TAKING PERMISSION SERIOUSLY

What kind of marketer are you? Am I? You are one whether you realize it or not.

Seth Godin is the guru of marketing I've been waiting for the last five years, able to condense all the malarky and guess work of marketing down to musician-level simplified inspiration and practical application. (Thanks Matthew for introducing us.)

He's written about permission marketing a great deal - the idea that consumers often do the marketing/advertising for the product/company. In the music busines we call these marketing-capable consumers "fans." Joining a street team is the most commonly recognized form of fan-driven marketing in Nashville but there's so much more fans do to spread the word, intentionally and unintentionally.

Burning a copy of a CD you love (if granted permission to do so by the artist) and passing it on to five friends is also fan marketing.

As is playing that CD in your car

Taking your friends to a concert

Or entering their names when downloading an artist's free music.

It's all marketing. Passing on knowledge or experience of a product you love, whether the product is a person, sound or idea.

More powerful, I believe, than banner adds on web sites and full page adds in Rolling Stone. Enough fans talking well about an artist and that artist will spread even without radio play, great placement in stores, a budget or a massive tour. Fans, acting as marketers, enabled and encouraged by the artist (permission), can make an artist.

But it has to be done well - the fans job that is. WHAT a fan says and HOW a fan says it creates an image, an identity, for an artist that can help or hurt the artist.

Fan marketing has to be true. It has to accurately reflect the product.

When a tiny tiny portion of X Artist's fan base reacted to me on X's message board recently for posting about X in what they saw as a negative way, I immediately thought "This isn't how X would want to be defended. This doesn't fit what I know about X." Their reaction (marketing) told a lie about who X is and what X's music is about. And in calling me names and making threats in reaction to my "harming" X's career they may have, ironically, done a better job of it than I.

Because we are all marketers, willing or unwilling, what we say and how we say it affects the products we represent. Not only that, but simply who we ARE has the same effect.

When rappers started wearing Adidas back in the 1980s the shoe became associated with the new youthful innovative urban sounds of Run DMC and the like. Before that, Adidas were just tennis shoes for adults. The type of consumer wearing the shoes changed the product's DNA.

An Adult Contemporary radio station asked me once how they could attract more college students (I was a college-aged pastor at the time.) I told them they probably couldn't. Adult Contemporary Christian radio is too closely associated with moms to attract many from outside that narrow audience - especially college students who want to think they're cooler than their mother.

In church planting circles there's a theory that the first 100 members determine the kind of members the next 1000 will be. The trajectory of a product is set early on by who the early adopters are.

My career was jolted to life five years ago by much appreciated massive amounts of Adult Contemporary radio play. Over 100K records (and fans) resulted. And those early fans, to a degree, determined the kind of fans I've had ever since. Getting my "product" to spread in another subculture has been difficult to say the least. (This blog has helped.) I'd love to retain my original audience and their friends while moving to other types of music lovers as well but it seems unlikely. Seth might say metaphoricaly that I need Run DMC to wear my shoes on the MTV Music Awards.

I was interested in Howard Dean as a candidate for a second, based really, honestly, only on his black horse status. I like the underdog. Karate Kid. Rocky. Good flicks. But when certain celebrities attached their names, anger and angendas to his candidacy he suffered and lost my interest. They tld me something about who he is and away I went.

All this to say, I wonder how my "fans", my marketers, communicate me to other people and what impact that has on my ministry/career if any. I wonder what I can do to better support their efforts and clarify who I am for them. What do they want? What do they need?

This blog has been a step toward supporting their accurate marketing efforts. No one need guess who I am and what I'm about. I'm here everyday. Talk to me. Hopefully you'll find something worth marketing...I mean talking about with your friends. And by all means, let me know if I can help you have a better conversation with them.

You have more power than anyone in a marketing meeting. Seriously. Thanks to those who wield for me. Wouldn't be here without you.