Know your audience, but stop insulting them.
I know Halloween was a month ago, but it seems that once you hear Michael Jackson’s Thriller with some frequency, you wonder why you aren’t listening to that entire record throughout the whole year all_the_time.
So, I’ve tried to keep it in rotation because, well…you know, it’s an amazing record. Maybe as close to perfect as a record could get. Big words, I know, and there are other records that can be in that conversation, but man oh man is it a good one.
I know you can agree, and I know that because I know you’ve not only heard the record, but KNOW the record and know it well. You can definitely name at least three songs on that record. You’re trying it now and guess what…yep. All three of those are on there. Good job. I knew you could do it.
How do I know this? Because Michael Jackson’s Thriller is the best-selling album of all time with almost 50 million copies sold worldwide.
W o r l d w i d e.
Love it or hate it, if you were human and had access to music in the early 1980s, you were part of the audience for this record. Race, age, musical taste, political affiliation, boxers or briefs, whatever…it didn’t matter. Everyone heard this record.
Those days are gone.
Now, we have what (ahem) marketing people call “hyper-fragmentation” which is a 6-syllable way of saying that there’s so much stuff out there that is so specific to people’s tastes, that there really isn’t a reason for an audience to ever expand their mind and try something new.
They try on a box, like that box, and then only experience things inside said box.
The audience can stay safely in there and surround themselves with only the things that they already know they like. Music. Magazines. Movies. Political views. Clothing styles. Whatever. It even starts crossing over, so if you like this kind of music, then you’ll also like these clothes and this kind of coffee. Wait whaaaaaa?
People tend to like a certain kind of something and then stick with it. I can’t blame them, but also…yeah, I can. And f**k it, I will right now.
It’s a problem…
And kind of a huge one because as marketers get super detailed in their targeting, they tend to go overboard on the “quality over quantity” philosophy which ensures now that they know their smaller audience extremely well, but ends up limiting everyone in the long run.
Somewhere along that line, it all goes backwards. It ends up being the brands and marketers that dictate what an audience likes instead of the other way around, which is how it started and always should be.
Then, at some point after that…it just gets insulting a little bit. It’s almost like you’re not allowed to have tastes that evolve. They’re going to tell you that you like something and goddammit you’re going to not only like it, but love it. If you don’t, then it’s you that is having an identity crisis because no way in hell could a brand ever get you wrong. How dare you change! (← Did my sarcasm come through there? Yes? Good. Just checking.)
It’s insulting because it assumes that the audience won’t grow or change. It’s insulting because it assumes that we, as humans, aren’t able to process or handle anything outside the zone of familiarity that we’ve indicated exists.
In the early 1980s, it was different and Thriller had full exposure to the masses. It exposed and turned people on to upbeat R&B, and even though he was popular before that record, Michael Jackson became a legend on this record.
The videos released thereafter to support those tracks are STILL some of the best videos of all time. Again, I know you’ve seen them, and know them. I bet you can very poorly do three dance moves from the Thriller video, too. You’re thinking of them as you’re reading this. Yep, that one. Yep, that one, too. Yep, and that one. See?
Challenge your favorite brands
Today, we kind of have a responsibility. We as an audience need to challenge marketers in order to flip the table back to where it should be.
Throughout my efforts in building a brand for musicians, I try to remember to always give my audience credit. A benefit of the doubt. They may not like everything all the time, but the ones that appreciate the effort that creating and bringing something new to the world requires — THOSE are my people.
You know who you are. I see you out there. I see you.
An audience will surprise you if you let them
Knowing them so well that you know what they want before they even do is nice, but that can also be dangerous. It doesn’t offer marketers any opportunities or incentives to evolve, while also devaluing the audience as actual, real, evolving humans. Womp womp.
It’s hard to think about how Thriller, if released today, would fare. I’d like to think that it would still have a huge impact, but maybe not.
Then I wonder if there has been a record that has been released in the past few years that, if released in 1982, would be just as huge as Thriller or even bigger.
Then my brain starts to hurt so I stop thinking about it.
But for now, go listen to that record and think about how you’re marketed to. Don’t let anyone limit your tastes and put you in a box. No one has you pegged and you’re allowed to like what you like.
If anyone asks you why, just tell ’em that it’s Human Nature.
#bewhatyoumake
