There is a lot of unexpected wisdom in pop songs we carelessly sing in the shower, intone when driving a car and dance to at parties. The 5 pieces listed below contain a lot of marketing knowledge! We hope to deliver you a source of inspiration, as well as an origin of a playlist for the next party of your marketing department.
Take with a pinch of salt and have fun!
Discover your customers with Buyer Persona. Download free ebook
1. Beyoncé, Listen. Digital Body Language
Lyrics:
Listen to the song here in my heart
A melody I start but can’t complete
Listen, to the sound from deep within
It’s only beginning
To find release
Meaning:
Beyoncé expresses the request each consumer wants to make to marketers: Listen to me! Customers want you to be more mindful and to read individual needs instead of just treating them as a whole and bombarding with irrelevant bulk messages.
Context:
Beyoncé herself is a master of marketing, astonishing audience not only with songs but also promotion ideas. In 2013, she launched the most brilliant campaign in music industry – which was a no campaign after all.
She simply uploaded her new album to iTunes and informed her fans on Instagram – it was her Christmas gift to them. No pre-heating of the atmosphere, no teasers, just music. Paradoxically, it worked. In the age of constant talking and noise, the ascetic idea blossomed into impressive sales (80,000 records in the first 3 hours).
Lesson from Beyoncé:
Marketing Automation gives you tools to listen and understand your customer better. It contains a wealth of useful knowledge if you tap into it. Digital Body Language Technology will let you hear each customer’s song and discover her needs even before she realizes them herself (thanks to Next Best Offer mechanism).
2. Coldplay, The Scientist. Competencies of marketer today
Text:
I was just guessing
At numbers and figures
Pulling the puzzles apart
Questions of science,
Science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart
Meaning:
No, it’s not the song about broken heart and ended relationship. It rather describes modern marketer’s condition and difficulties she faces on an everyday basis. The modern marketer has to combine mutually exclusive features. She must be a scientist, focused on hard numbers and data, and an emotional type, who wants to engage in discussion and share emotions with customers, because today we think in terms of conversations, not campaigns. In marketer’s psyche heart and reason must cooperate in synergy although it can cause some internal conflict and tough decisions.
Context:
Seems like a forced interpretation? Musicians from Coldplay are masters of marketing! Do you remember their Ghost Stories album campaignblog? They prepared 9 manuscripts of lyrics and hid them in 9 libraries around the globe. It became a worldwide scavenger hunt. The campaign was inexpensive, but due to its originality it won fans’ hearts.
Lesson from Coldplay:
Marketer is no easy job, involving joining features that are hard to join: like creativity and analytical skills, empathy and reasoning. That’s why it’s one of the most frustrating, underestimated and exhausting professions. But would you exchange it for anything else?
3. Amanda Palmer, The Thing About Things. New consumer
Text:
I can carry everything I need in one collapsing suitcase
I can carry everyone I love in one phone application
Meaning:
Palmer’s song describes a new model of consumer, who travels across life lightly; she resists gathering too many objects, but collects emotions and experiences and focuses on being here and now. She believes that material things carry less value than encounters.
Context:
Amanda is known to be an artist who truly engages in communication with her fans on the web and monetizes that relationship. Think about the story of one lousy Friday night, when Amanda tweeted about being a loser who spends the weekend in front of her computer. Soon her fans doing the same joined in, so Amanda called them all “The Losers of Friday Night on their Computers.” But she didn’t stop on installing an informal club. She immediately put on the website for LOFNOTC and designed and started to sell T-shirts with a tag, as fans jokingly suggested. She stroked when the iron was hot and earned $ 11,000 in one night.
We wish our lousy Friday nights ended like this.
Lesson from Amanda Palmer:
See that your customer doesn’t want to herd new objects, but concentrates on experiences, also shopping ones. It means that you should pay attention not only to WHAT you sell but also to HOW you do it. According to Defaqto, 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for better shopping experience.
Secondly, get inspired by Amanda when it comes to using social media to build bonds with fans and engaging in unpretentious and natural conversation.
4. Justin Timberlake, Cry Me a River. Less is more
Text:
I know that they say
That some things are better left unsaid
Meaning:
When you communicate with your audience, don’t give away everything at once. Build an aura of mystery instead, gradually sharing and leaking small parts of information.
Context:
Anthony Kenneda was first to notice that Timberlake might be inspiring for B2B because he entirely controls the timing of disclosing information to bring about some buzz and rumors.
Choose from 6 free Marketing Automation webinars and register today.
Lessons from Justin:
Less is more rule still applies to marketing. Giving away too much in a too short period will hurt your business, in PR actions and conversations with your customers and leads. Take a look at your newsletters: aren’t they too wordy, too direct and too boring? Maybe they would benefit from sending them less frequently but with more care for the quality? Also, examine your social media: you tweet every 15 seconds, but do you have something to say?
5. The Clash, Lost in the Supermarket. World without personalization
Text:
I’m all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came in here for that special offer
A guaranteed personality.
Meaning:
It’s a sad song about customer’s dissatisfaction with dull, standardized, one-size-fits-all shopping experience, epitomized by supermarket, a place where all consumers are treated will equal indifference, as well as plastic, characterless products. Isn’t that depressing?
Research data tells the same:
59% of customer say that personalization influences their shopping decisions,
31% of customers would like their shopping experience to be more personalized than it is,
74% of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalized.
(Source: InfoSys via How customers feel about personalization)
Context:
Sting said that flirting with Marxism was the Clash’s best marketing movement. We’re not going to discuss it in economic terms, but we’d like to draw your attention to one fact: breaking the rules and rebel sell better than a polite realization of the textbook.
Lessons from the Clash:
Personalize your shopping experience and remember that there is nothing that customers hate more than being treated as in the supermarket. And be original! Resist the trends and find right tools to realize your vision.
To sum up: quality, uniqueness, and personal touch
The examples listed above show that in marketing you should put quality over quantity and focus on finding your way, instead of following the rules. As Seth Godin says, “good” is no longer enough, you must offer something “remarkable”.
What’s interesting, pop-stars who we would likely accuse of constant narcissistic talking about themselves taught us to be discreet and leak new information gradually and quietly. So stop talking and learn how to build an aura of mystery.
The third thing is the importance of personal contact with the audience, both via social media and personalization tools (like Marketing Automation).
Follow
