{"id":1449,"date":"2008-11-19T09:12:53","date_gmt":"2008-11-19T17:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=1449"},"modified":"2008-11-19T09:13:30","modified_gmt":"2008-11-19T17:13:30","slug":"saturation-publicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2008\/11\/19\/saturation-publicity\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturation Publicity"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I see one more article about Malcolm Gladwell and his book "Outliers" I’m not gonna buy it.<\/p>\n

I know, seems like a 180, but that’s the risk you take when you promote your band, beating the target audience over the head to such a degree that fans abandon you, worse, say negative shit about you.<\/p>\n

This is how publicity directors insure they don’t lose their jobs.\u00c2\u00a0 By showing their bosses a number, how many mentions they’ve gotten.\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn’t matter if it helps the project, insures the longevity of the project, it’s all about a raw quantification at the outset.<\/p>\n

Read any articles about Metallica’s new album recently?\u00c2\u00a0 How about Lil’ Wayne’s?\u00c2\u00a0 At least Metallica’s on tour, they’re getting some concert reviews, but most acts are not of their stature, the newspaper doesn’t care.\u00c2\u00a0 And if you don’t go on the road, it’s like you dropped a rock in a lake, ripples move outward, and then calm returns.<\/p>\n

The question is how can you get your project to live on?\u00c2\u00a0 How can you achieve legs?\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t do this by saturation publicity at the outset.\u00c2\u00a0 This just alienates your core, which spreads the word.\u00c2\u00a0 If you think the casual user counts, then you’re probably working at the major labels, entities that have ridden this philosophy to the ground.<\/p>\n

Not everybody liked the Dead.\u00c2\u00a0 But their model wasn’t so much free music as an ongoing percolation in the marketplace.\u00c2\u00a0 They toured regularly, you could bring your friends.\u00c2\u00a0 Developing bands are on the road all the time.\u00c2\u00a0 Superstars flog one album ad infinitum and then disappear.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, return again and again with the same damn show.\u00c2\u00a0 People might come back if you charged a fair price and played different material.\u00c2\u00a0 But you don’t.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Don’t tell everybody.\u00c2\u00a0 Tell somebody.\u00c2\u00a0 Today’s publicity is like hearing high school gossip on "Entertainment Tonight".\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?\u00c2\u00a0 I thought that was just between you and me!<\/li>\n
  2. Try to get stories for the life of the project.\u00c2\u00a0 Hold back, see if you’ve got traction, work that traction.<\/li>\n
  3. Many albums have entered SoundScan at number one and dropped before selling tonnage.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas others have started at the bottom and gone multiplatinum.\u00c2\u00a0 As for superstars…\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, I hate Beyonce because I have to keep reading about her and her damn movie "Cadillac Records".\u00c2\u00a0 That won’t be a good flick, because there hasn’t been a good movie in eons, Hollywood is only interested in the money.\u00c2\u00a0 But what if Beyonce did a cover of a soul classic, maybe "Nowhere To Run", and gave it away free on the Net and told none of the usual suspects?\u00c2\u00a0 Word would spread like wildfire.\u00c2\u00a0 Fans would be e-mailing everybody they know, owning the project themselves, feeling part of it.\u00c2\u00a0 Who can feel part of the process when the media oligarchs are jamming it down our collective throats.<\/li>\n
  4. If people can’t own it, can’t believe in it, can’t talk about it and spread the word, you’ve got no legs.\u00c2\u00a0 And legs are where the money is.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Read anything about the Buffett book recently?\u00c2\u00a0 "Entourage"?\u00c2\u00a0 Everything’s front-loaded.\u00c2\u00a0 Not knowing how to truly reach and sustain its audience’s interest, the hypesters just throw it all against the wall at once.\u00c2\u00a0 And if there are no legs, they just shrug.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t their fault.\u00c2\u00a0 But it was!<\/p>\n

    It was hard to get a story in the pre-Internet era.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, you can always find a blogger to flog your project.\u00c2\u00a0 Worse, no story is local.\u00c2\u00a0 The "New York Times", "Wall Street Journal", "Time" and "Newsweek", never mind the YouTube clips of TV shows, all exist next to each other online, side by side.\u00c2\u00a0 What you end up with is a deluge.\u00c2\u00a0 And you know what happens when you’ve got a deluge?\u00c2\u00a0 People drown!<\/p>\n

    That’s what it feels like when you’re subjected to the endless repetitious hype.\u00c2\u00a0 You use every effort to swim to shore and connect with what you know and truly trust, which is not the flavor of the moment.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    If I see one more article about Malcolm Gladwell and his book "Outliers" I’m not gonna buy it. I know, seems like a 180, but that’s the risk you take when you promote your band, beating the target audience over the head to such a degree that fans abandon you, worse, say negative shit about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-the-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-nn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1449"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1451,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions\/1451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}