today your love, tomorrow the world
Some marketing lessons from Da Bruddas - Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy (also Marky, Ritchie, CJ and Elvis - for the benefit of completists..) - Ramones.
First up, Ramones’ approach to songsmithery contains some lessons for creating online content, says Michael Aagaard on copyblogger:
1. Eliminate the unnecessary and focus on the substance – the heart and soul of the message you want to convey.
2. Captivate your audience in a nanosecond - Make every headline catchy and simple enough that your readers can’t help but read on.
3. Never lose focus on your audience - Giving the audience an awesome experience is your main priority.
4. Blow self-obsessed smug corporate speak to bits - with razor-sharp relevant content.
Good stuff.
Michael also adds 'Throughout their 22-year career, the Ramones never lost focus on their fans..'
Not strictly true, Micheal. And here is the other lesson.
Between 1980 and about '83 Ramones released 3 mainly duff albums using 'pop' producers - Spector, a bloke out of 10cc and even Dave Stewart (pseudo wierdo out of Eurythmics) - in a desperate, and ultimately fruitless, attempt to capture the mainstream audience that had temporarily paid attention when their sugary sweet cover of 'Baby I Love You' had bothered the top 20 charts in 1980.
During this period, slowly but surely, they started to lose the fans that loved them for the no-nonsense 3 chord rock'n'roll that made their name as, sadly, the much coveted mass mainstream pop audience failed to buy in.
Normal service was resumed, and lessons learned with 1984's 'Too Tough To Die', which ditched the so-slick production and returned to the buzzsaw rock'n'roll. And slowly the fans came back.
Ditching the key distinctive elements of the brand that make 'you' look and sound like 'you' is is a risky strategy.
Other people are far better at being other people.
And, compromising your product or service, overstretching the brand in the hope of appealing to everyone, means you might end up appealing to no-one.
Gabba gabba hey.
