Marketing - Classic Or Dud?

But this thread is about marketing in music - which I suspect is seen by most marketers not as a sewn-up sector but as a horrible unpredictable piracy-plagued area where normal consumer rules don't apply.

The poor slags that write copy usually look like they need sleep, lay off the coffee and realize that liqour is not a food group.

The monsters that work in the marketing department that don't work on a Mac or write copy are usually sub-human monsters just a bit below sales and human resources. They seem to delight in slagging on the poor lackeys given the job description marketing assistant. Generally the bosses are the types that give sharks a bad name and somehow these people get to have TVs in their offices, which says something.

Of course this is only my emperical observations being an outsider and not a tribe member.

I would say the "viral marketing" of Radiohead IBlips was a genius move, allowing fans to host/promote upfront tracks on their websites. Why don't more bands offer a similar service?

Special mention to the COCKFARMING AUDI TT - designed under the influence of Jimi Hendrix. Hello are you a boring middle-senior manager but like to feel 'far out' sometimes when its just you and your car? BUY THIS ONE THEN! Cockfarmers-------.

the actual test result was of course that subliminals upped hot dog sales by 0% (eg same as most marketing strategies)

USE OTHER FACTS PLEASE *CLASSIC*: "they wouldn't do it if it didn't work"

I am talking about the concept of viral marketing, as it allowed fan participation and created awareness through numerous channels, extending from large scale fan sites to blogs.

*with a really apalling byline photo which was reason #1 I got all my hair cut off.

also it's at war conceptually with the RIAA => this is the secret red self-destruct button in the lizard lair, it uses non- commodity transmission and exchange to "promote" commodity blah blah = the former begins to dissolve the latter, of course (conspiracy theoroid "leftists" of course believe that commodity exchange NECESSARILY destroys everything else = the lizards cannot lose) (they then pitch this as radical political analysis)

Originally it was bigged up by I think Hotmail as a fancy name for their putting ads for themselves at the bottom of every email their users sent.

we should think of a vaccine! or would this (=viral marketing) prove to be a self-limiting infection, in the end.

The worst type of marketing: NME twinning with Oasis since 1994 - episode 101

one p of marketing is promotion, I hate the NME co-branding of Oasis See the front cover of this week's NME wanker Liam in a parker with "wanky scruffy mod haircut over ears" shaking Tambourine. Then pages of Oasis analysis inside blame it on Steve "NME brand" Sutherland as stand in editor of NME till early August.

also laugh at new Q magazine with "Yellow" (get it!) poly wrap round with Coldplay on front, and GIANT Glasto poster ! Q is turning into more SELECT alike from seeing it in newsagents over the past year - it seems to be marketed at the casual mid 20s + male - the only music mag they buy is Q - they also read, ..no wank over half naked celeb chicks in FHM/Maxim/Loaded type.

http://www.reversespeech.com/home.htm

i just noticed on my subliminals suXoR link that it says "freud's theory of the unconscious has been discredited as there is no neurological evidence" => i wonder if there is "neurological evidence" for the phenomenon of "hang on hang on it's on the tip of my tongue no it's gone i'll be awake all night now"

haha you can rant about "melody" here if you like: people only like melody becuz of necromantical marketing as all know

If it was voddo magic it would be fun! The fact is marketing is as scientific as hell mark s.

''haha you can rant about "melody" here if you like: people only like melody becuz of necromantical marketing as all know''

I like melody

PPl like pop because I'd say they honestly like it but also because everywhere you turn these pop stars are there. So if that isn't marketing then what is?

There's no 'psychological method' or 'coercive technique' involved. A consumer has a propensity to buy a record. The potential records they might buy are selected from the set of records they know about. Get your record in that set for enough people and it will sell well assuming it meets certain basic quality expectations. The simplest way to do this is to buy exposure for it. This applies at whatever scale you're talking about - it explains why one local indie band does better than another, and it explains why one national pop star does better than another.

My guess is that 'psychological' marketing - promoting a brand on the basis of its cool, say - can alter market share by a few percentiles in either direction, but not by much more than that.

Saying "our record sells on its own merits not on psychological selling methods" is a psychological selling method, obviously.

But let's pretend for a moment that marketing is effective. As well as marketing individual products though there's also sector marketing - the kind of marketing which tries to lure the singles consumer onto albums, or the non-world music consumer into world music, creating a narrative of consumption within the individual life which keeps the profits rolling in. Easily the biggest gift for marketers here is the idea that certain kinds of music are 'grown out of', and that the 'discriminating' fan buys a lot of records in different styles in their search for the 'best'. In other words, if marketers *are* the omniscient scientists they're painted as, one of the biggest weapons they have is the rock discourses lots of their 'enemies' buy into - the idea that the Beatles albums (say) aren't just mass-produced pop artefacts with a sell-by-date like anything else but are in fact the Greatest Art Of The Twentieth Century is a marketer's dream concept!

This is why, if you're against marketing as a power in music, you should be against narrow radio formatting and playlisting - and fine, many of you are. (I am too, actually). You should also I think be against Top 10/50/100 lists which have the same repertoire-narrowing effects. The charts I'm not bothered about - they're based on something measurable, unlike playlists - and it is interesting finding out what most people are enjoying: it just gets more interesting the more music those people have to choose from. But the key point is that any individual record is pretty much blameless in this process - it makes no sense to say 'X is bad because she's marketed', it makes more sense to say 'More people should get the chance to hear Y'.

Which is what I said above! By scientific= I don't want to imply there is a formula that determines success so I used the wrong word.

What I'm saying is that they are very comprehensive w/placement (they obv. aim for that goal). So this is what marketing is and i hate it because of that.

You say Victoria beckham and Mick's solo alb. failed but that's prob. because ppl got tired of them (the market has been saturated). They've had plenty of success up to that point of course.

That's it. If you're marketed= you're everywhere. These 'lists' also piss me off. It's a sign that ppl at mags just run out of ideas.

For instance if I (or Ned, Julio, or whoever on ILM) replaced Steve Lamacq for a year on radio 1, and had full complete control of the program - things would change and different artists would become popular.

Exposure of music/ and info about music is the key, if you alter the inputs into a system (particularly at the mass media end) - then the outputs will be changed. But because the mass media is rotten in Britain, ie it restricts choice, is tightly controlled and is obsessed with program formats, particular genres and conventions - i.e singles more important than albums - very little changes.

6music is big disappointment as Toby? and few others mentioned, the type of new release music they playlist is often the most boring unadventourous songs based rock music.

Well, i'd like ppl to hear/read many things and judge for themselves. Maybe this is the age of the 'song', ppl are very preoccupied w/melody and so forth and i think it's far far too late to reverse this (as I said I like melody but i hate when ppl go on abt it like it's the only thing there fucking is).

what happened to XFM told me a lot. They were a little bit adventurous (in the context of normal radio) and ppl turned their backs to it. Maybe there wasn't enough money to market/promote it but i think most ppl aren't that bothered.

What I don't agree w/ is ppl deciding what one should hear or not. Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions.

Only if bald is a hair colour.

None of the above really answered one part of Toms question, which is why people hate being marketed at - why marketed is such a pejorative term, but at the same time marketing seems to be an effective way of getting more people to purchase your product.

I think this is because 'marketing' is too broad a term for what people hate. Playing gigs, doing interviews and hustling some radio play may be aspects of marketing - but they aren't objectionable.

What is objectionable is manipulation and mis-representation. The deliberate planning by someone to weight a market - the equivalent of insider trading - with little reference to the product itself. I don't much like Radiohead, but I don't hate them musically. I hate their careful and decietful marketing though.

It could be argued that marketing - like them business motivational speaker dont actually have to be successful, that marketing exists as a way of getting companies to pay the salaries of marketing people - but I dunno, it may be way oversold, but I do think it can have a very significant effect.

At least 50% of the threads on ILM are lists.

As a non-music related aside, this company briefly advertised in Private Eye on the advice ov marketing "experts", but seem to have now decided they can't be bothered w/any ov that crap as far as I can see. Nevertheless they may be the biggest actual bicycle manufacturer (as opposed to packer & shipper) in the UK. All ov our sales of their machine come from word ov mouth. this company's idea ov marketing themselves appears to be a lineage ad in the back of "Classic & Sportscar" magazine. It makes one wonder why marketing exists at all, I must admit. (ramble ramble)

For instance, when I see a series of reissues like the Miles Davis ones Columbia was doing where they reissued his entire back catalogue right up through the 80s, I get angry. They remastered all of the albums, including the really fucking terrible and widely disliked ones, ie. You're Under Arrest, and used extraordinarily evasive and misleading language on the packaging to make fans think that these recordings were as critically lauded at the time as the others, and that they belong in an equally prominent spot in Miles' canon. Now, while the idea of a Miles Canon itself is suspect, don't you hate it when you see an awful record being marketed at people who clearly don't know any better, ie. young people trying to learn about jazz? I'm still pissed off that I never heard a good quality Charlie Parker recording until I was 20 because the only compilations that I saw were bootleg Royal Roost tapes but offered no advice as to the sources of the tapes on the packaging.

as a counterfactual, what wd music be like w/o ANY marketing? (no records, no tours, no photographs, no band-names, no cults of celebrity — haha so you wouldn't even be allowed to call yr band THE SYD LITTLEFIELD QUINTET — possibly no songs as such, or fixed song-structures.... )

well the point is there's far too much marketing. An overload surely. Surely there would be recs and tours (you can advertise it). I quite like the idea that there would be no songs or fixed song structures.

Had to watch a presentation by this asshole for work:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

So depressing to watch my coworkers straight eat that shit up.

He was mentioned at a training session I was at yesterday.