MADE

The biggest, baddest and best musical brands grow in the fertile soils of groupthink. It’s where the seeds of mass hysteria are planted. This is one of the most important pieces of marketing insight I can give you.

Surely, you’ve heard the cliché that people are smart, but crowds are stupid. It may be true, but it’s not entirely a bad thing. The ultimate success of any music enterprise, any business or any organization depends on the propensity for groups of human beings to do things because other human beings are doing them. Homo sapiens should be called Homo socialus.

Deep down, we’re all just pack animals with smartphones.

Has anyone ever seen a razorblade in an apple? So why do we believe that there’s all these people out there putting razor blades in apples on Halloween? Why did we all think that the world’s computers were going to crash on Jan 1, 2000? Why do we assume that all American cars are poorly built? Because everyone else believes it. We are all highly susceptible to believing things that aren’t entirely true or that we have no direct experience with because other people believe them.

Tell me if this has ever happened to you. You’re at a red light. Boom! It turns green. But the cars to the right and left of you aren’t moving. Maybe the drivers are distracted with their cell phones or something. You know the light’s green and you know green means go, but you hesitate to step on the gas for a few seconds because no one else is moving. Why do you do that? Why do you go against your brain? Because you’re human. You’re a social animal. And doing what everyone else is doing can sometimes keep you out of trouble. Maybe there’s a firetruck coming the other way that you can’t see and they can. If everyone else is doing something, there must be a good reason, right?

Brands, including musical brands, spread through the vehicle of emotion; through the psychological connections people develop with one another. And people get emotional about things they like. And the way to make people like something is by surrounding it with compelling stories, ideas and visuals that make people feel something rather than nothing.

As the old saying goes, it’s better to be hated by a few than ignored by everyone.

It’s why you can’t just make beats in your basement and get rich. You have to create a story around the music. Historically, you had two venues to create the story around your music: live performances and the press (TV, magazines, radio, etc).

Now the press has been largely replaced by digital. It’s a place where stories can spread like a wildfire…if they’re good.

Have you noticed how almost nobody leaves comments about individual musical tracks? You see all these sites that allow fans to leave comments about songs. Almost nobody does. People do leave comments about photos and blog posts, though. Because those things provide context…about a place and a time.

They communicate a story. If you can create a story around your musical brand that gets a few people believing, then they’ll talk to their network. And that’s how world class corporate and personal brands get started these days.

U2 is touring right now. What are people saying about U2? They’re not talking about the songs. They’re talking about the magnificent stage. People can tell stories all day about the stage to their friends.

But, but…of course, for your stories and ideas to have any chance of spreading, the music has to be good. It’s always the foundation and it needs to be solid.

By: Twitter Buttons