Despite what others may tell you, I’m the eternal optimist. The glass is always half full, and anybody can become President of the United States if they study hard and eat their Wheaties. I prefer to see things for what they can be instead of shooting down ideas before they’ve had time to fully ripen.
That being said, I’ve been doing what I do for a good long time now. And I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at it. I’ve worked in the crappy conditions (physical, financial, philosophical, and any other -al you can think of) and walked away with a very healthy understanding of what works and what doesn’t.
Inherent in all that pesky experience comes a perception of cynicism. I am, at times, rather critical of my team, products, ideas, and so on. But never, ever is it meant simply to be insulting or non-constructive. Rather, I’ve earned the right by doing what I”ve done to make the assessment of success/failure for a given concept or product. And, blissfully, more times than not I’ve been 100% spot on.
Lots of people, and I’ll include myself somewhat, have a hard time hearing reality. And there’s an abundance of CEOs who want to hire free-thinkers who they secretly want to be YES-men. Or, worse, they expect someone to bring in all the buzz words they read about in self-help books for entrepreneurs. Generally speaking, if you’re going to “think outside the box,” “raise the bar,” or (my fave!) be able to really “sell the sizzle,” I want nothing to do with you. Please don’t use buzzwords in place of actual viable thoughts and ideas. I’d much rather the smart person without the idea, then the eager go-getter with a mouthful of jargon.
So - back to cynicism. Pay attention to everything around you that works, that you’ve done, and that you’d like to see in the marketplace of your choice. Look at yourself and your work critically (but not destructively). The true cynic (not some self-proclaimed expert/blowhard) may mock you for your efforts, but only if you’re not properly prepared or lack the virtue your ideas require. The cynic is your best friend.
I got a message the other day from one of my clients. I had submitted a marketing plan which met existing budget, staff, and timeline limitations. Admittedly, it wasn’t the most exciting and groundbreaking campaign, but it maximized every existing opportunity.
The response I got was “I hired you ‘cuz you think outside the box. Give me something that delivers that…and go read this book.” The book in question is “Punk Marketing” and it’s a great read. The missing link to the client suggestion is that most of the “unique” and “innovative” ideas they mention cost thousands, if not millions, of dollars to implement. But apparently, I should have the same brainstorm for pennies on the budget (and consulting!) dollar.
My response was “within the parameters you established, this is the best plan to meet your goals.” And I’ll stand by that statement. There are no easy solutions, no quick-hits, and no magic bullets in the marketing world. And anyone who tells you otherwise is quite full of themselves. You can nitpick, wordsmith, and debate infinitely, but rarely if ever does it lead to success. In the music industry, he who hesitates is old news.
The best advice I’ve been given is by John Mazzone. John’s a cool guy who runs a company called JamSpot. The JamSpot founders had a great idea, which was well executed, and is now highly successful. His advice, “just do it.” OK, I know it’s Nike’s idea too, but John’s reasoning is different: There’re a millions wrong reasons to stop you from doing things and they’ll block you from the right ones. “Just Do It” gets you closer to the right reasons much faster. It’s not permission to be reckless, but it’s also justifying the “gut instinct” inside successful folks.
Criticism, in its best and worst form lives on. The late, great Dorothy Parker wrote some of the finest, including:
“This not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force” (The Algonquin Wits, 1968)
“Katharine Hepburn delivered a striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B” (Review of Katherine Hepburn in “The Lake,” 1941)
“Not Much Fun.” (Parker’s response to bartender’s question, “What are you having?”)
Then I read this review of a recent Motley Crue concert. It appears criticism is alive and well. Enjoy…
Motley Crue Set Marked By Gross Factor and Filler
(Marc Hirsh/Boston Globe, 8/25)There is, as almost everybody knows, an old borscht belt joke: Two women are at a resort complaining about the meals. The first woman says, “The food here is terrible.” The second woman responds, “I know. And such small portions!” The musical equivalent played out Friday at the Comcast Center, as Mötley Crüe not only dipped into its numbingly dreary collection of glam-metal hits but played far fewer of them than it could have in a 90-minute set crammed with filler.
Most of that wasted time was spent, as “Spinal Tap” so eloquently put it, treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality. The show opened with shadows of an angel performing a sex act on a devil, and there appeared to be actual porn intercut with the video footage of world leaders past and present accompanying “Same Old Situation (S.O.S.).” (Clearly, this was a statement, but it was unclear about what.) The low point came when drummer Tommy Lee aimed a video camera at the women of the audience for five whole minutes of “Show us your [acquiescence to peer pressure]!”
That sort of thing was obnoxious when Mötley Crüe was younger; these days, with the members all well over 40, it’s just pervy-old-man gross.
Guitarist Mick Mars mostly stayed out of it, but with his squat top hat pulled down to his eyes, long flowing coat and waxy, featureless pallor, he was creepy enough in his own right. Fittingly for a player so limited that he once admitted that he could only solo over one chord, his riffs sounded as though they were all built around the same three or four notes.
Then again, Vince Neil had his own four-note vocal range and Lee lost the beat right before the second chorus of “Girls, Girls, Girls,” so maybe that’s just Mötley Crüe. The new “[Very Bad Word] of the Year” was aimless, but at least it was loud and dumb, in good company alongside “Wild Side” and “Kickstart My Heart,” which featured an explosion-punctuated bash-out coda lasting almost as long as the song itself. In other words, filler.
Openers Trapt had the misfortune of playing when many ticket holders were themselves still trapt in Friday rush-hour traffic. Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx’s side project Sixx:A.M. followed with nondescript pop-metal.
If someone wanted to do a parody of a crazily enthusiastic man-of-the-people metal frontman, he would act and sound an awful lot like Papa Roach singer Jacoby Shaddix, but the band kept things moving by eschewing riffery for pure power chordage.
Buckcherry’s full-tilt hedonistic hard rock led to frontman Josh Todd’s amazing discovery that a microphone is shaped much like male genitalia, breaking news that, through his actions, he shared with the audience.
Once a month I go out and buy some music. You know: in the store, CD in hand, and actually purchase items. While it’s a longer discussion, I really do like having a physical product and an interaction with a real person when I buy music. Call me crazy…
Anyway, here’s what I bought, and they all come VERY highly recommended:
Give an artist the opportunity to pick ‘n’ mix their own favorite tracks, and odds are something amazing, something obscure, and something awful will result. This album has all of that and the liner notes go in depth into their decisions. If you only hear The Peddlers perform “On a Clear Day (You Can See Forever)”, this disc is still worth 10x what you paid for it.
I’ve heard this album a thousand times. Everybody has. But the bonus disc contains a (shockingly good) unreleased track (Sisters of the Cross) and lays out the basic piano demos for what became classic tracks. It’s fascinating to see the changes, progress, and development from start to finish.
I sat transfixed on the floor of a packed Austin, TX bar to see Ron Sexsmith back in 2004. I would do it again and again. Songwriting doesn’t get better than this. If you’ve just broken up with someone, want to find that someone to fall in love with, or need any excuse to open a bottle of wine and just sit back … this album is it. Absolutely incredible.
Today would have been Mae West’s 115th Birthday. Though, she would’ve passed for a young, err, 80?
Mae’s Words of Wisdom
A dame that knows the ropes isn’t likely to get tied up.
A hard man is good to find.
A man in the house is worth two in the street.
An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises.
Any time you’ve got nothing to do and lots of time to do it come on up.
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
Cultivate your curves - they may be dangerous but they won’t be avoided.
Don’t keep a man guessing too long - he’s sure to find the answer somewhere else.
Don’t marry a man to reform him - that’s what reform schools are for.
Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can’t figure out what from.
He who hesitates is a damned fool.
He’s the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of.
His mother should have thrown him out and kept the stork.
I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.
I believe that it’s better to be looked over than it is to be overlooked.
I didn’t discover curves; I only uncovered them.
I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.
I like a man who’s good, but not too good - for the good die young, and I hate a dead one
I like restraint, if it doesn’t go too far.
I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
I only have ‘yes’ men around me. Who needs ‘no’ men?
I only like two kinds of men, domestic and imported.
I speak two languages, Body and English.
I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
I’ll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.
I’m a woman of very few words, but lots of action.
I’ve been in more laps than a napkin.
If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning.
It ain’t no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don’t break any.
One and one is two, and two and two is four, and five will get you ten if you know how to work it.
To err is human, but it feels divine.
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.
Virtue has its own reward, but no sale at the box office.
When I’m good I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.
I’ve noticed a growing trend in online music sites. They’re free, FREE, FREEEEEE for everyone, and they’re gonna make all kinds of money for artists. How is this possible, and if it’s such a great deal, why aren’t musicians making millions of dollars?
Here’s the common example (taken from an actual website called jamendo): Can the Artists earn money with jamendo?
Yes they can! Jamendo enables all the users to make a donation to the Artists with a minimum of 5 Eur (or Dollars). In any case, jamendo retains as little as 50 cents for financial fees, the remaining sum is directly given to the Artists…But there is more, jamendo shares 50% of its advertising revenues to the Artists who opted for the Program ‘Revenue Sharing’.
Sounds pretty good, right? You, the loyal listener, donate a minimum of $5 to support a (probably struggling) artist. The middle-man (Jamendo) only takes “as little as 50 cents for financial fees.”
Wait, read that again.
As little as 50 cents. Not as much as 50 cents. This basically says that the MINIMUM amount taken from loyal listener before it gets to struggling artists is 50 cents, but there’s NO limit. They could actually be taking $4.99 and not have violated their stated user proposition.
Another classic premise involves sharing ad revenue. Using Jamendo as the example, they offer a 50% share on ad revenue on your page. So, let’s assume (they’re using Google ads…) that you get $0.02 per ad click on from your page. That means (in the most simplistic terms) you get a penny if someone goes to your page and clicks on the ad.
Pretty cool, right? Not so fast. The great majority of the bands on there don’t drive much traffic. Maybe they’ll make $1.00 per month. And so does Jamendo. But suppose Jamendo has about 50,000 artists doing the exact same thing.
Monthly payout per artist: $1.00
Monthly payout to Jamendo: $50,000.00
There’re all kinds of sites, some with more favorable rates, that offer things like this. So the next time you hear someone buzzing about Sellaband.com, SlicethePie.com, TheSixtyOne.com and others, think about what happens to your sponsorship dollars. If you’re giving money to a band and assuming it all goes to them, well, think again. Who’s really seeing the money?
Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. was an American soul and funk singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, arranger, composer and actor. Hayes was one of the main creative forces behind southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served as both an in-house songwriter and producer with partner David Porter during the mid-1960s. In the late 1960s, Hayes became a recording artist, and recorded successful soul albums such as Hot Buttered Soul (1969) and Black Moses (1971) as the Stax label’s premier artist.
Alongside his work in popular music, Hayes was a film score composer for motion pictures. His best known work, for the 1971 blaxploitation film Shaft, earned Hayes an Academy Award for Best Original Song (the first Academy Award received by an African-American in a non-acting category) and two Grammy Awards. He received a third Grammy for the album Black Moses.
In 1992, in recognition of his humanitarian work, he was crowned an honorary king of Ghana’s Ada district. From 1997 to 2006, he provided the voice for the character “Chef” on the Comedy Central animated TV series South Park.
Hayes was found dead in his Memphis home on August 10, 2008
In my haste to race back into town yesterday, I didn’t notice the yellow “you need gas” light until it became a blinking yellow “you need gas NOW” light.” Looking for the nearest gas station, I came across something new to me: Stop ‘n’ Shop gas. The same place that’ll provide your groceries has apparently stepped into the gas biz. I was suspect, but I was also running (literally) on fumes.
When I pulled up to the full-serve pump (!), the attendant asked for my Stop ‘n’ Shop card. Odd, but ok. Then he said “oh, you’ve got reward points, so your gas will actually be $3.58/gallon.
Gas right now is hovering around $3.85/gallon, and here I was paying nearly $0.30 less. Filling up the tank suddenly got a little more reasonable. Here’s how it all works:
For every $50 you spend at Stop ‘n’ Shop (on groceries), you get $0.10 per gallon off your next trip to the gas station. So, I had spent $150 (over the last 2 months…) and had 3 rewards waiting for me. There’s a little more to it, but you get the idea. Anyway …
Gas prices are ridiculous, and I’m not gonna stop eating any time soon, so this seems like a win-win to me. I”m not entirely sure how Stop ‘n’ Shop makes money doing this, but it’s actually a program that makes sense to the consumer. While I’m more of a Market Basket/Whole Foods/Trader Joe’s kind of guy, I’ll definitely utilize this perk and shop at Stop ‘n’ Shop. Market Basket doesn’t save me nearly as much money, and shopping there is like going into war armed only with a shopping cart (or wagon if you’re from around here…).
But wait, this is a music blog, right? How does this relate? Well, it doesn’t per se. But imagine a similar model in the music industry: For every EMI artist’s music you buy, there’re points given that you could redeem through Ticketmaster to see a show. It’d be EMI/Ticketmaster’s way of saying “we understand, it’s expensive, but we’re trying to help…we have a soul after all.”
Stop ‘n’ Shop knows that families need food, need gas for their cars, and are somewhat strapped for cash. They found a way to tie it all together and help people save a few bucks. If music is necessary, then is there a way for the music industry to do the same thing?
I work in marketing. It’s what I do. A long time ago, I realized that I’m pretty good at “reading” people, figuring out what motivates them, and being able to focus that understanding toward promoting a product or idea. Ultimately, that’s what marketing is. And as such, a lot of it is a very “soft science.”
Certain jobs have very specific skill sets that separate them from most people’s abilities and understanding. For example, no one has ever accused me of being a chemical engineer, surgeon, or web developer. They’re not skills I have or could even remotely claim to. But everyone seems to think that they understand marketing.
Here’s an example: I did some consulting for a small start-up company. They brought me in to do some light marketing (i.e. we’re not hiring a full time person, but we need something …). Then they present me with a specific task and stated goal. So far so good. I then proceed to prepare a campaign that meets the goal with the best possible return and using the given budget (which, as always, is next to nothing …).
Upon reviewing this plan, the CEO decides that he knows better than I how to do marketing. He’s never worked in marketing, never in the industry that we’re in, but suddenly he’s explaining how to market his product to me.
This same CEO fawns over his designer and project manager, because he knows he doesn’t have the technical knowledge to do their jobs. But since you don’t need to know Dreamweaver or Photoshop to do marketing, he feels comfortable telling me how to do mine. The knowledge and experience I bring to the table is somehow meaningless and irrelevant.
So, since the CEO calls the shots, we go with his idea. It fails miserably. This, of course, is my fault — failed execution. Upon later reflection, he reconsiders and goes with my idea. It works very well …
Somewhere along the line, marketing became bastardized from its true form. True marketing uses precise metrics and analytics (along with creativity!) to create a desired result. It’s not just about spending gobs of money on t-shirts, parties, and advertising. But those who hold the purse strings seem to think it is, and it does a huge disservice to the rest of us.
Despite what others may tell you, I’m the eternal optimist. The glass is always half full, and anybody can become President of the United States if they study hard and eat their Wheaties. I prefer to see things for what they can be instead of shooting down ideas before they’ve had time to fully ripen.
I’ve heard this album a thousand times. Everybody has. But the bonus disc contains a (shockingly good) unreleased track (Sisters of the Cross) and lays out the basic piano demos for what became classic tracks. It’s fascinating to see the changes, progress, and development from start to finish.
I’ve noticed a growing trend in online music sites. They’re free, FREE, FREEEEEE for everyone, and they’re gonna make all kinds of money for artists. How is this possible, and if it’s such a great deal, why aren’t musicians making millions of dollars?
While the finished product was the Beatles album “Help!”, the working title was “Eight Arms to Hold You.”
In my haste to race back into town yesterday, I didn’t notice the yellow “you need gas” light until it became a blinking yellow “you need gas NOW” light.” Looking for the nearest gas station, I came across something new to me: Stop ‘n’ Shop gas. The same place that’ll provide your groceries has apparently stepped into the gas biz. I was suspect, but I was also running (literally) on fumes.
I work in marketing. It’s what I do. A long time ago, I realized that I’m pretty good at “reading” people, figuring out what motivates them, and being able to focus that understanding toward promoting a product or idea. Ultimately, that’s what marketing is. And as such, a lot of it is a very “soft science.”