Innovative effects specialist EarthQuaker Devices demonstrated the value of customer events, attracting 500 people to its recent open day.
Over 500 musicians and music fans converged upon EarthQuaker Devices headquarters in Akron, Ohio for the firm’s first annual EarthQuaker Day. The firm is garnering a reputation as an innovator within the MI space for its marketing activity, recently launching its own comic book series to help promote its effects range.
The free, day-long customer appreciation event included product demonstrations, pedal clinics, workshop tours, live music, arts and crafts vendors, local business displays, a riff contest, EarthQuaker employee birthday celebrations, raffles and giveaways, confetti cannons, a giant octopus kite, a scratch-and-dent sale, organic local cuisine and more.
EarthQuaker employees’ bands Stems, Co_Conspirator, Emotional Support Pigs, Doom Christ, Actual Form, and Relaxer provided live music. Clinicians included: Joe Golden, demonstrating EarthQuaker’s fuzz and overdrive effects; Cory Juba, demonstrating modulation and time-based effects; and, Steve Clements, demonstrating a variety of uses for EarthQuaker Devices effects with keyboards, synthesizers, and drum machines. Dr. Z Amplification provided amps for backline use.
Eleven contestants participated in the riff contest with celebrity judges Michael Stanley, Neil Zaza, and Jamie Stillman. Entries were judged on Performance, Accuracy, Tone, Originality, and Guitar Face. Champion Curran Murphy received a trophy, $100 cash, an EarthQuaker Devices pedal of his choosing, bragging rights, and a confetti-filled awards ceremony in his honour.
The next EarthQuaker Day will be Saturday, August 5th, 2017, and the firm aims to hold it on the first Saturday of August thereafter.
