What the sex pistols can teach you about marketing
It All Begins Here
October 26, 2015
The other day I attended an excellent webinar by Grant Leboff named What the Sex Pistols Can Teach You About Marketing. That’s right – The Sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock, and his replacement Sid Vicious. As a fan of the group, whenever “Anarchy in the UK” is on the airwaves I test my car stereo’s volume limits. And with such an intriguing title to a webinar, I just had to join!
Marketing lessons from bands always pique my curiosity. I wrote a blog post to express my thoughts on the excellent book Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead, and was positively stoked to attend this webinar. San Francisco’s jam-happy Dead can be considered the antithesis to London’s loud and fast Pistols. But both bands have much to teach marketers.
Consider the Sex Pistols. The group was put together by Malcolm McLaren, a British entrepreneur who had advised punk progenitors The New York Dolls. McLaren also owned a clothing store in London, and the band members were habitues of the store. Although the band was of limited musical competence, their career lasted less than three years, and their catalog consisted of one proper album, we are still talking about them more than 35 years after they disbanded during a disastrous US tour.
Why? Mr. Leboff offers a few lessons. First, it is not about the music. Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols responded to a critic during their late 1970s heyday: It has nothing to do with about music at all, you silly cow! Looking back, they were about the total experience of music, fashion, and attitude.
Lessons learned:
Marketing is not a means to an end. It has to have value. Don’t just market your product or service because you have to; make it a true value to your business.
Find your influencers. McLaren had connections, and he knew how to open doors. His guidance provided access to the mainstream British media and the underground press that was championing the punk movement.
Marketing is not about products and services. Marketing is about people. Your customers are more than just account numbers; make your customers your heroes. The Sex Pistols made their fans the hero, which predated social media by decades.
Marketing is about building communities. Fans of the Sex Pistols were known as the Bromley Contingent (many of the early ones were denizens of this London neighborhood). Fans were eager to spread the word about the band. They gave their time, which is as important as giving of their wallets.
Capture imagination with an ethos behind your business. What’s your ethos? Back in 1975 (when the Sex Pistols were getting started), Microsoft had the ethos of “a computer on every desk top.” Back then the phrase was two words, and Microsoft helped make the phrase synonymous with the computer. Your ethos informs your value proposition. Steve Jones described the Sex Pistols’ ethos as “we aren’t into music, we’re into chaos.” Disruption, anyone?
Context is everything. How did a band with very little output, that repeatedly dropped F bombs on live television, and turned sneering into a spectator sport, become so popular? They were disruptive and manipulated the media by thinking like them.
Marketing professionals, think like the media. Make your customer the hero. Don’t be afraid to be disruptive. Perhaps you too can be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (the Pistols were inducted in 2006).
Don’t Call us, we’ll call you
It All Begins Here
September 22, 2015
These days I am in full-time job search mode, which I would not wish upon anyone. This is an emotional roller-coaster. You spend your days developing and maintaining contact lists, spending hours applying to positions, wrestling with applicant tracking systems, making follow-up phone calls, preparing for interviews, (if you are very lucky) interviews, and trying to contain your anger when you learn that the position you thought was right for you was filled internally . Every day.
Having begun my first career in sales, I dutifully make a follow-up phone call on every resume I send. Those calls rarely go well. I am astounded at the number of people who do not take phone calls. If you do catch a live person (and I do believe they are out there), their mood can usually be characterized as surly or dismissive.
When I make these follow-up calls, people on the other side of the conversation often remind me a song from 1975 or so, “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You.” This song, by the Colorado-based band Sugarloaf, tells the story of the band channeling their frustrations of little interest from record companies into bubblegum sarcasm. The song’s title and chorus was all they ever heard, if they received any response at all. The band got into some trouble because the song mentioned the phone number of a record company executive, who was apparently less than welcoming. That errant use of a phone number in the song made it a fluke hit.
The phrase has even crept its way into software coding. The Hollywood Principle is a software design methodology that takes its name from the cliché response given to auditioning hopefuls in Hollywood: “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”. Wikipedia tells us that it is a useful paradigm that assists in the development of code with high cohesion and low coupling that is easier to debug, maintain and test. I much prefer the fluke hit.
Maybe I need a fluke hit, because I hear the chorus every weekday.
One communications plan for (hopefully) only one you
It All Begins Here
August 28, 2015
A client recently asked us to develop a PR plan. Great, we can work with them to develop their key messages and help influence how their audience perceives them. Later that day, the same client asked for a social media plan as well. Wait a minute, shouldn’t they be one plan? Sure, you can involve public relations, social media, advertising, community relations, and events, but make sure the channels fit together into one plan.
Why only one plan when there are so many channels? Consider your audience. People will find out about you through web searches, advertising, newspapers, email, articles, events, and social media. Wouldn’t you want them to receive the same consistent message, regardless of where they find it?
Putting your communication plan together involves asking yourself a lot of questions. The questions all relate to the following four statements.
Articulate what you do, and what you do better than anyone else. Describe what your business does in one sentence; feel free to include the products or services you provide. Now the tough part – what does your company do better than anyone else? Ask yourself and your customers this question. The customer’s answer could be a real eye-opener. For example, I once worked for a telecom equipment manufacturer that was about to roll out a “quality products” themed global marketing campaign. We were certain that product quality was our differentiator. But our customers had other ideas. A customer focus group - a room filled with about a dozen different clients - told us that our products were terrible! A customer said the only reason he bought from us was because we replaced the faulty stuff with no questions asked. So the true test is how your customers would answer the “what do you do better” question.
Define the audience. Who do you want to reach with your communications? Are you targeting the local business community, customers (current and potential), investors, business partners, employees, or combinations of the above? Once you have defined your audience, make a list of what is important to each of them.
Identify your key messages. Now that you’ve identified your audience and what you do for them, you can list what are the most important things you want your audience to know about you. Whether you are the innovator, the low-cost provider, or the communications counsel to the stars, make sure the key points are in your messaging.