It Used To Be All About Me
My parents never told me Santa Claus was real. I always knew it as them that put the presents under the tree. Even when other people in my family would write “From Santa” on the cards I knew. I played along, but I knew where those gifts were coming from. Later my parents explained to me the reason they did that was because they didn’t want me to find out later in life that they had been lying to me this whole time making me believe in something that was made up. As I grew up they didn’t want me confusing the imaginary Santa that they had lied about with the real Jesus that they had also told me existed, but I couldn’t see him and he did nice things for us. That’s always seemed to make sense to me.
This post has nothing to do with Santa.
Over the past few months I’ve seen, read and heard countless “influential” bloggers, authors and musicians suddenly come to a realization that for “so long it’s been all about me, but this time it’s different”. It’s typically coupled with some request for something or right before explaining some new venture they are about to embark on. They’ve come to their senses and this time it’s really not about them. This time it’s about the children, or the church, or the ministry, or the outreach. This time it’s different.
Well good Mr. Influential Blogger Guy. It’s nice to know that for however long you’ve been doing this that you’ve been lying to me and the masses that are following you. It’s great to hear that the campaign that you did last year that I supported was really just a ploy to get yourself attention and it turns out the whole thing was ‘all about you’. But at least now that’s different. It’s good to see that you’re coming clean now and I can fully trust your motives this time.
See, saying something like that doesn’t make you more authentic to me. It doesn’t make me want to support your cause this time around. It makes you someone I don’t want to trust again. It makes me feel like you burned me already by thinking that you were authentic last time. So, all you folks thinking that the best way to get someone to believe you is by saying that you lied last time, that’s not the case. In fact, I don’t need to hear it at all. Just start making things not about you and we’ll be just fine.
Anyone else notice this ‘tactic’ or am I the only one?
The ‘Oops’ Eraser And The Record Label
This morning I read Seth Godin’s newest book “We Are All Weird“. Don’t be too impressed it’s only about 100 pages so it’s a perfect Sunday morning read. Deep into it, he talks about a friend of his that started a string of boutique hotels in Los Angeles. He goes on to say that Hyatt jumped on the bandwagon and started a chain of trendy boutique hotels, but something felt ‘off’. From the framed Beatle’s record to the “Oops” eraser on the desk. Mass produced “weird”, he calls it. No wonder it doesn’t work.
I started thinking about that more and it finally hit me. This is why “weird” bugs me. It’s not the weird itself, but the popularization of the ‘weird’. Who else is completely driven nuts by the t-shirt that says “Why Be Normal”? It’s not that the shirt exists that bugs me. It’s the fact that the person wearing it got it at Target because they saw five other people wearing that shirt and thought it was cool. Mass production of “weird” is no longer weird. It’s annoying. Especially to the ‘weird’.
Think about it. How many hipster’s out there are completely annoyed that Jónsi is on a Chevy commercial? Or that you can hear Fleet Foxes at the grocery store? What was once “weird” has been commercialized and now it’s not “indie”. It’s not weird. And it’s not cool.
I had a friend who would wear leather Indian moccasins. You know, the kind with the tassels? He wore them because they were ‘weird’. They were different than other shoes and he thought they were cool. He didn’t want ANYONE to find out that you could get those exact moccasins at Urban Outfitters for $30. Because if that happened, POOF, not cool or weird anymore.
Get to the point Brody.
Seth, speaking about the Hyatt hotels says this,
“It doesn’t’ work because while they did the surface things, the easy things, the cheap things, they failed to do the hard work of being (and embracing) the weird. It’s sort of weird for the masses, not the actual work of a human being with interests.”
I’m looking at you record labels.
How many times have you seen one artist do the same “weird” thing another artist did six months before? I’ve said it before in my “Spaghetti” post, but just because it works for one band doesn’t mean it’s going to work for another. Labels, you’ve taken the ‘weird’ parts of what certain artists do and tried to make every artist their style of “weird”. You’re adding leather moccasins to the Urban Outfitter’s inventory, and by doing that you’re ruining the coolness of weird.
Like Seth said, “no one wants to do the hard work of embracing the weird”. Instead labels try to generalize the “weird” and hope it works for everyone. Maybe the Facebook gimmick isn’t going to work this time. Maybe the Twitter campaign doesn’t matter to this crowd. Maybe we’ll have to come up with something just a little different this time around.
See, if there’s one thing that fans see through, it’s the fake weird. It’s the generalized tactics. Especially with the Internet, we can now pick and choose our version of cool and as soon as someone else thinks our version of cool is cool, it’s no longer cool. The same goes with marketing tactics. We’re already seeing articles about how “uncool” Kickstarter is, or the abuse of Twitter in marketing. It’s too mainstream, so it’s not cool anymore. Nobody really thinks the person wearing the “Normal Is Boring” shirt is weird. They think they are like everyone else…. or normal.
“Don’t dress up your general and pretend it’s particular. It’s not. Average is for marketers who don’t have enough information to be accurate.”, says Godin. And I completely agree. Study your fan base, study your artists, learn their “weird” and embrace that. And for crying out loud, throw away that “Opps” eraser.
