In May, I had the chance to hear marketing guru Sasha Strauss speak at Coloft about marketing and branding strategies for small businesses and entrepreneurs. He was a great speaker — the talk was informative as well as entertaining, and he managed to keep the whole crowd engaged throughout the entire presentation.
Sasha Strauss, $100,000 of Brand Strategy Advice
Strauss runs his own marketing consulting firm that handles high-end and corporate clients, teaches both at UCLA and USC, gives talks all over the world, and is an overall very busy guy. He was, however, very charitable with his time, giving everyone in the audience an open invitation for a free consultation. I decided to take him up on his offer — I figured, why not?
The waiting list for this was a lot longer than I initially thought it would be — after exchanging a few emails with his assistant, I managed to land a spot three months later, during the latter part of August. By the time the date rolled around lots of things had changed with the group; I had a lot of new questions to ask about branding and marketing methodologies in general, so I was ready to hear something new at that point. I pulled my notes together and went to meet with him at a cafe in Los Feliz, unsure of what to expect.
Being used to hanging around introverted musicians and academics for the most part, it wasn’t the sort of thing I was used to — he was clean cut, dressed in designer clothing, theatrical in the way he carried himself, eloquent and stylish in presentation. I, on the other hand, was wearing whatever collared thing that happened to be clean at the time, with a cheap 99 cents notepad that I recycled from my previous job. Despite initial awkwardness, the meeting with him ended up being very helpful since it gave some insights into what OK Music was doing as a group and where we might be able to go from here.
As most entrepreneurs tended to be, he was very generous with his advice and suggestions. The one thing I’ve enjoyed about meeting people in the startup community was the honest and helpful feedback that they were willing to give, and he turned out not to be an exception.
We talked for about an hour about various different things, but Strauss landed on a few key points:
Our “themed improv” idea is indeed unique as a business model, and is worth pursuing as a venture.
He probably had no idea how hard I was trying to find a previous model to work off of, to no avail. We were in an entrepreneurial “new” market — in contrast to startup businesses who’re looking to break into currently existing markets, customers in “new” markets have to be created from the ground up.
The disadvantages of a non-existent customer base is pretty obvious: no customers. The advantage, however, is that there is no competition. If we can make it work, then we’d be comfortably ahead of the game, even if others decide to imitate what we do. As far as I can tell, there hasn’t been any other groups who can do what we do at the level that we’re at right now — OK Music is a combination of unusual talents matched with unconventional methodologies, and I would think this would be hard to replicate anywhere else.
Intuitively I figured that this was always the case, but it was good to hear it from an outside opinion since that meant I could stop looking for previous examples.
Invent a new genre and stick with it.
Since our idea was new, he suggested that we invent a new genre and use it as a way to brand what we do. OK, I’ll just invent a new genre? It seemed daunting but since he obviously knew a lot more about the subject than I did, I decided to give it a shot.
We’re currently trying out “Interactive Music” as a branding phrase — there’s a chance that this could get blurred in with things happening in the computer music and video game industries, but this could be a good thing since it’ll connect what we’re doing to something happening on a broader scale. We’re currently looking to collaborate with artists in new media practices as well, so the term could end up dovetailing into itself eventually anyway.
Thanks to a few search engine optimization tricks, so far we’ve been pretty consistent in getting on the first or second pages of Google for “interactive music”, “interactive impovisation music”, and so on. And this was without having put in any effort into marketing and promotional tasks whatsoever. With a little push, getting on top shouldn’t be too difficult if there becomes a need for it.
Chart on Personal Branding
Put your personality into the business! Tell a story to the audience! Take control of your business/life! You could make millions!
I usually tend to be pretty skeptical of dramatic language, but he seemed earnest enough that I started to believe that it could be done. His enthusiasm was, of course, tempered by the usual “it’s a lot of work”, “there will be difficult setbacks and hurdles”, “some things will take a long time to happen”, “prepare for a lot of rejection” warnings that tend to accompany any given talk at entrepreneurial meetings. These warnings have never phased me before and I wasn’t about to start worrying now, so I decided to give it a go.
One of the more interesting things about his advice to me was that, as the one managing the group, he thought it was necessary for me to use my personality as part of our branding strategy for OK Music’s projects. After hearing him talk about Marilyn Manson and Mr. T. as examples of successful “fabricated” personas, I was somewhat worried that I might have to do the same. This skepticism is one that I think a lot of musicians have of business practices in general — that in order to be popular or successful, you have to learn how to be “fake”. For an improv group like OK Music where directness is very much part of the product itself, it didn’t seem possible that something like this could work.
However, it turns out that this wouldn’t necessarily pose a problem to our group as long as we had some kind of “story” that the audience found compelling. In the long run, marketing strategies that rely on trickery doesn’t actually work too well, especially in the digital age where things have become increasingly transparent. Someone like Mr. T is able to survive in today’s media environment because his persona is consistent and reliable enough to endure the changes in people’s tastes. Even if he might exist as a fictional character, the dedication and belief he puts into the idea is what makes him “real” in the eyes of the public.
I would say that all of the members of OK Music are more or less incapable of creating alter egos, given their interest in the improvisatory arts. But creating a narrative out of the positive things that we’ve been able to accomplish in our group seems like something that could be done, and done well. The advice that Strauss often gives to his clients is that consistency is the key to gaining the audience’s trust, and there’s nothing more consistent than just presenting things as they are.
So that’s the gist of it so far. Before our meeting was over, Strauss mentioned that the market hasn’t quite “hit it” with our idea yet, but this is probably a good thing for me since I’m going to have to get through my Ph.D program during the next couple of years anyway. Entrepreneurial projects typically take 5-7 years before they reach a point of revenue, so in a lot of ways my graduation date will line up perfectly with expected time tables. As it gets closer to the end of my program, it should be clear by then if the project is a go or a no-go — in either case, I’d have done my best to pursue this idea, and there should be no regrets.
Those interested in the art of branding might take a look at the video above, which was more or less the same talk he gave at Coloft.
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