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What would it take to make North Americans yield to the conventional wisdom of most countries and start calling soccer by its more widely used name: football? How do you make a life-long Coca Cola drinker switch to Pepsi? When does a Boston Red Sox fan learn to love the New York Yankees? Can you teach an old dog new tricks? Where is the tipping point at which an influencer can have an impact on our beliefs, tastes, thoughts, and behavior?
The answers to these questions are the equivalents of the Fountain of Youth, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Midas Touch to marketers everywhere. The ability to influence behavior, as much as some of us despise the thought of being manipulated, is a very valuable thing to people who have products and services to sell.
A tale of two tunesmiths
These thoughts are running through my mind today as I’ve just finished listening to a Fresh Air podcast in which Terry Gross recently interviewed Iggy Pop.
Iggy was one of the early punk rock musicians in the late 1960s (coming to the public eye as the lead singer of the Stooges) and now, in his early 60s, he’s just released a new album Preliminaires, which I awkwardly describe as French-inspired crooning: softer, more melodic, and more subtly seductive than, say, “I Wanna Be Your Dog” or “Real Wild Child”.
Do you think that die hard Stooges fans will flock to Preliminaries in droves? Good question.
A couple of weeks ago I heard yet another Fresh Air podcast where Terry interviewed John Doe, another famous punk rock musician who rose to fame in the Los Angeles band X. Doe has more visibly experimented with different musical genres. He’s joined up with a Canadian band (the Sadies) to create Country Club, a clearly country/western album. Doe sang snippets from several songs on the show. His musical output since X’s heyday (late 70s, early 80s) has certainly ventured into country-ish music, none of which I’ve heard.
I should mention at this point that I detested country music in my teens and early 20s. In the early 90s there was a small number of country-ish musicians that caught my ear, although they were more rock/pop tinged than others (like, say, Garth Brooks, Dwight Yoakum, and Steve Earle) but I still cringed most of the time whenever I heard pedal-steel guitar or nasal vocals.
Somehow, though, hearing John Doe belt out some country standards blew my mind and made me reevaluate my musical tastes. He’s got a great voice, for one thing. However, I think it was the emotion his singing conveyed (I think Terry Gross called it a sense of desolation) that really touched my heart. So to speak.
What’s the tipping point?
So, at some point, a person’s tastes may seem to change.
Suddenly, twelve year old Suzie tries boiled spinach and decides that it doesn’t taste as bad as she thought. A beer drinker tries wine and decides it’s palatable – or vice versa. You finally watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer after your close friend raves about it for years on end… and you decide it rocks, even though vampires and the supernatural always seemed dumb to you in the past.
You finally decide to check out Broadcasting Brain after all the rave reviews and… OK, seriously now…
I’m not a professional marketer but I have been observing things for awhile. I think that any kind of influencer is going to have an uphill battle trying to get people to like something unless:
- It meets a need – information, utility, entertainment… any or all of the above.
- It’s similar to something you already like that it’s easily identified and understood – at its core, country music can tap into the same emotional roots as soul or blues music: normally pain or joy.
- It’s a work of love or art - it sure looks like the people who made or discovered this thing knew what they were doing and did a fine job making it.
- It touches you emotionally - when Terry Gross asked John Doe about his interest in country music he said, (half) jokingly, that all white men like country music. While that’s not literally true, what Doe meant was that the feelings of pain and joy that country music explores are feelings that most men can relate to in a pure, unvarnished form: most men go through periods when we feel cheated, worthless, powerless, and heartbroken, believe it or not, and sometimes we get to feel some joy, too.
I’m not saying pity the poor white man here, by the way: many of us are dickheads at times, too.
The point that I’m trying to make is that these mournful country tunes somehow rang Pavlov’s bell for my musical tastes because they satisfied one or more of the criteria that I mentioned above.
So, how do you turn a PC user into an Apple fanboy?
Yes, I suppose I should address the original question in the post title.
You can take one route, I suppose, and try to recruit an influencer, sneezer, etc. to try to convert a die hard PC user to a hard-core Apple user. You could get Jeff Goldblum, Louis Gray, or Tiger Woods to promote your product.
However, this will only be successful in the long run, in my opinion, if you can tap into the other four things that I mentioned above:
- Show the PC user that an iMac is not THAT different from a PC
- Show how it can meet needs
- Show how it is a darn good product
- Show how it can evoke that “gosh wow, this is cool feeling”
Otherwise, no one will care. Or change.
Over to you: what are your stories?
I’ve told you a story about me, now I’d like to hear something about you. Please, in the comments section, tell us all a story about how you came to like (or love) something that you never liked before. How did it happen? Did any of the criteria that I mentioned above come into play? Did someone else’s recommendation influence you?
X was always country-influenced, as were quite a few great punk bands, back in the day. Social Distortion's cover of Ring of Fire, for instance, is about a billion times better than Adam Lambert's, probably because it admitted that you could not improve on the original. Some people get that.
Window OS, for the most part, has always been a series of riffs on, homages to, rip-offs of Mac OS. I don't think that fact would persuade anyone without a sense of history. Which excludes most American consumers.
HS: this is interesting. Although I'm not deeply knowledgeable about punk, so was a bit surprised at the country connection (though perhaps more for US bands than UK bands?)
Everyone always goes on about Macs as if it's a simple choice between Windows or Mac. Really, though, a Mac tends to cost three or four times the price. Most of America (by which I mean USA and Canada) and lots of Europe have a hard time spending an extra hundred dollars, let alone an extra thousand.
I'll get a Mac in a few years, but at this point in time it's hard enough for me to afford a Windows laptop. Actually, I'd be more inclined to go Linux or Ubuntu. Then there's Debian and Unix and so many things to research…
Off the top of my head, The Mekons, a first-wave British punk band, recorded a two grand records in the mid-80s called Fear and Whiskey and Honky Tonkin, both obviously and unironically influenced by American country. Mekon leader Jon Langford later moved to Chicago and formed the Waco Brothers, labeled alt-country by some but it still sounds like roots rock/country played by punks, to me. Some of his Mekons buddies joined him later. The Godfathers, also British, always played a Cash cover during their encores. Again, off the top of my head.
I wasn't thinking in terms of cost, but sure, that's a factor in any buying decision.
Macs is really awesome and pretty expensive too, but it has really good features,