Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
You’re on a boat with the man your man could smell like.
Can I just say, this commercial is easily in my top 3 ads of all time. Knowing that their demographic is both men & women (who do the shopping for their men), the geniuses at W+K came up with this awesome way to talk to/entertain both. I even stop the DVR during recorded shows to watch this commercial. It’s. That. Good. And it was all filmed in one long shot. Below two of the guys on the Old Spice account talk logistics.
Chalk it up to naiveté, being new in the world of marketing, but I thought that the important intersection between marketing and psychology was obvious. It’s one of the reasons that advertising and marketing initially appealed to me. But after reading “Why advertising needs behavioral economics” by Rory Sutherland, it would seem that maybe the world doesn’t value that connection like I thought. Sutherland asks, “Why is marketing – and, more importantly, the vital study of human behavior – so little celebrated in the wider world of business?” Perhaps because I was brought up in the Journalism School that I take for granted the idea that everyone knows that everything should be firmly based on research; and it seems so counterintuitive that you would go forward in business without knowing about people – the people who buy your product, the people who support your business, the people who drive your bottom line.
The Internet has drastically changed the music industry. It’s been said before, but I never really considered how until my sister emailed me this video:
To make money through major labels, you need blockbuster hits. You need to be the next Lady Gaga, Britney Spears or N’Sync (forgive my obviously girly examples). They spend so much money producing, distributing and marketing the physical CD releases that it’s more effective to try to make money from one super mega-hit than many smaller singles that could cumulatively sell the same number as the mega-hit; hence the age-old problem of over-played songs on the radio. Surely there exists more music than the 10 songs played over and over on 105.1. It’s artificial scarcity –> variety exists, but you’re only exposed to a sliver of it. Labels just didn’t want you to know it. But now in the information age, with digital music sales, it’s almost as easy to make as much from the small hits as the one mega-hit. Paired with the low-cost of digital tools, there are millions of people, like Levi Weaver, out there making music for every genre you can think of and those you would never have dreamt of, and making it independent of a major label.
So here is Levi offering a fresh perspective, a new model – basically fundraising. Instead of looking at it as buying a CD (a very impersonal transaction), Levi is asking that you donate money to support him. In return for your donation, you will receive a CD. He offers a glimpse in to his world. Supporters know that the money is going directly into his hands, instead of through a distributor –> record company –> representative –> agent –> musician (or however the equation goes).
Back to how the Internet changed the game, I guess it boils down to accessibility and choice. Now how do record labels harness these to make more $$$? I think the answer has to do with making it easier for the consumer to sift through all the choices.
