One Great Leap for Fankind

Every now and then brand marketers look to other creative industries for inspiration.

As music downloads in the UK exceed sales of physical product, what lessons can we learn from the music business - the creative industry under more pressure than most? Recognising that Simon Cowell is not the music industry what have the creatives – the musicians - done themselves, to reshape the way the industry traditionally markets its product?

Let’s take three strong minded highly creative artists – first the band still regarded as one of the most interesting and innovative, Radiohead, hyper prolific American alt country bad boy Ryan Adams and indie singer-songwriter trio Ben Folds Five - and see what bright ideas we could learn from.

When Radiohead self-published their In Rainbows album they asked fans to pay whatever they thought it was worth to download. While some people inevitably downloaded it for 1p it’s reported that the ‘average’ price volunteered for the download was £4. Whatever the real price paid what did subsequently happen was a sell-out of a full price limited edition CD and a bunch of fans applauding the bands creativity and trust in its audience.

Ryan Adams did a deal with his record company that allowed him to publish the songs from what would become his Love Is Hell album as they were being written. They came by way of downloads and a couple of 4 song EP’s over the course of a year. He conducted a dialogue with his fans on his website, scrapped songs that didn’t work well on the road and reworked material that was liked. The majority of fans bought material three or four times over as it was refined and re-released – happy to be part of the artistic process.

Ben Folds is currently trying the Pledgemusic platform Ben Folds Five – a process that makes it easy to allow fans to directly participate in a release and to buy and hear that music before anyone else. The platform challenges artists to offer their dedicated fans other kinds of creative incentives and exclusive items in return for their support. Similar to the Ryan Adams drip release technique it engages fans way up front – not via the traditional tease but inviting them to participate and be involved as they maintain their engagement with the band.

All brands strive to engage and galvanise their most loyal customers - and the music industry is no different. These musicians are employing personalisation to both engage and fundamentally generate additional revenue from a broken business and distribution model. While the majority of any audience may be happy with the vanilla, off-the-shelf product is there a proto fan audience within your customer base prepared to pay a premium for product variants that recognise loyalty and their desire for personalisation?  

Smells like tan spirit

As retailers and shoppers grow tired of the Pop-Up concept, it’s heartening to see the rise of the ‘curated space’ as a way of allowing people to soak up the stories of luxury brands,  OMEGA’s new Olympic ‘House’ being  a recent example.

In London this month, Hermès has installed a multi-sensory exhibition that delivers a beautifully managed tour of the brand's quirky history and 'no stone unturned' search for perfection.

As Emily Bell said recently in Pomp magazine, as the brand celebrates its 175^th anniversary, “Hermès is officially old”.

However, as we all know, age is no barrier to style. Hermès ‘ Forever Leather provides the chance to experience both the touchy-feely textures and craft of the brand (including chatting to Nadja, one of Hermès artisans, in person) to interactive signatory orange boxes.

Walking through each room, visitors are hit by waves of sensory effects – the aroma of the leather, the shock of the white sand in the equestrian section – in a way that is still simple and somehow avoids being ostentatious.

Forever Leather is at 6 Burlington Gardens, London until 27^th May.