- Marketing Is Not a Cure-All for an Unlikeable Product
Inherently, marketing is about connecting with your audience in an authentic way that leads them to want to patronize your product. However, even the best marketing whether it comes in the form of traditional tv ads, social media marketing, or experiential events, is not a cure-all for a product or person that presents itself in an unlikeable way.
Leading up to the recent democratic debates Bloomberg has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on television ads to show his progressive side; The Mike he wants viewers to believe will occupy the white house. The onslaught of ads is a necessity to combat some of the resurfaced clips of Bloomberg where he can be heard justifying political policies like stop and frisk and redlining — policies which disproportionately affect African Americans and Latinos.
In the case of creatives, specifically musicians, this is a great lesson in that it teaches you that you can have an expensive music video and an awesome PR campaign, but if the product you’re promoting (the song) is terrible then no amount of marketing can polish the product enough to make it appealing to your target demo.
2. Keep your MystiqueÂ
For those unfamiliar with the track record of former Mayor Bloomberg, there was a Mystique around him. If you’ve never heard him talk, and you rely only on surface-level information he presents as a change agent who, after reshaping New York, is ready to take the next step in his political career; The Presidency.
However, during the debate, it became clear that as Bloomberg talked more about himself and his policies, he was slowly destroying his greatest asset to uninformed voters; the mystique that he worked so hard to create with his advertising and marketing. By removing the mystique surrounding himself he was wasn’t able to articulate any of his strengths and as a result, opponents were able to clearly point out his flaws. Had he opted not to debate and remain on the sidelines a little longer he would have been in a better position to succeed thus far?
The lesson for creatives: Keep your mystique — while social invites fans to know every piece of your life in an intimate way, the greatest stars maintain a cloak of secrecy; We know (or at least hope) that they’re working on a project. But what else do we know? What don’t we know? These questions serve to keep us interested in the art and
3. Money Can Buy You a Seat at the Table, But It Can’t Keep You There
Bloomberg is in it to win it. He’s spent over 450 million in ads, and going into Super Tuesday he has 0 delegates. What this shows us (aside from the behind the scenes lobbying and politics which I’m sure factors into securing delegates) is that you can spend a ton of money to get in front of your target consumer and to connect with them in hopes that it will lead to a conversion of some sort be it a merch sale, song stream or live show ticket. There have been artists over the years who’ve spent hundreds of thousands in marketing some who were financially backed by record labels yet were ultimately not accepted by the market. Why?
The answer is probably because money can’t buy cultural relevance and while it does put you in front of consumers it doesn’t mean that they believe your messaging. In a sense, it’s the issue all advertisers face when trying to get consumers to shop with them. Today you can spend X amount of dollars to get in front of Y amount of people. That part of the battle is easy enough, but actually being given permission from the consumer to tell them about their product is an entirely different battle. With that in mind, what we see is that this isn’t as much a money game as it is a trust and authenticity game.
Granted, by putting money at the forefront of your campaign you are jump-starting your career and getting yourself a seat at the table, but that alone won’t be enough to keep you there nor capture the eyes and ears of the people that you’re fighting to have listened to you. That’s a job money can’t do, that’s the hard work and it’s for you.
4. Stay On The Right Side of History.
Your track record follows you everywhere you go and in the recent DNC debates viewers saw Elizabeth Warren bring up Bloomberg’s track record over the years including the stop and frisk legislation, his numerous NDAs with former employees, etc. and unfortunately for Bloomberg, it’s coming back to bite him now in 2020 as he runs for president. What happens is the contradiction becomes viewable in realtime and ultimately damages your campaign. These types of contradictions are hard to resolve no matter what product you’re hoping to convince the masses to buy.
We’d all do well to remember that If the narrative contradicts who you are inherently (i.e. the video shows your positive traits, but your interviews exude crudeness and intolerance) then marketing/advertising can’t do much to save you because what you have is an identity issue — all your efforts will do is highlight the lack product development surrounding your product. Bloomberg ultimately shows us that while his budget allows him to be seen everywhere in a positive light it’s hard to get over the fact that he comes off as an unlikeable candidate in plethora ways.
The lesson then is that as a creative you’d do well to ensure that in any event, you try your best to b on the right side of history with the decisions you’re making; And the right side of history oftentimes is simply displaying a level of human decency. Sometimes it’s best not to say that thing that you want to say during an interview, or to you know get into an altercation with this person who says something about you during their press run. Other times it’s better to take the high road and to understand that we are in this world together and that you have to do your part to make it a better place as an artist, it’s your responsibility, and in the long run, it will put you on the right side of history.
5. Run Your Race
The Democratic primaries have been going on for about a year and a half now, and different candidates have dropped out of the race at different points in time; some never even made it to the debate stage and virtually all of the People of Color dropped out before the end of 2019. Bloomberg, however, entered the race roughly two and a half months ago, put on a very strong campaign and ended up on the debate stages, and a couple of weeks later began being mentioned as a front-runner with the other Democratic nominees.
As an artist, you should keep that same mindset and realize that just because you have colleagues around you who are going up to success, who are doing it at younger ages than you faster than you don’t mean that you are out of the race. You can be 35 or 40 like DMX and still make it to the top. In fact, if you check the ages of most of the pop and producers and artists out here, a lot of them are in their mid-30s going up to their 40s, they’re still in the race. You still have time to get it done. And you don’t have to measure yourself against your opponents. Bloomberg just started and, for better or worse, he’s blazing a trail through this campaign that will alter it in some ways positive, some ways negative, just depends on how you look at it, but stay in the race, my friends, let us know what you think in the comments.
-Snobhop