The stars look very different today
It All Begins Here
January 15, 2016
The world was stunned this week by the sudden death of David Bowie. He released an album only last week (on his 69th birthday) and from this fan’s perspective it was great to have him back in the spotlight. Bowie defied almost every convention over a five-decade career that spanned multiple music genres, movies, theater, art and more. Someday, a dictionary will show his photo as the example of “chameleonic.” He taught the world so much.
Here are a few lessons learned from the man born David Jones:
Reinvention as an art form
Ziggy Stardust? The Thin White Duke? Elephant Man? He had numerous alter egos and personas, each perfectly matched the music to the character. The muscular guitar figures of the late great Mick Ronson of the Ziggy era were nothing like the sinewy funk lines of Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick of his Thin White Duke period, which presaged the Stratocaster pyrotechnics of Stevie Ray Vaughan on Let’s Dance. He ditched the disco getup for the tailored suits and serrated guitar work of Reeves Gabrels for his Tin Machine days. These personas and musical styles had a common thread – the unmistakable voice and compositional chops of Bowie. The lesson learned is, don’t be afraid to try or be something new.
Collaboration across generations
Bowie worked with so many different and varied artists who helped shape his sound and vision. One of the more bizarre television appearances I’ve ever seen was his duet with Bing Crosby on a Christmas special. With an age gap of more than 40 years, Crosby had no idea who this strange creature was singing with him. But that didn’t stop them from sounding great together! Their accomplishments in music and the movies actually gave the two stars significant common ground. Another Bowie collaboration grew out of a conversation at a dinner party. John Lennon and David Bowie discussed the path to fame, and once a level of fame is achieved the famous try to deconstruct and downplay it. The resulting song displays some of Lennon’s finest guitar work. Bowie would later re-record the song with Queen Latifah (born Dana Owens), then an up-and-coming singer. One of my favorite songs from the 1980s is Under Pressure, the brilliant duet that Bowie recorded with British rock legends Queen. He had been friends with their singer, Freddy Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara) for years and they shared a love of presenting rock as a visual spectacle. Can you sense a pattern with his collaborators?
Great Risk Great Reward
His innovations stretched into the unlikely worlds of finance and technology. Bowie was one of the first celebrities to offer bonds on his back catalog. Bowie Bonds were asset-backed securities of current and future revenues of the 25 albums (287 songs) that Bowie recorded before 1990. The idea was pioneered by investment banker David Pullman, and the bonds issued by Prudential in 1997. At one time, Bowie Bonds had a higher rate of return than a 10-year Treasury note!
His footprint in technology was also significant. In September 1998, Bowie launched his own Internet service provider, BowieNet. Subscribers to the dial-up service were offered exclusive content, as well as a BowieNet email address and regular Internet access. Although the service was closed in 2006, Bowie was again a pioneer in another world.
One of the true originals has left us, and made an indelible mark on our world. The stars do look very different today.
Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, or why you should always try to challenge yourself
It All Begins Here
December 3, 2015
Six strings, four strings, it’s all the same, right? Wrong (imagine Dana Carvey as John McLaughlin in his most bellicose bellowing)! The ukulele and the guitar may both be stringed instruments, but there are many differences in how they are strung, tuned, and played. I’ve been playing guitar for decades and can voice most chords on the guitar without thinking. Which is where the little uke comes in. It has only 4 strings (from low to high: G, C, E, and A) for you to express yourself.
As a musicianship exercise, last weekend I took a few songs that I knew well on the guitar and rearranged them for ukulele. The point of the exercise was to get me thinking about chords, structures, and shapes in a new way. Liberate my thinking a little. My first rearrangement was “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” one of the most beautiful and under-appreciated songs in the Elton John catalog. Pick up his 1972 gem “Honky Chateau” and you’ll find it is full of treasures. In fact, Rolling Stone ranked it number 357 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time (2003 version of the ranking). The song was inspired by Elton’s lyricist Bernie Taupin hearing gunshots outside his hotel room during his first trip to New York. So the song states that “Rose of Spanish Harlem” is just a myth, rose trees never grow in New York City – powerful stuff to me, since I grew up half an hour by train from New York and have sworn I’ve seen many trees alive and well.
I’ve been playing the song on guitar for years and can usually play it from memory. But the C, A minor. and other chords in the song are much different on the ukulele. Your fingers wind up going to places you (and they) never thought they’d go. Be ready to take your mind to different places too! The transition to a different instrument taught me a lot about the song and showed me things I didn’t know were there!
Which brings me to the topic of this post. There is an opportunity to stretch yourself in everything you do. You are never too old, too set in your ways, or too structured to learn something new. Even if you think that you know something well, looking at it differently can teach you new things. So go back over that customer engagement survey and look for some new insights. Ask a client if what you do in another vertical could work in theirs. Look into a new cloud technology. As the song says, turn around and say “good morning” to the night.
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.