Today, I’m listening to Jeremy Denk’s new Ives record, which came out on iTunes this morning.
I don’t really know much about this music, but that’s ok, because he obviously does*. It sounds magnificent.
* indeed, he’s one of our generation’s most erudite and articulate musical commentators, something that people would talk about more if he didn’t also play the piano.
Q. What do racism and classical music marketing have in common?
A. Old white people (and a troubling grasp of statistical analysis).
Generalizations can be helpful, but they can also lead us astray if we don’t understand what we’re doing with them. Let’s look at a few plausible statements that you might hear in a marketing meeting, backed up with some authoritative-sounding research from somewhere like the NEA. They might individually be true, but if you’re going to base decisions on them, it helps to know how little information they really contain.
Most classical music fans are well educated.
Most classical music fans are old.
Most people don’t like contemporary music.
Most people come to at least two concerts a year.
Each of these statements tells us something about the makeup of the audience, but combining these insights to create a picture of a typical customer can be disastrous, misusing demographic data to create a stereotype that doesn’t exist.
It might be that only 1% of the audience is both old and well educated. It might be that most of the people who come to more than three concerts a year are really into contemporary music. Even if most of the “mosts” do travel together, you only need a tiny percentage of the total audience to fill the hall or buy a record.
The best-selling record of all time is Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Worldwide, more than 110 million copies have been sold. There are 6.9 billion people in the world. That means that for everybody that bought it, 61 people didn’t. Put another way, 98.4% of people have not purchased the most popular album of all time. In the US, where most people have access to a stereo, nine out of ten people didn’t buy it.
Forget about most people. You don’t need them. Nobody sells music to most people. The New York Philharmonic can fill the hall playing Varèse and Ligeti.
The audience comes to an average of 4.7 concerts a year.
The average record buyer purchases 1.7 records a month.
Most people have two arms. A few people have one. I’m not sure it’s even possible to have three. If Thomas Pink got their customer research from arts organizations, then none of my shirts would fit: I have an above average number arms.
Some people buy one ticket for themselves. Some people take a date. Others take their whole family. Group them together, and you’ll completely misunderstand the purchasing process.
When your variables only exist in whole numbers, nobody conforms to the mean. You’d get more accurate results by asking just one of your customers. Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.
Classical music purchasers are more likely to care about audio quality than other music consumers.
12% of the US population is black. 44% percent of the US prison population is black. There is a higher incidence of incarceration among black people than among white people.
It’s not ok for me to assume that black people are criminals, but even if it were, it wouldn’t be sensible: it’s alarming that one in 36 black people is in jail, but this doesn’t tell us anything about the other 35.
The same is true of the audiophiles. They might be more prevalent among classical music fans, but it doesn’t mean they’re the majority, and it doesn’t tell you anything about the others. Build a store for the audiophiles and you might find yourself catering to a very small audience.
I made a viral **smirk**
There’s not much else to say, except that I made it using xtranormal.com, which was amazingly frustrating to use. Oh, and happy social media day. Whatever that is.
No good at marketing? Don’t worry – not many people are. Here are ten easy ways to look like you know what you’re doing. You might recognize a few of these…
1) Never say what you expect to achieve in advance, and you can spin anything as a success: “We’re going to do direct mail. We think it’ll be great.” If somebody asks for your “clear criterion for failure” dismiss them as negative. Say that you’re focussed on achieving a positive outcome. Don’t say what that is.
2) Declare the results of your projects in positive terms, regardless of the actual outcome: “Our junk mail was a great success. We wrote to 10,000 people and generated two new subscriptions.”
3) Use lots of buzzwords and horrible grammar so the reader can’t understand what you’re actually saying. Force them to take their cue from your tone, rather than the facts. Misusing mathematical terms will help lend an air of empty substance to your presentation. Suggest that the best is yet to come, so that it’s too early for criticism but high time for praise: “Our direct mail initiative has been a great success, generating 10,000 user impressions with a .02% conversion ratio to date and still rising.” Don’t bother to mention that the growth in your response rate is already miniscule and trending toward zero.
4) Compare your work to arbitrary baselines. Select these baselines after you’ve had a chance to see the results: “In direct mail, it’s common to have a 0.01% response rate, so we’ve outperformed the baseline by 200%.” Never mention what it cost, or somebody will work out that it lost money.
5) If anybody works out that two $200 subscriptions wasn’t much of a return on $4,400 in postage, claim that the real value of your campaign was in impressions: 10,000 of your best customers now have a brochure, and many of them will be coming back later to make their purchases. Claim credit for a portion of all subsequent sales. Talk about the “bigger picture” so everybody who disagrees with you will seem short-sighted or narrow-minded.
6) Set incredibly low expectations. Find evidence of decline in one aspect of the industry and use it as a baseline across the board, claiming everything above that line as a victory resulting directly from your work. If you’re forced to set realistic targets, don’t worry: you can always adjust them later to account for unexpected events beyond your control.
7) Don’t waste your time with teamwork. Instead, ask questions in meetings like “How can we connect this with what the education department is doing?” If anybody comes up with an idea, you’ll be able to take the credit whilst looking like a team player. If they expect you do to some of the work, make sure the whole thing comes out of their budget.
8) Make a show of staying informed about everything. It’s much easier to steal ideas and associate yourself with the organisation’s successes if you know what they are, and if it seemed, in some vague way, like you were involved.
9) Announce everything positive to the interdepartmental email list before anybody has enough information to know if it really worked. You don’t actually need to claim that you did anything. After a while, people will come to associate you with stuff that goes well. Praise others for their part in it, and they won’t even be able to complain that you’re taking the credit. Do this for long enough, and eventually you’ll become the arbiter of success: a project hasn’t gone well until you announce that it has.
10) Present everything as an experiment, and there’s no such thing as failure. Claim the information gleaned from your expensive mistake is “invaluable”. Never quantify it. You don’t want somebody comparing what you are getting paid to the cost of learning something you should have already known.
Both Anne Midgette at the Washington Post and David Ng at the LA Times linked to my review of Renée Fleming’s new rock album.
David quoted the New York Times, the BBC, and me. Does that seem strange to anyone?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining. It’s quite an honor to have two such impressively credentialed commentators let me do the talking. It just seems a bit odd that they didn’t do it themselves. It makes me wonder how Fox News might approach arts commentary:
“Some guy in Northern California thinks Renée’s album sucks. We don’t particularly care whether or not it actually does and we don’t want to alienate any potential viewers by taking a position on the subject so we’ll ask you a barely related leading question that allows us to sneak in a completely unverified statement as if it were fact: Should Obama have endorsed the record by inviting her to perform at the Whitehouse? Call us now and tell us your views.”
Maybe this is how music criticism works now. Maybe the nation’s critics have followed my mother’s advice, and aren’t saying anything unless they have something nice to say. Maybe I should do the same. Maybe that’s unfair: Maybe David’s trying to give a balanced report of a record that has polarised listeners1. Maybe somebody at Decca’s PR department has naked pictures of everybody, and that’s why it was so hard to find a negative review of the record from a major news outlet2. Maybe somebody at Decca’s PR department has naked pictures of me too. I didn’t hold back, so I guess we’ll find out now3.
1 …into the two distinct groups of “don’t like it” and “don’t know any better,” because the appreciation of music is completely subjective unless you disagree with me, in which case you’re wrong.
2 Unless you count The Awl as a major news outlet. They went to town on it.
3 NOBODY wants to see that.
There are lots of ways to mess up a live recording. You can play the wrong notes, you can forget to press record, you can use the wrong kind of tape or drop the hard drives down a lift shaft. They’re all risky though. If you really want to make absolutely positively sure that nobody buys your record, just follow these simple steps:
1) Identify a major event that will be well attended, well reviewed and widely broadcast. Plan to release the record six months later, when nobody can remember what all the fuss was about. Blame this delay on an obsession with the quality of a record nobody will hear. Read more »
What are they really saying on that conference call?
I don’t have any music for you = I haven’t heard it
This hasn’t been mastered yet = they’re still fiddling with it
We’re really excited about this release = Our expectations are bigger than our budget
You have to see them live = the record isn’t impressive at all
This is a huge priority = we’ve spent a fortune on this and we plan to ignore the fact that you think it’s terrible
We’re expecting the story to build post-release = We have no plan
We’re coming to you very early on this = We hope you’ll come up with a plan
This act is building a lot of buzz = We can’t name a single major media outlet that has mentioned them
We’ve got a great opportunity for partnership = We don’t have the budget to do this properly
This is a supergroup = We hadn’t heard of any of these people until last week
We know this is going to be huge = We desperately need to recoup all the money we spent on this
Building on the success of their last album = A poor imitation of their last album
Prodigy = promising youngster
Legendary artist = hasbeen
We have an NPR hit confirmed for release week = The NPR feature will run two months before (or after) release date
We have a PBS special airing in the fall = You mom will want this. You’ll hate it.
They’re big in Germany = Run while there’s still time
Our “target street date” is… = It will be leaked by…
We don’t know who leaked it = We know exactly who leaked it
I don’t want to talk about initial orders = This is going to be a disaster
We have a deluxe edition = We changed the cover and doubled the price
It has been remastered = It sounds the same but louder
It has been digitally remastered = It sounds the same but much louder
It has been digitally remastered by the original producer = There was nothing wrong with it the first time
Nothing says “we perform together on a regular basis and have achieved a sublime rapport as a chamber ensemble” quite like a badly-composed collage of individual promotional photos.
Once the whole band had contracted narcolepsy, it became impossible to get a picture of them all with their eyes open. Read more »
Renée Fleming’s rock album comes out today. I almost gnawed off my fingers trying not to write about it, but after seeing the New York Times carefully dance around its glaring flaws not once but twice, (see also the LA Times and WSJ) it’s time for a review. Read more »
