Their emotions are high, the anticipation fills the air, talk about what’s in store is thick-in-the-room and the excitement of your new mega blockbuster premier which is about debut has your sensory preceptors set to overload.
The equipment is buzzing, your heart is pounding as you hear the countdown begin. In – 5, ..4, ..3, ..2, ..1.
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What do they see, hear, feel? Can they taste and smell your recipes of hearts – desire, pain & suffering, healing. Have you swept their hearts away within the first moments of interaction or are you boring them. Having your audience locked in and in-tune to your message has to be the most critical component of your marketing or you will loose your audience right from the start. The pressure is on, are you ready?
The stage is set & it’s time for the show, The lights dim, the music starts and queue your on. Your marketing is just like the art of the theater, your prospects, customers and leads all want o be entertained, enchanted and feel like they are receiving the red carpet treatment. A true V.I.P. Experience and knowing that your solution is the only solution for their needs.
Crossing from reality to the digital divide with your prospect is becoming bored with pain old bombardment advertizing and will continue to seek out more real human experiences and interactions with a business than ever before. Think about it who were the biggest players online in the social sphere over the last 3 years?
Eminem, Lady Gaga & Michael Jackson three of the biggest names in music, marketing and media have reached a pinnacle of top tier talent second to none. Your business on the other hand probably hasn’t grasped the whole experiential and humanization in marketing the music industry is built around experience and feeling.
No matter if your creating a blockbuster movie, a heart wrenching love-song or an uplifting ballad the emotion is carried from start to finish. Your reader has to be immersed deep into your brand, but more than just the brand itself. It has to be enriched in the brands experience. What it does, why it improves, where it can be found, when it’s available, who it’s for. All of this is accomplished in a way that projects a feeling within the hearts of your audience.
So how can you the small business take advantage of what these icons of thew music and marketing industry have shown you and make it your core principle for all of your marketing communications with your audiences. You have to go way beyond the brand and get down deep inside of your customers. But before we do that let’s take the advice and lessons from these amazing stars and modern day legends.
Let’s start with the master MC. The Marshall Mathers one man band. The one and only rapper Eminem. He had a massive push from the time he was in high school until he finally broke the charts at the age of 25. When he broke the charts with his mega hit “8 mile.” Eminem’s hard hitting lyrics helped to take him to the top of the charts.
Again Eminem had to make a huge comeback after a 5 year absence from the scene. It was here where the experience and human interactions begin. Listen in as AdAge.com Tells the story of Eminem’s huge comeback…
In the world of hip-hop, a five-year absence is an eternity. So for Eminem’s new album, “The Relapse,” the marketing team at Aftermath/Interscope Records has mounted an audacious campaign that playfully smears the lines between the rapper’s troubled past and the nightmarish, fictionalized world of his latest work. By using Twitter to dispense short, often disturbing thoughts and links to multimedia components revolving around a mental institution, they’ve helped make the album the most highly anticipated hip-hop release of the year — and set it up for a sequel in the second half of 2009.
Paul Rosenberg, the nine-time Grammy-winning rapper’s manager, said the marketing effort isn’t necessarily the biggest push Eminem has attempted, but it’s clearly the most creative.
“In the past, when we’ve tried to do things in a new way for Eminem, it was just more of OK, cookie-cutter types of ideas,” he said. “But in this one we really pushed ourselves, because of the time we’re living in, to create a different experience.”Two kinds of tweets
That experience lives on several social networks, but for many fans it has originated on Twitter. Some of the tweets are behind-the-scenes updates leading up to the album’s release tomorrow (“They are still editing my video”) while others are seemingly non-sequitur paranoia (“There’s no place to hide …”), complete with links to images that suggest Eminem is in a mental hospital and/or rehab facility called Pompsomp Hills.
Other tweets have included a link to the album’s cover, a mosaic of pills that form an image of Eminem’s face; a screenshot of his upcoming paid iPhone and iPod Touch game set in Pompsomp Hills; a link to a blood-splattered video for his single “3 A.M.” that’s set in the fictional clinic; and a link to an interactive web experience that’s set there as well.
That a simple Google search reveals a just-amateur-enough-to-look-real website for Pompsomp Hills makes the narrative details even more discomforting for fans familiar with Eminem’s recent real-life troubles with prescription drugs, which put him in rehab and led to his hospitalization for pneumonia in early 2008, as he recently revealed in a Vibe cover story. Omelet, a branding, advertising and entertainment agency based in Los Angeles, helped develop the Pompsomp Hills website, along with other facets of the nontraditional push.
The entirety of “Relapse” was leaked onto the web last week, and in it the rapper reportedly describes his problems in both blunt terms and twisted fantasies, bringing life, marketing and product full circle.
Dennis Dennehy, head of marketing and publicity at Interscope, said Twitter has been the perfect platform to slowly build anticipation since October 2008, when the album was first announced.
In summary of AdAge.com’s story the Impressive results “Twitter wasn’t the only medium used to get the word out, a total of 113,868 unique visitors during April with the most popular of his tweets.”Eminem’s storytelling on the web goes well beyond the scope of most music marketing Scott Yeti – Wooha.com
Read AdAge.com’s full review here. How Eminem’s Marketing Team Is Using Twitter To Build Buzz
So what is it about Eminem’s storytelling his writings and beyond the scope of marketing mean to a small business? More importantly what can we learn from this epic icon of our time? Eminem is a brilliant storyteller.
A true lyrical sniper with a shotgun as copyblogger.com would say in a story by Sean Platt
“Though I’ve always been drawn to great lyricists and songwriters, I’d never heard anyone able to effectively indulge satire, rage, sorrow, shame, guilt, regret, power, passion, loneliness, bravado, stupidity, genius, leadership, idiocy, misogyny, sympathy and, believe it or not, tender compassion. And Eminem was doing it in a stream of pentameter that would, I’m certain, cause William Shakespeare to shudder. “
What Eminem can teach you about writing
Write and read all you can
Edit ruthlessly
Write What You Know
Start Strong Finish Stronger
Be concise and use powerful sentences
What Eminiem can teach you about marketing
Put yourself out there
Be Extreme
Tell A Story
Experiment
Address Objections
Your job is to be the star and fascinate people. Sure you may not need to be as extreme as Eminem with your antics but you cannot deny that this man knows exactly what he is doing. Look back to just last year again where his AdAge reviewed his latest debut “Recovery” brought in spots and sales at the Super Bowl.
Eminem a brand that is constantly reemerging through hardship, pain, strong will. One to be known for perseverance. Do you have the strength within to push on? Finding that wining edge and never giving up. Ask yourself if this sits behind your brand. Do you want to give your customers more to look forward to then follow what the woman of the hour has to say about keeping your audience entertained.
Image via Wikipedia
In a Hubspot.com com review we learn of how she captivates and engages with her brand. The powerful woman powered humanization watch as her intellect and passion for marketing unfolds. Add this to your Eminem set of marketing – jujitsu skills and watch out for an explosion of customer support and loyalty to your brand.
1. Timing is Everything – It is the speed and pace of actions and words that make or break a performance. Look at any video of a Lady Gaga performance. She nails timing. She pauses and builds momentum at all of the right times.
Marketing Takeaway: As many learned during the recent Science of Timing webinar, when content is distributed at just the right moment, it can have a major impact on its reach and performance.
2. Humility Is Key – If you subscribe to HBO, you likely saw part of Gaga’s Madison Square Garden concert special. No matter which part you watched, you also likely heard her thank her fans. This is because Gaga understands that humility is key to building a rabid community of supporters.
Marketing Takeaway: Thank your customers and fans for their support. Conduct surveys to ask for input and demonstrate how that feedback is reflected in business changes. Offer free upgrades, perks, or surprise gifts for customers to show your appreciation for their business.
3. Details Matter – Lady Gaga doesn’t lip sync during her concerts. She is constantly training for her dance numbers. In other words, she obsesses over all the details related to her product and brand.
Marketing Takeaway: Remember that the little things matter. For example, if you’ve just conducted a website redesign, make sure your website’s links redirect to URLs that you may have changed during the redesign. Online marketing is about the compiled results of multiple efforts over time. If you stop paying attention to details, results will be lost in the long term.
4. Don’t Give Away the Magic – How much do you really know about Lady Gaga? Have you ever seen her wear jeans and a t-shirt? She intentionally hides her “normal” activities. She treats all of her time in public like a performance. She is a master of fame.
Marketing Takeaway: Your customers just want the magic. Customers don’t care how much R&D went into a product or all of the people it took to make it happen. For the most part, customers are selfish. They want something that will solve their problem in a simple way. When creating content and developing marketing strategies, amplify the magic of the product by down-playing how the magic happens.
5. Marketing Is a Lifestyle – Gaga has made fame and marketing her lifestyle. Every performance or song release had marketing as a part of its DNA. She doesn’t only focus on marketing a few months before an album is released; instead, it is an every day mindset.
Marketing Takeaway: Marketing campaigns are all well and good, but in an inbound marketing world, campaigns aren’t enough. Now, marketing needs to be in the DNA of your company. Employees in all departments should create content and aid in the company’s goal of market domination. Examine the daily activities of your business. How can you better integrate marketing into your business’ culture?
6. Standing Out Wins – Have you tuned into an entertainment awards show in the past year? If so, you’ve likely heard the constant chatter about the crazy outfits Lady Gaga has worn. She is a master of standing out and being controversial. This behavior is rewarded with an abundance of media coverage and attention.
Marketing Takeaway: Being controversial isn’t about taking risks. It’s really just about doing something unexpected and out of character for your industry. Write a blog post that takes a different stand on a topic than most others in your industry would take. Look at how others in your industry are doing inbound marketing, and take a different approach. It’s time to stand out.
Read more about Lady Gaga’s marketing techniques on Hubspot.com
Lady Gaga doesn’t just stop at great music as we look deep into her marketing we see how she took and embraced the web, the Internet and mobile technology. See what Mashable.com’s Brian Anthony Hernandez has to say. Listen in to the web of intamacy Lady Gaga has built around her audience and fan base.
The web is what you make of it,” reads the parting text inGoogle Chrome‘s latest commercial featuring Lady Gaga.
“She’s mastered the art of [the] launch,” Scordato said. “Every new video or album release is always an event. She and her team recognize that millions of views or album sales don’t come overnight.”
The takeaways are:
- You need to build momentum with elements of surprise along the way.
- Integrate. Make sure all your marketing channels are working together to promote a single brand identity and message.
- Use your fans as your best marketing asset. Encourage and remind them to tell your story and never forget to thank them along the way.
- Give people something to love. If you can do that, you’ve won half the battle.
Let’s not forget the King of Pop Mr. Michael Jackson. Our most controversial and most talked about icon of the past few decades. From his childhood stardom with his four other brothers and sisters to his super-stardom identified first and foremost by his shoes, shades and his glove.
Image via Wikipedia
A true trendsetter for the industry in a story covered byboardsmag.com Kevin Ritchie
The glove, the shoes, the shades: Michael Jackson’s Pepsi campaign of the early ‘80s helped spread the iconography that endeared fans around the world to the superstar until his untimely death last month.
But in the world of advertising, the late pop singer’s $5 million deal with Pepsi in 1983 was a landmark integrated campaign that laid the blueprint for celebrity endorsements to come.
A year after Thriller‘s release, The Jacksons were looking to break into Madison Ave. and asked Jay Coleman, founder of Entertainment Marketing & Communications International to find them a deal.
Initially, Coleman pitched The Jacksons to Coca-Cola, but the company considered them “niche” and refused to meet his $5 million asking price. “They saw it as an ethnic marketing opportunity,” says Coleman. ”I think they just believed if you wanted to reach black consumers, you had a black star. If you wanted to reach white consumers, you had a white star. They really didn’t understand the fact that Michael was truly a cross-over artist.”
Micheal Jackson did something that not many artists have ever done. He was able to set the pace for many artisits and he inspired marketers to reach beyond their capabilities and think outside of their boxes. Businesses trendsetting isn’t as common place as building up competition and “me too businesses.”
never the less your small business needs to push the boundaries of your marketing. It takes exceptional thinking to produce exceptional results. Real human powered results. Just don’t make the mistake and blaze a new trail in the wrong direction. Michael did.
HE MANAGED TO DESTROY everything he had built by going against the grain.
As Dean Phillips @ Streetdirectoty.com reveals here…
You couldn’t help but be captivated by the unbelievably cute kid with the amazingly controlled falsetto voice and electric dance moves. He was only 10 years old, when he exploded onto the music scene, along with his brothers as the lead singer of the Jackson 5, but he had the stage presence of a twenty year veteran. Before or since, I haven’t seen a child that talented, that gifted, that dynamic, that charismatic!I’m talking about Michael Jackson, of course. The whole world fell in love with Michael Jackson! In the early seventies, Michael along with his brothers, the Jackson 5, were the hottest musical act on the planet!
As an adult, he still had the magic that so captivated us when he was a child. And once again, he became the hottest musical act on the planet!
In fact, if Michael hadn’t broken ‘a cardinal rule,’, there’s little question, he’d be considered the greatest entertainer of all time.
So what ‘cardinal rule’ did Michael Jackson break? He tried to reinvent the wheel. He took that handsome and familiar face that was loved by millions of people all around the world–and he destroyed it, along with his incredible career at the same time. Businesses do the same thing every single day. They destroy what’s familiar and successful. Instead of taking the path of least resistance, they try to reinvent the wheel–usually with disastrous results!
Use what works, don’t avoid the media and mainstream marketing channels. Use them to your advantage. Add value and incentive to them. Engage and embrace your customers with sharp and brilliant messaging. Bring them to an all encompassed solution. Make them feel involved. Think about it… Where do all of your customers look when they want to know more? Where do they go to get the latest information about your business, or their favorite celebrity, or even the latest news? Let’s look to the stars once again. When Michael Jackson died it was claimed that he almost took down the Internet….
Real Time Search or just Real Search?
Current event search is the ultimate real time search opportunity. It’s what consumers are looking for in the moment. That’s the ultimate example of when search can fail or succeed. There are lots of ways people are attacking this right now:
- Google News
- Cuil
- Yahoo
- Bing
- Twazzup
- Scoopler
- CrowdEye
- YouTube
- OneRiot
Where do people turn when IT happens?
Michael Jackson died and almost took the Internet with him (CNN). People were looking for info on Google, on Facebook, Twitter, Google News, OneRiot, etc. Consumer habits don’t change until there’s a stimulus. When Michael Jackson died, ~7.8000 were searching Google that day. Consumers turned to Google, that’s who took the big hit. The day after Michael Jackson’s death, people went to YouTube to relive memories, to get his old content, etc. They turned away from the news sites and toward where they could go to experience Michael Jackson. Searchers looking for Michael Jackson content flocked to commerce sites:
- music.yahoo.com
- youtube.com
- myspace.com
- ebay.com
- amazon.com
- music.msn.com
- mtv.com
- music.aol.com
- imeem.com
- playlist.com
- last.fm
Michael Jackson’s death was good for business.
From concept to deployment your small business has to have the human element in marketing. We have seen a culture and a movement form around brands, artists and building of a tribe or a community will only grow in importance as time passes. It’s 2012 and a new year of engagement has emerged. Are you ready? Will you make it to the top in your market? Take a step back, away from the high tech and go back to the high touch point.
If you want to make your marketing go hip hop and your revenues start to really pop take these tips, use the paved paths to success and take your business and your marketing to new heights.
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