WHAT ABOUT THE CUSTOMER?

At the end of the day, it comes down to that old cliché about coming into this world alone, leaving this world alone and filling the middle part with stuffing that makes you happy and enjoying it like you would a damn good chopped liver sandwich with plenty of cheese and onions. 

For myself, life has been brilliant, and far better than expected with wonderful twists and turns, a fantastic cast of characters and adventures with there still being ongoing journeys ahead. 

What’s there to do in the Here and Now is to keep DOING what one believes needs to be done, and looking inward and seeing what more there’s to do that has meaning and adds value to one’s portfolio.

We might not all be able to find a cure for cancer or the crippling Alzheimer’s disease that took my mother away, but we have god given talents to make a difference by doing things that come naturally in whatever fields we have chosen for ourselves. 

It’s about enjoying the life you are now entitled to and, as Bob Dylan said, without having to work on Maggie’s farm no more and able to cherry pick what’s next. 

I write, because I’m in music marketing and writing gives me the inspiration to expand my horizons without trying to be an “influencer” or sneezing on people and becoming an influenza. 

This is where I see so much going wrong with what is still known today as “marketing and communications” and where the medium of the message has become a hit or miss exercise disguised as an exacting science.  

What this is is some shaky corporate “culture” based on bluffing one’s way through the tough questions, and, if lucky, all the oddly shaped pieces being forced to fit into the puzzle and one becoming a powerbroker and maybe even a Shylock. 

When leading the International divisions in the Regional offices of two major music companies in Asia, and coming straight into the music industry from the very much disciplined world of advertising and learning from great mentors, I was surprised to see a very much amateurish run business. 

However, this offered me the opportunity to change things around and create a more sleek and streamlined business model with room for growth. 

How? 

By losing the Human Resources Department and doing away with outside consultants who I saw as nothing more than a crutch to justify internal decisions.

After all, if you don’t have the people in place who know what they need, why are they hired and what are they doing there and singing about money for nothing and chicks for free?

The result? An increase of sixteen percent in sales which gave us 24 percent market share, something that provided us bargaining power with business partners like music video channels.

From a business model perspective, when it came to the music industry, nothing had really changed from the early days of the Ertegun brothers starting up their own label by signing up and supporting a new artist named Ray Charles.

Berry Gordy Jr created his Motown label as “Hitsville” and “The Sound Of Young America”, whereas everything Richard Branson achieved for Virgin Records was with one artist and his first release- Michael Oldfield and “Tubular Bells”. 

My time with the two multinationals showed that none of the majors had a USP- Unique Selling Point- except for the talent. This is what made them special. It was success through association with business partners, but of absolutely no consequence to music fans.

When forced to “go digital” like many other businesses, a herd mentality took place and there were new hires from tech companies who knew nothing about the value of music nor artists. 

This caused a disconnect and which is where many businesses have stalled and are dependent on “research findings” and data from outside sources.

Often, this is to convince them that what they’re doing internally is perhaps not incorrect, but how things can always be improved.

Really?

What’s gone missing in the hurry to be part of the “digital revolution” is that the entrepreneurial spirit that offered consumers what they didn’t know they needed has disappeared.

The technology was allowed to become the idea, creative shrinkage happened, the boffins took over the asylum and in the music industry artists bailed into a DIY world where they could own all Rights.

What I see today is a numbers game driven by online platforms being played with such pseudo importance that “communications” often miss the mark. 

For example, how many versions of the same story about Katy Perry and some other female celebrities with big boobs going up in space for eleven minutes, thanks to Jeff Bezos, can one person read? 

Doesn’t this at some stage become maybe even an annoyance and boil over into angst?

Imagine that you’re running a business and taking a scattergun approach to marketing by distributing information about your product on every online platform- just to make sure that nothing and no one is being left out. 

What does your prospective customer or business partner get out of this? 

In other words, instead of awareness, how effective are your marketing efforts in positioning your product in the current marketplace as being different to and better than rest? 

This is was what some of us learned long before everyone seemingly jumping aboard the Digital Revolution to be seen as being relevant when there is a far greater demand for pinpoint accuracy and relevance in product positioning. 

There’s much to be said about Less Is More, the KISS theory- Keep It Simple, Stupid- and believing in what you have created and how and where and when it should be seen. 

Creative by committee might provide internal “safety in numbers”, but this doesn’t mean that it’s being bought by that customer segment who needs to be convinced about what works best for them.

Be brave in your marketing efforts without being reckless- and needing to wear a tie to show that you’re a “playa” from the corporate world.

No one cares.

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