You really need to check out Brand Autopsy.
Not only is it flattering to be taken apart and then put back together by these guys, but they’re seeing things I never saw and are delivering an enormous amount of value about the new book.
My favorite are the "shorten" links. You’ll see. Go read it.
Do you have a lawn?
You know, the wasteful green expanse in front of your house… that kind of lawn.
It turns out that lawns were virtually unknown in the USA until after 1850, and were invented in the UK not too long before this.
The reason for a lawn? To demonstrate wastefulness. A lawn tells your neighbors you can afford to waste land, waste water and have a team of servants to keep it all pretty (History of Lawns In America.)
The marketing of lawns is true marketing. Not interruptive clever ads, but an idea that spreads and sticks. Just like Starbucks. Or e-mail. The challenge facing industries and organizations is to create ideas that have the marketing built in.
You don’t have a front lawn so your kids can practice soccer. You have one so your spouse won’t yell at you for embarrassing the family in front of the neighbors.
Happy mowing.
The brilliant Jerry Shereshewsky at Yahoo! chimes in with another riff about the Bowling Green orchestra. "Music isn’t a centrality in their lives, although it probably once was. The orchestra can extend their relationship, increase their perceived value and get lots of word of mouth (not to mention a few bucks too) by sharing programming thoughts (aka playlists) for their greater audience. If you like this concert, here’s some other stuff you would love. Send them to an affiliate link to buy or download."
In other words, share of wallet, not share of market.
“It tasted like a canned seafood candy bar, so odd and unappealing…”
That’s part of today’s New York Times review of Koi, a new restaurant in Manhattan.
Koi has the story down pat. The supermodels at the bar, the imposing maitre d at the front desk, the celebrity heritage from LA and the fusion Japanese menu. It lets the diner lie to himself about how special he is to be permitted to eat here.
It doesn’t matter. Not one bit. If the food is this bad, people won’t come back.
And that’s what a lot of people miss about marketing and lying. Your story is worthless if it’s not authentic. Your story won’t spread if the facts don’t back it up.
Jeff Reed writes,
I am the music director of an orchestra that is entering its sixth season, which is located in a town of 50,000 people. Our budget was about $15,000 the first season and it will be nearly $500,000 this season. We have always had balanced budgets and will finish this season (ends July 1) with about a $20,000 surplus. This is happening at a time when many orchestras have ended in bankruptcy or are finishing with large deficits. I owe much of our success to you.
Having read several studies on why orchestras are failing, I have learned (which came as no surprise), that people these days don’t want to hear one type of music (which is what orchestras usually offer-only classical) and that audiences get bored without a visual element in a concert (merely watching the musicians isn’t enough).
To respond to these studies, we created what we think is a purple cow: an orchestra that programs Beethoven and the Beatles on the same concert (usually, orchestras perform only "serious" music on one concert and have a pops orchestra to do the "light" stuff–they usually use two different orchestra names, even though the same musicians do both concerts!). All of our concerts are centered around themes which tie the various musical styles together, often with an added visual element on a screen above the orchestra. For example, we did "That ’20s Show" which featured "serious" music from the 1920’s by Shostakovich, a commissioned film score to accompany a silent film (the orchestra played the score while the audience watched the film on a screen above the orchestra), and popular songs by George and Ira Gershwin. We did a bluegrass concert that featured Copland’s "Appalachian Spring," standards performed by a Bluegrass band, and a new composition for bluegrass band and orchestra.
I don’t know how remarkable all of this is nationally or internationally, but it is certainly working in Bowling Green, KY. Our audiences have grown from 100 the first season to an average of 800 this past season (some concerts sell as many as 2,000 tickets).
I just finished reading "All Marketers Are Liars." My question is: what story are we telling or should we be telling? It seems like we are telling quite a few, for example: (1) orchestras don’t have to be boring (which deals with a common perception); (2) We think outside the Bachs (sorry for the pun), which seems to make people feel good about the fact that they want to hear several different types of music and that they aren’t stupid if they get bored listening to some classical music. All of our season themes are along those lines: Anything Goes, Thinking Outside the Bachs, Bluegrass to Baroque, etc.
I thought it would be fun to answer Jeff’s questions on the blog… The fact is, he’s already 99% of the way there (through no fault of mine!)
Most orchestras are run by people who are focused on the "truth" of what they do. They are performing the canon, doing it with skill and passion. They offer their community the best of what they are able to produce, and hope that those that are intelligent and genteel enough appreciate what they have to offer. If people don’t come, it’s some sort of commentary on the declining state of our culture, not, in their view, a reflection of the story they’re telling.
Every once in a while, a traditional orchestra decides to go slumming to raise money. They program a Pops concert or bring in PDQ Bach. The problem with this is that they’re still talking to the very people they always talk to, so it’s not enough. That, and because it’s seen as an extra, a lesser task, few orchestras really get very good at this sort of programming.
Jeff, on the other hand, has figured out a totally different way to look at the situation. It starts by understanding worldview. There is certainly a tiny population in Bowling Green that walks around with the worldview, "I love traditional classical music and will pay to see it live." These people would be an easy sale, but there are very very few of them.
There’s a much larger group that has a worldview that says, "I’m interested in live music and enjoy an evening out. I want to do something fun and something that doesn’t make me bored or feel stupid." These people are the kind of people who read movie reviews and movie ads–not because they have to, but because they want to. They are the kind of people who don’t skip over the entertainment section of their local paper.
In walks Jeff’s group with a simple story, well told. "We’re not slumming, we don’t look down on you and we’re here to have fun, too." By taking advantage of clever programming, slide shows and other non-traditional techniques, Jeff is busy putting on a show–a show that people want to hear.
I don’t think Jeff needs help telling his story. The challenge is now to make it easy for people to tell that story to their friends. I’d obsess about getting permission from my fans (via email, or a traditional newsletter) and then deliver regularly news to them that’s easy to spread. I’d offer "bring a friend" evenings and discounts, and start programming in venues outside of the traditional theatre.
The takeaway here is that if your target audience isn’t listening, it’s not their fault, it’s yours. If one story isn’t working, change what you do, not how loudly you yell (or whine). Nice work, Jeff.
This is a true story of the Net, of talent and trust. It’s a small world.
Fifteen years ago, on the streets of Soho (the artsy district of Manhattan) my wife and I were window-shopping for art we couldn’t afford. Outside of one of the galleries, literally on the street, we saw an artist selling his work right on the street. We bought a painting for about $100 and congratulated ourselves for "buying art in Soho" at a discount. The artist was friendly and we wished him luck.
Knut Masco, the artist, specialized in painting on the back of old windows. He decorated the wooden frame and painted on the glass. He was a committed street artist and made a name for himself when he joined in with some other artists and sued Rudi Guiliani for banning their work (a surprisingly large number of people don’t remember the original bully version of Guiliani). They won and that was the last we heard of Knut.
Anyway, two months ago the Masco in our house fell off the wall and shattered into a billion pieces. We were heartbroken. "This is a job for google" I cried, and off I went to find Knut. Nothing doing. He had vanished.
I hopped over to the amazing Google Answers. I posted a query and within a day, the researcher found Knut… living in Israel… under another name… no longer doing art!
I dropped Knut a note, found out his new name was Boaz, and described our need for a new painting. He quickly agreed–even though he couldn’t find any old windows and had to make a new one from scratch. Even though he hadn’t painted in a while. I offered to pay in advance, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
Two months later, I get an email saying the painting is ready and has been shipped. I send him a check, made out to his new name, on faith. A day later, a painting arrives by Federal Express. From Israel. With a handwritten invoice.
The painting is terrific–even better than the original. But more important to us is the story. Not sure what you can do with it, but thought you’d want to hear it.
Dave Sampson sent me this link: Drug Photos.
If you’ve got kids, I beg you to share this with them. It’s disturbing, but important. And far more powerful than any table of statistics or medical report ever could be.
Thanks to Red for the link: AutoBlogger.net.
I think it’s worth noting that there are more than ten million blogs out there, and best as I can tell, virtually nobody does it because they have to. In other words, it’s not a job yet. I’m sure it will be soon, for some people.
And that’s because citizens demand that they lie. And we’re getting what we deserve.
I listened to a debate on the radio yesterday between David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union and Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way. It was about the upcoming US Senate vote about filibusters. Ostensibly, this was a thoughtful, public-radio exposition of the facts and thoughts behind each side of the debate. It was nothing of the sort.
BRILLIANT
That’s the only word to describe David’s approach. He told a story about fairness. He used phrases like, “up or down vote” and “nominees who have been held hostage for four years” and “what’s in the Constitution.” He spoke calmly and reasonably and never wavered from the story he wanted to tell. If you were inclined to believe his story, it was easy to believe. More important, it was easy to spread.
INCOMPETENT
Ralph Neas approached it like a Moot Court debater. He talked about how Robert Byrd’s previous motions (fifteen years ago) were fundamentally different. Who exactly cares about Robert Byrd? He talked about how the Republicans had filibustered forty (forty!) years ago with Abe Fortas. Ralph may very well have been right about the facts, but it doesn’t matter, does it?
[When marketers talk about politics (and when politicians talk about marketing) it almost always ends up as a degraded conversation because people get emotional over their points of view. That’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m talking about is the consistent bungling of the Democratic Party as they fail to tell stories that people want to hear.]
John Kerry lost to an unpopular incumbent seeking reelection for just one reason: he insisted on focusing on facts, on issues, on position papers and on nuance. He acted like an intellectual bully, refusing to worry about the story he told. George W. Bush, on the other hand, was absolutely masterful in the way he told a story that a portion of the electorate wanted to hear.
It may be, that like me, you wish that all issues were decided on facts and reliable data. They never are. We’re people, not machines, and we believe stories, not facts.
Ralph Neas doesn’t appear to understand this. If I had been him, I would have repeated the mantra, Antonin Scalia over and over again. I would have talked about what will happen if the court has three more Scalia’s on it. I’d tell that story calmly and carefully and repeatedly. Not everyone dislikes Scalia. That’s okay. You’re never going to persuade everyone of anything. What you can do, though, is persuade the persuadable, persuade the people who are choosing to listen and are open to believing the story you want to tell.
Thanks to Dhrumil for the link and the photo: We Like It Raw.
The idea being sold is raw food, but the picture instantly tells a story that is far more effective than the words could ever be. Yes that’s the same person, less than two years later.
