{"id":763,"date":"2007-04-17T18:56:28","date_gmt":"2007-04-18T02:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/04\/17\/the-zimmers\/"},"modified":"2007-04-17T18:56:28","modified_gmt":"2007-04-18T02:56:28","slug":"the-zimmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2007\/04\/17\/the-zimmers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Zimmers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Zimmers "My Generation"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Used to be you couldn’t reach the old farts.\u00c2\u00a0 They didn’t go to school, they didn’t go out to clubs, they were positively out of the loop.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that what selling CDs at Starbucks is predicated on?\u00c2\u00a0 Baby boomers being out of the loop?<\/p>\n

But suddenly, baby boomers have learned how to use e-mail.\u00c2\u00a0 And they can surf the Net too.\u00c2\u00a0 They might not know the call letters of the Top Forty station in town, but they know all about YouTube.<\/p>\n

"My Generation" is a novelty.\u00c2\u00a0 Not far afield from the jokes that used to cross the Net transom back in the nineties.\u00c2\u00a0 But the mania, the rabidity with which this story has spread, is utterly fascinating.<\/p>\n

Sometime in the last week I started getting links.\u00c2\u00a0 Today I must have gotten five.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’ve yet to see a story in the straight press, yet to see a story on TV.\u00c2\u00a0 And aren’t those the media that break stories?\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t it about massaging gatekeepers to get them to say yes, to get your story out?<\/p>\n

Not anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 Now you can bypass the entire system, and go straight to the public, your target audience.\u00c2\u00a0 And if what you’re purveying is interesting, that audience will do all your marketing for you.<\/p>\n

Face it.\u00c2\u00a0 Irrelevant of its staying power, irrelevant of the execution, the Zimmers’ rendition of "My Generation" was a brilliant idea.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the essence of great art, conception.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why Jethro Tull is more meaningful than Mariah Carey.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, Mariah’s just a pretty voice singing a song, whereas Jethro Tull made one song into an entire album!<\/p>\n

The concept of oldsters singing the anthem of the youth, presented without irony, is a mindbender.\u00c2\u00a0 Weren’t these the same people who used to hate rock music?\u00c2\u00a0 And what’s up with the joy of the chorus?\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t see that much joy in the face of a rapper in a zillion dollar video.<\/p>\n

So the conception delivers the appeal.\u00c2\u00a0 Execution is secondary.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about gloss, or sheen, but the idea.\u00c2\u00a0 And the idea has stuck.\u00c2\u00a0 This story is spreading at light speed.\u00c2\u00a0 New acts benefiting from a million dollars in marketing and promotion oftentimes don’t even sell 10,000 albums.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, they get on TV, but no one talks about them.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas this homey video is the rage!<\/p>\n

Novelty videos won’t be the talk of the town forever.\u00c2\u00a0 Heard anybody raving about a mashup recently?\u00c2\u00a0 But the underlying behavior, discovering something and spreading the word…that’s here to stay.<\/p>\n

So what’s next?\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re a talented diva do you have to kiss Jay Leno’s butt?\u00c2\u00a0 Be misunderstood on "The Today Show"?\u00c2\u00a0 Or can you just post your video to YouTube and your target audience will tell everybody they know about it?<\/p>\n

Oh, admit it, you wanted to spread the word on the Zimmers, you wanted to be the first to tell your friends.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t be the first to tell you friends about "Spider-Man 3".\u00c2\u00a0 There’s almost nothing to talk about there.\u00c2\u00a0 All the buzz is media-centric.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s people buzz that matters.\u00c2\u00a0 And the way you create that people buzz is by empowering individuals, making them feel like they count, that they have a say, that they have an investment!\u00c2\u00a0 And this investment begets fans.\u00c2\u00a0 Those in on the ground floor want to wear their badge of honor at the gig, in conversation.<\/p>\n

Oh, the top-down marketing campaigns will not die.\u00c2\u00a0 But everybody will see them for what they truly are, manipulations.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas the fan started phenomena, they’ll have soul, they’ll last.\u00c2\u00a0 These new fan started acts\/creations are akin to the underground FM radio bands of the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 AM wouldn’t play them!\u00c2\u00a0 They didn’t fit the format!\u00c2\u00a0 So, a rabid audience embraced these acts and made them stars.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only listening to them on the radio, but buying their music and going to see them live.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a whispering campaign that brought people to Monterey Pop and Woodstock, not a marketing assault.<\/p>\n

This is the worst nightmare of the powers that be.\u00c2\u00a0 Because their power is based on control of the marketplace.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why the major labels fought file-trading, not because they were wary of having their assets stolen, but because they were afraid their monopoly on distribution might be broken.\u00c2\u00a0 If you can get distributed and paid by yourself, what do you need the major for?\u00c2\u00a0 The marketing.\u00c2\u00a0 But is all that marketing helping you, or hurting you?<\/p>\n

Everything I’ve said above is well known by\u00c2\u00a0 Web-surfers.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s second nature.\u00c2\u00a0 They can tell you what’s real, and what isn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 They can go on about discovery.\u00c2\u00a0 They believe the old ways are decrepit.\u00c2\u00a0 The only people touting and propping up the old system are those involved in it.<\/p>\n

The Net changes everything.\u00c2\u00a0 It eliminates the middle man.\u00c2\u00a0 It begs different assets be promoted.\u00c2\u00a0 Train-wrecks get traction, but briefly.\u00c2\u00a0 Quality lasts, just as long as you don’t oversell it.<\/p>\n

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

The Zimmers "My Generation" Used to be you couldn’t reach the old farts.\u00c2\u00a0 They didn’t go to school, they didn’t go out to clubs, they were positively out of the loop.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that what selling CDs at Starbucks is predicated on?\u00c2\u00a0 Baby boomers being out of the loop? But suddenly, baby boomers have learned how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-online"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-cj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}