Us is using the sphereplay™ tag to sell f-balls.
I felt comfortable talking about this because it's factual, but I think I should stop typing now. I'm going to follow some very good advice and do like my mama says...."if you can't say anything nice..."
In the meantime, we've met and played with some very cool people who became interested through the f-ball commercials and that's been fun.
_________________ play from your heart.
******************
play is evolutionary.
Joined: 20 Aug 2010, 00:19 Posts: 227 Location: Orlando, FL
Ryan wrote:
TABjuggler wrote:
Some of the people that came out so hard against my posts, had previously expressed nearly the exact same opinion at the start of the campaign. I find that fact slightly amusing. It would have been a lot easier to convince me of your points with something like "here look at this post, I felt the same way, but not this is how I feel" instead of the butting heads type posts. Interesting.
Ya TAB that's why i made this post.
\o/
dang, does that mean I can expect bitterness in my future? I don't like being bitter while I am juggling!
I will make one comment though. I was out at UCF with Xan today and there actually was a ton of people coming up and being like "is that really magic?". I was actually surprised how many people were genuinely unaware. Maybe it is just because I am not constantly working with contact balls like Xan was, so I have less contact exposure to passerbys. However, it did seem like most people that recognized it wanted to comment about it, so I almost saw it as a crowd attractor kinda thing. Some people that I would never consider "audience" kinda people came over to talk and watch Xan play. I wouldn't have seen that happen before Fushigi.
However, He did get several of them to touch it and see how it worked and even showed a few people some basic stuff. (MAN that sounds great out of context).
Joined: 28 Jun 2010, 15:39 Posts: 198 Location: CT, USA
TABjuggler wrote:
Some people that I would never consider "audience" kinda people came over to talk and watch Xan play. I wouldn't have seen that happen before Fushigi.
I don't know, you think? CJ's pretty unique, seems like a common attention-getter. Everyone asks me why I'm walking around balancing a ball in an elbow stall. They all think I'm doing physical therapy. Then I show them a crappy Enigma that I never practice and they're all impressed (even though my ball has lots of "tell" marks on it).
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What can I say...I did some research. 
