Lairig Marketing

will.i.am: what.a.scam

How did you do it…
Get Ad Age to publish your advertising manifesto…
Written in word bursts…
Style over substance…
Like your music…
Tonight’s gonna be a good night (repeat 100 times)…
I guess it was supposed to reflect the new “conversation” style…
Where one piles on derivative non sequitur after non sequitur…
That is redundant by the way…
Like this sentence you wrote…
“twitter is a physical representation of collective consciousness where you can tap into the consciousness of millions”…
Anyway, not really…
Twitter is collective narcissism…
You wrote 675 words overall…
And not a single thought that was new for the marketing industry…
“…your brand need[s] to be a part of the connection…”
Really? Hadn’t heard that one before…
And this one was a classic…
“today…to have a business…you need to go where the people are”…
Who builds a business where the people aren’t?…
Worse, though, is that so much you wrote…
Or think…
Is wrong…
Like “the ones that are prospering don't have commercials but still succeed”…
Which, by the way, is another redundancy…
Tonight’s gonna be a good night (repeat 500 times)…
Anyway, Apple spends hundreds of millions of dollars on TV ads…
Thought you might like to know that…
Decrying TV ads sounds funny coming from a (disastrous) Super Bowl halftime act…
Your payoff (finally) is that brands should build communities…
Nonprofits, maybe…
But profitable brands should sell shit…
But deep down you know this…
How else to explain this press release from Intel last month…
“Sunday night’s Emmy Awards marks the U.S. debut of Intel’s latest TV commercial…
The first scored by will.i.am”…
I would call you a hypocrite…
Intel calls you its “director of creative innovation”…
Once again, redundant…
Tonight’s gonna be a good night…
Repeat a billion times…
Then fade out…
Please.

The Music Industry, Russian Style

Ask a man or woman off the street how the music industry is faring, and he or she is likely to say “bloody awful.” Ask a marketing strategist, and he or she will say, “that depends on what part of the industry you are talking about.”

Step one in any category analysis is to make sure you are assessing the right thing. Imagine being asked to study the “health care” industry, when what was really meant was hospitals. Then imagine how many months of effort you would waste digging into information around insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, small physician practices, and the like.

And so it is with music. Yes, the man on the street is right that one part of it is “bloody awful.” According to data from the RIAA, sales of physical CDs dropped 21% in 2010. Hard to believe they still exist, no? You would think after falling at that rate for the past ten years…anyway.

Digital music formats, however, (which the man on the street might think are free based on what he’s been hearing over the past decade) are in fact a healthy part of the music industry, expected to finally overtake CDs this year in dollar value.

Yet, look inside THAT sector, and you will see we still aren’t done analyzing music. There are subscription sales, pay-as-you-go sales for both full “albums” and single tracks, and mobile phone music sales (which come in three flavors).

Per the RIAA, overall digital music sales were up 3% in value in 2010. Pay-as-you go sales rose over 8%. But for those innovators working on “smartphone music,” there was bad news – mobile revenues slumped by nearly 30%. And subscription revenue, a format that is supposed to be the be-all and end-all, dropped 6%.

What does the latter mean for existing or soon-to-be-released "music cloud" offerings from Amazon and Apple and Google and Spotify? And what was Russian gazillionaire Len Blavatnik thinking when he ponied up a cool $1.3 billion last week to buy legacy label Warner Music Group?

There really isn’t much left in the way of cost cutting. WMG, with Blavatnik’s funding, needs to find the subsectors of digital music that can be reenergized in a very big way.

Or.

Maybe there is one other sector Blavatnik is targeting. Sales of vinyl records (look it up, kids), rose 26% in 2010.

Never mind that vinyl is a rounding error in the music industry. Old-school DJ Blavatnik is ready to rock.

Another Call For Good Rock & Roll

No one notices, but off to the far left, near the top of this blog site is a little box headlined “80s Video of the Week,” with a key line printed from the week’s song. It’s just a fun little thing I do, carefully handpicking a video from the most diversely prolific period in music. That MTV was around to embellish it all is icing on the cake.

For reasons that will soon be obvious, I’ll take the liberty today of pointing out the artist from last week and this week – the first 80s Video “two-fer” we’ve featured on Lairig Marketing. The band was “The Call,” a name so common it always made me wonder how no one else had ever laid claim to it. The Call, however, was anything but common.

Launching in the teeth of the New Wave era of Flock of Seagulls and Duran Duran, these guys didn’t fit the mold. A singular rock band sound was made even more distinct by the songwriting and vocal talents of The Call’s frontman, Michael Been.

This week’s video – The Walls Came Down – is a striking example. This was no “Girls on Film,” but MTV gave the band some decent air play until the mid-80s, at which time both MTV and the 80s music world in general went into the shitter. The Call continued pounding out albums, seven in all in the 1980s, but ended up mostly in the “critically acclaimed” category.

But unlike a lot of other critically acclaimed artists who ended up with nothing, things turned out OK for Michael Been and The Call. They made acquaintance with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Bono, Garth Hudson of The Band, Martin Scorcese, screenwriter Paul Schrader, and Harry Dean Stanton.

And as is so often true with serious artists, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Michael Been begot Robert Levon Been (is the middle name another “The Band” tribute?), who currently fronts a rock band called “Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.”

And here is where the story becomes both sad, and poetic. Two months ago, while working backstage at his son’s band’s performance at a Belgium music festival, Michael Been suffered a fatal heart attack.

Messages of sympathy have come from fans far and wide on the Web, proving that Michael Been and The Call made their mark. In a short period of creativity, where they ran counter to what was most popular at the time, they set a blueprint for future musicians, who hope to answer the Call to Artistry.

DirecTV Must Die

With apologies to Ad Age’s Bob Garfield, and his "Comcast Must Die" screed two years ago…

Imagine you purchased a plane ticket. You later board the aircraft. Instead of those comfy seats you’re used to, you see they have been replaced by broom handles. Technically you can sit on them, but you feel violated.

DirecTV has managed to pull this off, to somewhat the same effect. Earlier this month, with no advance notice, the satellite entertainment provider swapped out its music channels. In place of select stations from Sirius (a company that has a pretty good grasp on radio programming, even if it can’t make money at it), DirecTV inserted its own offering – Sonic Tap.

Some programs were replaced in kind (e.g., hits of the 60s was replaced by 60s hits), but many weren’t. The “fan” comments on DirecTV’s Facebook wall and in the forums on dslreports.com are 95% against the change. Tap this.

DirecTV might have had good reason to make the change. We know by its involvement with “Friday Night Lights” that it sees some sort of future in production. Perhaps it intends to spin Sonic Tap off and/or white label it to other satellite or cable providers. Or maybe the deal with Sirius was too expensive. But we don’t know because DirecTV hasn’t told us.

Making changes to expectations of EXISTING customers without alerting them is a shitty move, in any industry, always and forever. But what really bites in the case of DirecTV is its one-sided relationship with customers. You are committed to a contract, typically of two years’ duration. On top of that, if DirecTV sends you a replacement for a defective set-top box, it can deem that as a reason to reset the clock back to zero on your contract.

But apparently somewhere in your contract, there is a clause that says “DirecTV reserves the right to change its programming at any time and stuff it up your bum.”

Like a broom handle.

Congratulations, DirecTV. You have taken the cable model of customer service to a whole ‘nother level.

The Music Stream Runs Through It

Music, music everywhere. And not a drop to stream.

Could we see that outcome in the near future?

You wouldn’t have thought so a few years ago, when music streaming seemed like the cure for all things Napster. Simply by dropping a commercial in between every third or fourth song and/or draping a music portal in ad banners left right top and bottom, a new business model for music distribution was a sure bet for any Tom, Dick, or Ringo.

But there are some potential signs that the wheels on this bus are starting to wobble.

Case in point: Spotify announcing it will delay its previously much-anticipated entry into the U.S. marketplace, even after its (apparent) heady success overseas.

And while Pandora continues to cite ever-increasing numbers of daily “sign-ups,” its illustrations of heavy/daily users don’t seem to reflect such growth. By its own admission, its “sweet spot” is the 18-24 year-old cohort, a scary thought for a business based on advertising acceptance.

Here’s more: a recent data point from Forrester (tagline: use our data, not our insight) showing roughly 20% of U.S. adult Internet users listen to streaming music regularly. That percentage hasn’t grown much at all in the past three years. I will repeat that. That percentage hasn’t grown much at all in the past three years.

Finally, then, it might be obvious why I consider this press release excerpt a contrarian tell for the music-streaming market: “Ad-supported music service Guvera has closed a second round of funding worth $20 million…”

$20 million dollars for one more “better mouse trap of a business model” based on inserting ads into the user experience? TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS? Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to the streaming-music market peak.

iTunes set the tone (no pun intended) for this market by putting the final nail in the coffin of album sales, making it easy, and legal, to self-curate only the songs you want from your favorite artists. What streaming-music experience can really compete?

Still and all, music remains a great way for marketers to access their target segments. I can’t think of a more fun marketing assignment. An infinite supply of musicians, concerts, and music festivals seeking sponsorship to help them get what we as marketers aim to do every day – stand out from the crowd.

And away from the mainstream.