has anyone else seen the pimlseur ads on webpages? i assume you might have since googleads would target you as the right market. the ads say things like 'use this sneaky trick to learn a language in ten days just 30 minutes a day that the FBI uses.' etc. etc. and basically the same advertising approach used for getting a sweet six-pack of abs.
gee golly, if i'da known i could learn thisa here pesky tongue in ten days i'da saved myself the painful agony of studying all that history and culture and kanji and watching Audition three times. fatoowey!

In general if a company invests a lot in advertising (if advertising is the driving force behind sales), the company's products are probably crap.

Good products don't need spammy advertising.

My old Japanese professor recently posted on Facebook about how much absurdly more Rosetta Stone spends on marketing compared with research and development. I wouldn't be surprised if Pimsleur was similar.

Does anyone with a business background know the usual ratio spent on research and development vs. advertising in this type of business? It would be nice to compare it to what is usual.

i don't know, but I don't think pimsleur has changed much over the years.

Also think of the production cost. They just need to write/edit/proofread the scripts, then rent some native speakers and head into the studio for a few days and record/edit the audio, and whip up some supplementary texts. There is no way it's worth the $700 for say Mandarin 1-3. At that price, they probably only need to sell less than 100 copies to recoup the development cost. After that they can just print cds for a few bucks in response to orders and make a massive profit. Even the mp3 version is over $300. And it will cost more if you buy it incrementally.

Pimsleur is like one of those telemarketing companies that relies on BS advertising and offering money back guarantees to sell their product for an exorbitant price.

I use advertisement blocking add-ons with this browser so I've never actually seen any of these ads. Although I have heard, in the past, that Rosetta Stone spends as stated above "an absurd" amount on marketing.

"In general if a company invests a lot in advertising (if advertising is the driving force behind sales), the company's products are probably crap." Another case in point: Apple.

I don't know if Apple really fits the bill yet. For the time being I think Apples products are still solid and reasonably priced. But I do think apple is in for some serious competition going forward and they need to focus more on innovating and less on patent trolling or they will lose out in the long run.

nadiatims Wrote:I don't know if Apple really fits the bill yet. For the time being I think Apples products are still solid and reasonably priced.

The problem is the pricing and not the quality, their products are crap compared to what you're paying! Other than the restrictions of course.

[Zgarbas]

I think Pimsleur are good for the market they're going for =/.
If they're falling for "Learn X language in Y days" trick they're unlikely to be avid language learners in the first place. The fact that they don't care for the writing aspect of it (it being a pure audio course) means that they're probably just businessmen/tourists/what not and intend on maybe going on a trip to Japan and mingling a bit with the locals. Pimsleur does get you to that level quick. The fact that it only prepares you for people slowly speaking simple sentences is an entirely different aspect. For all they care they managed to say hello, thank you and a few understandable sentences and that's all they need to feel fulfilled. Sure, you can just pick up a 10$ phrasebook and get to the same level, but some people like paying for expensive programmes because it keeps the motivated and/or makes them feel like they went through a more thorough learning method.
So just like with Apple products, if people have enough spare money to spend on sub-par products that get the job done to the extent of their needs, which are not too high, I don't see why they wouldn't. Of course, people who actually want more than the basics wouldn't have any need for such products in the first place; they're just not the target audience.

Pimsleur is not so bad actually. An audio-only program (good) that focuses on production.

@Zgarbas I'm sorry, but you are way off about Pimsleur. If you haven't tried it, please do and see, it's 'free'. Stuff like "for all they care they managed to say hello, thank you and a few understandable sentences and that's all they need to feel fulfilled. Sure, you can just pick up a 10$ phrasebook and get to the same level" is just uninformedすぎる.

For complete beginners who don't really know how to go about language learning it's okay. It's just really expensive and very limited. You probably learn learn 200 words max...
You may feel like you can speak the language after doing it because you will be able to string sentences together to some extent but it won't really get you beyond travel level.

for the same price you could pick up a decent electronic dictionary and some phrasebooks that would include thousands of words/sentences possibly with accompanying CDs.

[Zgarbas]

delta Wrote:Pimsleur is not so bad actually. An audio-only program (good) that focuses on production.

@Zgarbas I'm sorry, but you are way off about Pimsleur. If you haven't tried it, please do and see, it's 'free'. Stuff like "for all they care they managed to say hello, thank you and a few understandable sentences and that's all they need to feel fulfilled. Sure, you can just pick up a 10$ phrasebook and get to the same level" is just uninformedすぎる.

I did pick up Pimsleur actually! Dropped it pretty soon, though, as even though I am not high level and listening/speaking is my greatest weakness, the highest level tapes felt too slow and simple.

It's not bad if your target isn't high, but a good phrasebook can be pretty amazing if you actually keep to it instead of just reading phrases (I actually learned a lot of German from this really amazing phrasebook back when the Internet wasn't really full of useful things). Phrasebooks are severely underrated because people don't use them to their full extent imho .
There's a very limited amount of things which you can learn from Pimsleur, though I agree that the way in which they teach and practice it give the learner more confidence in his ability. Paying that much for confidence alone though would fit with the target audience I'm thinking about. And I think there are better ways with which to spend your study time. I don't commute, nor ride a car, so maybe that's what makes it even less tempting?

I thought Primsleur was merely for language nerds flirting with new languages...

On the topic, I've never seen ANY Pimsleur ads ever. And I've tried to go through it twice, one until lesson 15 and the other until lesson 9, yes it's that boring!

Have you ever found a thrilling langauge course? :p

The only fun langauge course out there is Native Materials™ by The Japanese People®
And I wish there were some copies of HB™ availible around here.

uisukii Wrote:"In general if a company invests a lot in advertising (if advertising is the driving force behind sales), the company's products are probably crap." Another case in point: Apple.

Good point but I don't think you've ever looked at Apple's 10-K. They actually spend way more on R&D compared to marketing.

Apple
Advertising and Marketing Expenses
2012 - $1.0 billion
2011 - $933 million
2010 - $691 million

R&D Expenses
2012 - $3.4 billion
2011 - $2.4 billion
2010 - $1.8 billion

In contrast with Rosetta Stone. *Disclaimer - it's not fair to compare a tech company to an educational based company but some people might be interested in what kind of ratios they spend on R&D and marketing. As already pointed out, Rosetta Stone plows most of their cash into advertising. They basically took a successful language teaching method (for Spanish) and then copied it for every language across the board. The problem is that the further you get from the Romance group of languages, the less effective the program becomes. For now, they don't seem to be interested in better developing those other languages and are still enjoying nice cash flows. Thus, the low R&D and high ad expenses and nobody cares right now.

I do believe that eventually the company will wise up to the fact that people who are not studying Spanish are not getting much from the product and bad word of mouth will force them to spend more attention in better developing other programs for languages other than the Romance group.

Rosetta Stone
Advertising and Marketing
2011 - 161.4 million
2010 - 130.8 million
2009 - 114.8 million

R&D
2011 - $24.2 million
2010 - $23.4 million
2009 - $26.2 million

Source: Apple and Rosetta Stone 10Ks

I imagine that Pimsleur has nearly the same expenses as Rosetta Stone, but that info is not publicly available.

Sorry I made so many edits to this post

Thanks for looking that up, kitakitsune! I'm glad not everyone in the world is as lazy as me.

lol
how does rosetta stone manage to spend $24.2 million in R&D and still end up with such an ineffective product?

kikakitsune Wrote:Rosetta Stone
Advertising and Marketing
2011 - 161.4 million
2010 - 130.8 million
2009 - 114.8 million

R&D
2011 - $24.2 million
2010 - $23.4 million
2009 - $26.2 million

this is informative not just for the ratios, but also for the trend... obviously RS knows where its bread is buttered, as it's spending increasingly LESS on R&D and increasingly WAY MORE on the advertising.

This seems to ring true for me as I see a RS cart on wheels at every mall and airport nowadays, and they're still slinging the same old empty promises and misleading rhetoric.
I'm ashamed to admit my own mother bought the full rosetta stone package for japanese AND french... that's at least $700. goddamn those advertising henchmen.

nice observation.

Yep, marketers/advertisers are pretty much scum.

Also for all we know, half of that 'R&D' is market research.

nadiatims Wrote:nice observation.

Yep, marketers/advertisers are pretty much scum.

Also for all we know, half of that 'R&D' is market research.

Passing off market research as R&D would be a violation of GAAP and illegal.

No one studies business on these forums or something?

alas i must admit I have not studied business.

I think it could be pretty hard to separate the two at times though.

I've done two of the three levels of Pimsleur Japanese. There are much more efficient learning resources for the money, but it's worth doing if you're at the appropriate place in your studies. It's aimed at someone starting from scratch, though still useful for someone who could pass an N5.

Pimsleur has its strengths. It builds up confidence (setting up conversations that make use of exactly what you know at that point). The emphasis on production and the use of SRS-like techniques really drill the material into your head. If you listen to each lesson multiple times you will have words locked in to your head for life. Also being audio-only and half hour per lesson, it's perfect for doing while driving when you couldn't be messing with Anki anyway. Podcasts for this skill level tend to have a lot more banter and filler material.

Weaknesses... cost, obviously. Check it out from the library if you can. Lack of any written supplement makes it hard to confirm what you heard or see how it is written to look up in other resources. Also with no vocab list for each lesson, the only way to make sure you learned everything from a lesson is to review it again. The lack of formal treatment of grammar can be good or bad. It's less intimidating but being given examples and then having to generalize on your own could be frustrating for those who prefer a top-down approach. Also it's pretty easy to burn out on having some anonymous voice telling you to produce sentences for half an hour at a time.