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Pop-Music’s Lesson to Marketing
Stop what ever you are doing right now, and go tune into your local Pop-music station. Listen to the next 10 songs. Do you detect a pattern in the subject matter? Most of the lyrics in a lot of musical styles, not just pop-music, revolve around love and/or relationships. Why?
Pop-music is called pop-music because, well, it’s popular. If its popular, we have to assume that it’s representative of an idea or societal definition. If this is true, then why are we all so obsessed with love and relationships?
The answer is the sense of belonging we all need. Humans are social creatures, and to be as such, we rely on relationships to help understand the world, and ourselves. People tie in the quality of relationships they have with their happiness, identity, and sense of self worth. That explains the love thing. Love, as we believe it to mean, is the ultimate sign of acceptance. We as humans, above almost all else, require to be accepted on some level.
There are many books, and probably blogs on this subject, so I won’t labor much more to make the point of acceptance as a basic human need and motivation. What I will point out is its relevance to marketing.
In marketing, we spend a lot of time, energy and money on communicating to our customers in “a human voiceâ€, or in the proper context. So the obvious question becomes, what part of your marketing plans and initiatives plays to the basic need of belonging? This is one of the keystones to branding. What does your brand stand for? If your customers don’t know this, how would they know if they want to accept your brand? Do the actions of your company and its marketing stay true and consistent to these ideals? And finally, how can your customers feel that they belong, if they don’t have an opportunity to have a relationship with your brand?