Believe In What You Market

I must have watched the video in my last post about a dozen times now.  The one thing that astounds me is how every single musician is so obviously invested in the production of a WORLD CLASS product.  You can see it in the (otherwise placid) pianist and bassist, and it’s obvious in the JOY that the singer and violinist are getting when they hit their notes perfectly.   Perhaps I’m just an old fuddy-duddy, or maybe mainstream artists don’t get this much pleasure about producing perfection, but I would MUCH rather watch this sort of music video than one with “high production value.”

It reminds me of when I was Product Manager/VP Marketing  at Maximizer in the ’90s.  I didn’t just chant the mantra about how great our software was.  I KNEW IT TO BE TRUE.  If I could have been standing in every aisle in every Future Shop in the country when somebody was looking at shrink-wrapped contact management software, no-one would EVER have purchased our competitor.  A 90-second chat with me, along with the (semi-maniacal) look of certainty in my eyes, would have convinced them that I was NOT dishing bulls**t.

It’s the same with the musicians in the video, and it’s the same with Steve Jobs, and it’s the same with the Dalai Lama (or insert your religious leader of choice here).  They all KNOW they’re giving you the straight goods, at the highest quality possible.   And you can see it in their eyes that they’re doing it for YOU, not themselves.

That’s quality marketing.

(But it requires a quality product.)

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