How can Metal Inquisition use its fans to become a more successful operation?

Ruth Scanlon, Director Of Marketing at Metal Inquisition, presents her findings based on last Monday's input from readers.

After collecting all the data about our reader's through Monday's post, we quickly turned that information over to our marketing and operations departments. It was the marketing department, after all, that had asked us to gather this data to begin with. Armed with information about our readership, the marketing department put an 89 page report (a horrible Powrpoint slidewhow actually) which is supposed to make our future posts better suited to our readership. The information you gave us will also allow us to launch a more successful ad campaign down the line, and will inform future marketing decisions. First on the agenda, for example, is the great Metal Inquisition Yo-Yo giveaway of 2009. Stay tuned for all the details.

In order not to bore you to death with the details of the lengthy Powrpoint slidewhow, I will merely give you some bullet points. As you'll see, the main recommendations I'll share with you are about using our readers for our purposes, in order to make our operation run more efficiently. I think we will all benefit as a result.

Everytime I see a picture of this guy from the band Disturbed, my blood boils with anger.

Some of our readers are younger than we thought, as such we will make less references to Nocturnus, Voivod, Tankard, Sarcofago, Mortal Sin, Napalm Death and Brutal Truth in the future. All Nocturnus time machine references will be changed to comments about Slipknot, Distrubed and Lamb Of God. The really bad news for me is that I may actually have to find out who Lamb Of God are, or what they sound like. Same with that band Distrubed*. Ughhh....damn you marketing department! Similarly, we will now hold Tommy Victor in high regard due to his amazing fashion sense, and his affinity for Affliction clothing.


*After writing this insanely funny part of the post, I realized that the bands I used as examples of music young people would listen to, peaked in popularity nearly 5 to 10 years ago, thus proving how out of it I am. It's like your grandfather saying "Are you into that crazy new rock music? Do you like Fleetwood Mac?"






Many of our readers are from countries outside the United States, this means that from now on all references that are overly western shall be changed. If any of us must make a reference to any sport, it will be cricket (which the marketing department found to be a " location neutral" sport). We will also start spelling words like "color" as "colour".

This reminds me, I fully expect that those of you who have good jobs, and don't live like slobs (I'm looking at all of you 20 year old unemployed readers) will host me next time I travel outside of the United States. By my calculations, I should be able to stay for free in nice accommodations with people who are lawyers, scientists, web developers and teachers in pretty much every continent. Singapore, South Africa, Finland, Norway, Australia, Portugal... these all sound like great distinations to me. As far as our reader who lives in Toledo Ohio..I'm not at all interested in visiting your city, so don't leave the light on for me. What will you show me once I'm there? The newest wing that was recently added to Franklin Park Mall? Tony Packos? Will you take me to a Mudhens game? I'll pass. Similarly, I'll pass on going to Poland. You know a country is in bad shape when its greatest tourist attraction is a damn concentration camp. Look, I've been there, and my only fond memory of the trip would have to be when I saw a drunken man unknowingly walk through another drunken man's stream of urine.

Preliminary renderings of the new MI headquarters in Geneva.

We have at least one architect as a reader, which will come in handy when we finally decide to build our new world headquarters in Geneva. Maria, I'm talking to you, sharpen up those skills, and start thinking about some possible schemes. To any other architects who are reading this, I have to warn you, we are unbelievably good at writing about metal (duh), but we are terrible clients and can never make up our minds. Consider the ongoing arguments that MI staffers have been having about Voivod being good or not. After nearly 10 years we have yet to come to a unified conclusion. As such, I will make an executive decision right now and tell you what we're looking for: Something ala Richard Meier, but ideally not inspired by his work at the Getty center, which I find to be lacking in cohesive narrative. Much like Slayer could do no wrong...until they did wrong, Meier too had his fall. Since you live in Barcelona, I should tell you that I was not impressed with MACBA. Start sketching, I would like to see four alternative direction by next Monday.







We have a few lawyers as a readers, Lou C Fer being just one of them. He practices law in Spain. By the way, why do they call it "practicing" law? If you have a degree, I hope you are done practicing, and you know how to do things right. I know, I know, that last insightful bit about "practicing law" made me sound out of it, and a bit like Andy Rooney.

Damn, the marketing department just informed me that an Andy Rooney reference is too Ameri-centric for our international readers. I'll go back and fix it before I publish this.

Anyway, Lou (if I may call you Lou) we will need your help in the next few months, since you practice in Spain. Like my post about Manowar and the houses they live in, we are currently working on a devastating piece about Baron Rojo (see photo above), their homes and their preferred methods for hair loss prevention. The piece will surely anger the band, and will have endless legal ramifications, so we'd like to keep you on retainer.







For future posts that may include the topic of sports, our marketing department has instructed us to bring in the one professional athlete within our readership, one Marizle Farizle, as a consultant. The first post for which we will need his help will be about John Jospeh, singer of the Cro-Mags, and his use of a full Saxo Bank kit in this video where he teaches us all how to work out like an urban warrior. Wait, scratch that, I just got a memo from the marketing folks...the post will be about cricket, and how great of a sport it is.






Due to overwhelming response from our readers about our recent Metal Inquisition Archives post, we are recruiting a few of our readers who are librarians, to properly care for these delicate materials. As part of your duties you will be caring for my personal collection of Beta tapes, which include all the Danzig homve videos, Ultimate Revenge 1 and 2, a few Metallica bootlegs, and hours of Headbager's Ball shows (circa 1990). Along with this collection, the vintage issues of Metal Hammer (circa 1987-1989) will have to be cataloged. Similarly we will need to have our guitar pic collection classified and organized, the same holds true for our collection of Wild Rag newsletters (our equivalent to a Gutenberg bible). We are unable to pay you for these duties, the economy being what it is, but hope that you'll take a Mythic 7" and a Flotsam and Jetsam signed 8"x10" as payment.

To represent "finances", we have been instructed by the marketing folks to use images of the British pound, since it does not have the cultural baggage that the American dollar does.

Due to Metal Inquisition's finances being in complete shambles, we are bringing in a reader to help us sort things out. CallPastorBob is an accounting clerk, and should be able to sort out our situation out very quickly. You see, we are extremely profitable as a company, but have been having some issues with expenses over the last few months. Sergeant D keep expensing things like his Chris Isaak tattoo, and $1800 worth of XS Energy drink from Amway, although he claimed this was "research", I'm a bit suspicious. Similarly, Mr Gene Hoglan's Balls has just expensed his eight copy of the Grindcrusher sampler cassette. With irresponsible employees like this, I ask you, how long we can stay profitable?






We couldn't help but notice that an unusually high percentage of you work in nursing homes. While we have no use for your skills here at MI (I mean, I may wear orthodics and feel like an old man, but I'm still in my prime), we would still like to work with you on a project that we are currently developing. You see, Sergeant D has had a little pet project going for some time (aside from his Amway colabo with Waking the Cadaver), and it's now time to kick it into high gear. I'm talking, of course, about his research into using Benediction's music as a sleeping aid for the elderly. Contact us, and we'll make sure to get you started on this most important project.






Latly, I should now let you all in on the fact that the last question we asked you (about going back in time and letting the bus run Lars over instead of Cliff) was not merely a question. Oh no. We were taking requests. As you know, here at Metal Inquisition we own the actual Nocturnus time machine. We bought it from Mike Browning recently, when he was in need for some quick cash in order to buy more Egyptian decor for his Florida home. Although we've owned the time machine for about four months now, Mike took a while to send us The Key that starts it up. Now that we have (word to the wise, never use FedEx when sending The Key to a time machine) we wanted to know what our maiden voyage should be. The concesus seems to be that running the tiny Danish man would make him into a martyir, which we certainly don't want to do. As such, we are now clueless as to what our first trip in time should be. Any suggestions?