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.
Ship
“What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do is ship.” – Seth Godin
I love having ideas. I love brainstorming. I love collaboration. And when that happens, I’m ridiculously impatient until those ideas becomes a reality. No doubt this is super annoying to the folks who actually help me implement those ideas. See, I know enough about the technical side of things to break stuff, but when the question “can we do this” pops up, I’m out of my league. And that’s pretty often.
The other day I was having a conversation about “the idea guy” and the problem with him. People have ideas every day. I have ideas every day. So do you. The kicker is getting those ideas out of your head and put into practice in a timely manner. While it’s great to have the conversation that starts with “wouldn’t it be cool?” the longer I do this stuff, the more I see how much cooler it is when that idea is shipped. It’s not enough to have the ideas.
This week I head out with MercyMe and we’ve got some cool ideas that I think will become a reality. It’s taken a little while to set up, but there’s some cool things that I think we’ll be able to pull off on the road that hasn’t been done before to my knowledge. I’m excited to see these ideas being ‘shipped’.
We’ve got another project that, what I believe, is an absolute game changer in not just the Christian Music Industry, but possibly the Entertainment Industry as a whole. I don’t know if it will work. I don’t know if we can figure it all out, and if it does, I don’t know if we can get it out there. But here’s the thing. We need to ship it. It’s not enough to come on this blog and tell you, “Hey, check it out. I got an idea.”. It’s something that we need to pull off.
And this is where my impatience comes in full force. I want to make phone calls about it. I want to blog about it. I want to not sleep until it’s a reality and a fully functional product. I want to find a big league investor. I want to ship.
Anyone else out there have either problems shipping, or having the patience to see it happen?
Thoughts On Books
Seth Godin announced today that he’s not publishing any more books. Not in the traditional way at least. The way I read it, he’s a little unclear as to what he’s going to do, but it’s for sure not going to be the ‘hard cover – sold in a bookstore’ type of way. Pretty interesting huh? He’s living out what he wrote in Linchpin.
Sure, I’ve got some mixed thoughts on the whole thing, but here’s what I like about it. 1: I like that he’s stepping out and doing something different. I like that he’s taking what he talks about and putting it to practice. To me he’s going against what’s easy and testing out what could quite literally change things. 2: This might be the thing that pushes me over the edge and I’ll go get that iPad I’ve been on the fence about for so long.
Seriously though. This post originally had nothing to do with Seth Godin, but it seems to fall in line perfectly with what I was going to talk about. You ready for that?
I’m not what you’d call an ‘avid reader’ but I enjoy a good book now and then. You all know about our SkörInc Reading List and I’m doing pretty well on that. So here’s my question. Once you’re done with a book, what do you do with it? Pass it on to a friend? Take it to a Used Book Store? Shelve it? Kindling for the fire place? I guess the reason I’m wondering is because I’d like to hear your opinions on how passing books around among friends. Come on. Be honest. Who does this? Is there a difference between doing this and passing on a CD? Do you think that this is attributing to Seth Godin changing his format?
Now obviously passing books around has been the same forever. It’s not like digital music and how it became easy to duplicate, but what’s the consensus here? Is passing a book to a friend for them to read the same as burning them a CD? Thoughts?
Ready? Go.
Madison House And Passion
The following text is from Seth Godin‘s book ‘Linchpin’. I didn’t write the book or the following paragraph, but I think these few paragraphs, along with most of the book is what SkörInc has strived to be from the beginning so I thought I’d share.
“Madison House is a Colorado-based music management and booking firm. They represent artists like Bill Kreutzmann, The String Cheese Incident, and Los Lobos.
As the music world comes crashing down they are thriving. How’d they do that?
Because of people like Nadia Prescher. Nadia is one of the people who runs the firm, and like her peers, she loves the music. She comes to the shows when she doesn’t have to, works on the details that aren’t part of her job, and expends emotional labor because she can, not because she’s told to.
Successful musicians have plenty of choices. If they pick Madison House, it’s going to be because the people at the firm care enough to make a connection, not because they are the lowest-price alternative. Every PR and professional service firm can learn from this. When your people do what they do because they love it, it works. Even if they aren’t as technically adept as the competition.” – Seth Godin – ‘Linchpin’ (page 205)
Thanks Seth, for the reminder that we’re heading in the right direction.
Seth Godin Is Smart
So, I completely stole this post from Seth Godin. I was going to Re-Tweet it or whatever, but this seemed to carry a little more weight thank just a ‘Hey check this out’. Absolutely brilliant. What do you think?
Who judges your work?
Here’s the mistake we make in high school:
We let anyone, just anyone, judge our work (and by extension, judge us.)
Sue, the airheaded but long-legged girl in Spanish class gets the right to judge our appearance.
Bill, the bitter former-poet English teacher gets the power to tell us if we’re good at writing.
And on and on.
The cheerleaders are deputized as the Supreme Court of social popularity, and the gym teacher forever has dibs on whether or not we’re macho enough to make it in the world. These are patterns we sign up for, and they last forever (or until we tell them to go away).
In high school, some people learn to ship, they learn to do work that matters and most of all, they learn to ignore the critics they can never possibly please. The ability to choose who judges your work–the people who will make it better, use it and reward you–is the key building block in becoming an artist in whatever you do.
If you haven’t already check out more from Seth Godin. He’ll blow your mind.
