Absolute 45 Boat Report in MBY

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted User YDKXO
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Stick around, Trevor?

Trevor, it would be great if you stuck around. Sure, people involved in the industry need to be mindful of potential conflicts but you have always been absolutely clear about your position as a dealer of this range. What you wrote in your second para is already known by regulars on here.

I can't be bothered to read the forum rules but whatever they say your behaviour has been exemplary, full credit you (and to other posters here who have done the same). There is no need for you to retire becuase of "fairness" or anything, you have declared your interest and that is all that fairness demands. So it would be great if you stuck around and the forum could benefit from your contribution as an industry insiders.

Best wishes whatever you decide, and best wishes with the dealership business. I haven't read the MBY boat test yet but I must say (have said it before) that the Abs45 has got to be one of the best-looking sports cruisers ever made
 
"I want is a far more objective and critical style of testing such as served up by the car mags"

The trouble is, you are dealing with a very different animal. If you get all "Clarkson" in a boating magazine, in six months time you'll have nothing to test, no advertising revenue, and a hatful of writs. Let's not forget that IPC (Yachting World) were successfully sued for several million quid for rubbishing a boat in print.

In the motorcycle and motoring world it's different...they take criticism more readily because the unit value is much lower and they are proper grown-up companies. I once described a Kawasaki EN500 in print as one of the wost bikes I'd ever ridden and said it looked uglier than a hatfull of monkey's @rseholes. The next week a Kawasaki van turned up at my office with an EN500 in it, and a note from the test fleet manager that said "Enjoy your new long-term test bike!".

It's not the same with things that cost £500k, and it never will be.
 
Trevor, absolute ruibbish!

Your input is invaluable and you are a regular contributor the asylum that is the Lounge.

Not only that, but I was hoping to tap you for a pint, when I visit IOM.

Chris
 
Sorry, Tom, I'd put it the other way round. If somebody is going to spend £500k on a boat rather than £5k on a bike, then it is even more imperative that a test report is objective. I don't follow your logic either regarding car mags. They have advertisers to lose and those advertisers have much deeper pockets to sue them with as well. And another point. Where are boat builders going to advertise or get press releases published if they don't use either MBY or MBM? They need the boating mags as much as the mags need their advertising. It's a bit too cosy IMHO
 
Don't get me wrong...I'm not saying this situation is right, I'm just saying that you need to be aware of the commercial realities involved, not just for MBM/MBY but for every magazine in the boating world in every country. A bad review for a car/bike isn't going to significantly damage the company, but that's not true in the boating world. There are some boat builders who are very reluctant to have their products tested because they can sell plenty without any tests, whereas a bad review could potentially cost them millions.

And yes, if you're spending £500k you would ideally want some impartial advice. But put yourself in the position of the people producing magazines...a journalist earning £30k a year doesn't need the kind of grief he'll get if he slates a boat. He'll get grief from the editor, from the publisher, from the ad manager, from the boat-builder's PR agency and from the boat-builder as well. One magazine had tens of thousands of pounds worth of advertising cancelled (there goes the ad manager's new patio) and a petition raised by workers at the factory demanding the sacking of the journalist who was critical of one aspect of a boat.

If you produced a boating magazine that was as forthright and critical as some of the car or bike magazines, you might gain an extra thousand readers, but you'd lose most of your ad revenue, the editor would get sacked, the ad manager would be a nervous wreck, and the publisher would be bannished to the Special Projects Group. Publishing is a commercial venture and the people in charge do whatever is necessary to hang on to readers while making money. Editors of tabloids fill their papers with celebrity tittle-tattle not because they think it's great journalism but because it sells newspapers. It's a simple, if not particularly palatable, reality.

On the up side, maybe one of these day Which? magazine will do a test of 50ft flybridge cruisers.
 
MBY and MBM would be in danger of loosing all of their advertising revenue revenue if all their boat reviews were bad! or is that what you are saying between the lines that most boats would get slated if the reviews were objective?

I would imagin there are more good boats than bad boats by far. So how often would you actually, given the freedom, really slate a boat, one in 10? one in 20 ? You journo's have the power, only if you realised it, to signifcantly affect boat build quality and the competitive landscape of this market. If a boat is genuinely bad you should say so and if the means that the boat manufacturer goes out of business then welcome to the real commercial world we all live in. It wouldn' take long before the manufacturers that were serious about their customers would sit up and treat you guys in a different light. You behave like a door mat and guess what the manufacturers will wipe their feet on you. It's hight time the boat industry put the customer at the top of the pyramid. How many other industires do you know that you have to pay to go and visit their show rooms (LIBS and SIBS) and then you mught be let on to see the product if the sales people can be bothered to deal with you and where the manufacturers control the media???? Very few.

If your editorial stance is so weak then why bother, why not save yourself some money and just offer a mag full of adverts and aditorials, we would know what we were getting and would treat it as such.

I don't believe in this brand aware society that any manufacturer would last out not advertising in your mags, they would simply perish on the vine althought it would take more than one or two quarters that I accept.

/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif
 
Could'nt have put it better, wakeup. My thoughts exactly
 
and another thing, when did you ever go back to see 'a la groudforce' styleto see if a boat manufacturer had kept up their committment to make those small improvements that will be addressed in the production boat???? I bet not many, they simply pay lip service to you about your observations.

As a feature, I would love you guys to back through the last twelve months of boat reviews just focusing on the promised changes that manufcaturers committed to maing to new boats and discovering how many did make changes and if those changes were any good? It would be good to have a league table?
 
Put it another way. How much would you have to charge to warrant the risk???

Might be worth the extra quid or two to us punters per copy.
 
It's sad to hear the inside truth behind mobo journalism but thanks for letting us know.

It's annoying to know that the mobo mags are sticking their fingers up at their punters (us) by dealing out the bull$hit they give in the new boat reviews knowing damned well it's just a bit of journo scribble to appease the advertisers.

I definitely wont be renewing my subscription. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif
 
Please, don't get me wrong...I am not talking about any specific boating magazines. I am merely saying that in my 26 years experience in publishing I have worked on many different types of magazines that offer very different things to the readers, from the publish-and-be-damned to the thinly-disguised-advertorial. Each market is different, and each has to be treated on its own commercial merits.

The fact is, it would be a very brave publishing company to risk alianating their core advertisers in the hope that they would eventually come crawling back despite the new hardline editorial stance. And in the meantime, what if another publishing company launched a title with a more accomodating editorial stance? Wouldn't the disaffected boat-builders support the eager new boy rather than the established take-no-prisoners magazine? If that hapened, it would be P45s all round on the no-prisoners title. As a youthful editor I once told a publisher I worked for that it would better to go down in a blaze of glory than cow-tow to the advertisers...he gave me a wry smile and said "yes, but it would be my blaze and your glory".
 
While Tom is right in saying that no boating mag can afford to be as flippant in its criticism as a car or bike mag, it has never and will never stop us doling out fair criticism where it's due.
The trouble with the Absolut 45 is that it really is a bloody good boat. That said we still found several things to criticize if you read it carefully: it can be a handful in big quartering seas, the helm position is flawed, the joinery is not as good as some, the finishing could be better, the entry to the heads is through a cabin, storage is limited, the floor collects dirt, the mooring gear is too small, access to the engine room is flawed to name a few. We didn't criticise the issue of single or double berths because that's the kind of thing which buyers really can learn from a brochure and decide for themselves whether it suits their needs or not, whereas how it handles in a Force 4 is not.
The bottom line is that these flaws aside we think the Absolut is a good boat and we're prepared to say it. Next month we're testing a boat which we don't think is very good and we say that too.
Hope this helps.

Hugo
 
Oi...that's not what I said. To my mind most of the boat tests in most of the mainstream mags are absolutely fair. We all know that they can't be totally comprehensive because most are conducted over two or three days and can never unearth the foibles and petty irritations that only become apparent over months of ownership. A boating journalist doesn't want any flack, but plenty of them take it because they firmly believe they have to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. I am only one cynical old hack who has been around the block in many areas of consumer journalism, so don't tarr everyone with the same brush.
 
I was only joking about my subscription. Just thought it may bring a few out of the wood work /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
Well what can I say, thank you so much for your kind words everyone, have to say I have a lump in my throat, thought that was the end of me!, but I did think that to sign off was the fairest thing to do as I would hate to think anyone thought I was just here for free publicity.

Was on my way out to the yard this morning sitting in Manchester airport feeling a bit glum and to top it off the bloomin flight was cancelled so now back in the IOM office after a five o'clock start this am. Just before lunch, started getting texts from my chums here on the forum asking me to post again.

If everyone feels ok about it then I would be very grateful to be back here as I said I really love talking about boats and boating in general and this is one of the best places to feel at home with fellow anoraks!.

I mostly come on here to feed my nerdy passion for boats and in general and I do try to be as open as possible. However, I do know that my position as a distributor may make some feel that I am biased towards a particular style and make of boat but in fairness to others I have a great respect for particularly several British builders who I think still build some of the finest boats in the world and have indeed owned several British makes over the years all of which I was more than pleased with.

It just so happens that my taste and choice in boats has evolved towards something else and a little different and 'techy' than the norm.

I am very passionate about the product we represent so when something negative is levelled at us I do get a bit upset, its almost like someone telling you your child looks ugly! /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif.

As far as the media is concerned I think they walk a very fine line and one that I myself would fined very difficult. The marine industry is tiny compared to many other consumer product markets and as such has to reflect the constraint's of such a small industry. In fairness to the testers I have yet to see one that has not fully tested a boat and reported in a reasonable and fair manner. Yes there has to be some element of jurno jingo but I think most people would be bored reading a rather flat and uninteresting piece containing loads of stats and figures.

It is also hard enough these days to find real fault with most modern boats, the production and design has become so good that in many cases you end up just splitting hairs unless something dramatic happens like the launch of a new generation of boat such as a....(what was the name of that boat again?).

Anyway, after the shortest retirement in history, I am back, thank you for the txts and e.mails and see you out there......... may the spray be always in your face!.

Trevor
 
Wey hey, welcome back, nautical. Shortest sabbatical in forum history
 
Yep - welcome back, I think we all know what you have written to be totally true. The very fact that you do see some things from a different view point is very constructive and helpful to the forum.

It even seems that you going for that short sabbatical may have had some influence on the Red issue which now seems hopeful!! :-)
 
"it can be a handful in big quartering seas'.
Wonder if putting the engines in the middle of the boat and a nice set of low maintainance shafts would cure that ? /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
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