 The Jackson booth at Finnish Metal Expo 2009, Helsinki, Finland. |
The following account of Jackson’s presence at the Finnish Metal Expo 2009, held Feb. 13-14 in Helsinki, Finland, is just in from Henric Carlsson, Jackson’s Gothenburg, Sweden-based man in Scandinavia. More than 6,000 people attended the two-day onslaught.
Henric writes*:
I just took my shoes off, sitting down in front of my desk to start writing what was going to end up as this year’s report for Finnish Metal Expo 2009.
I feel hung over even though I haven’t had a beer in three days, and I haven’t slept well since three days before I left (over a week ago), but I feel great. Tired but great. We just had the perfect Jackson weekend.
Last year we tested this event to find out what it could mean to us in Finland, and this year we did what we thought was good for the occasion. Last year, this event had over 2,500 people, and this year was just as successful—and even more so for Jackson.
We brought several different models for display. We also brought a Jackson couch that a couple of people didn’t take a “no” for an answer for when they wanted to buy it (see it at www.myspace.com/jacksonguitarsusa). Artist Ben Varon, from Amoral, lent his Custom Shop warriors for display as well, and he had a signing session. So did Marcus from Ensiferum. We had almost all our Finnish Jackson artists coming to the booth, just to hang or say hi to the people and to us.
We had a giveaway—a JS30—signed by all artists (Amoral, Ensiferum, Medeia, Omnium Gathrium, Tracedawn), which we had in our booth, and a lot of people signed up for the competition. We gave away around 1,000 Jackson lanyards, and we had eth JS30 and a Fender® G-DEC® amp set up for testing. Every time I finished tuning a guitar, I had a line behind my back of people wanting to try it out.
 |
| Jackson’s Henric Carlsson arranges the furniture at Finnish Metal Expo 2009. |
This year, around ten new artists asked me about endorsements. I see that as an accomplishment, with the new artists we and our American counterparts have worked so hard with at this event last and this past year. This event also made our customers realize that Jackson is a brand to be reckoned with.
So this is my report. We have a lot of pictures and a couple of minutes of video recordings that we will edit and show you guys as soon as we have the time to edit it.
Talk soon,
Henric
*Edited somewhat, but we’ve got to hand it to Henric—his English is a lot better than our Swedish.