It's All Marketing, People

Did you know Clay said that at the Pittsburgh Jukebox Tour last year? He loves me.

I'm a marketing geek. I like to talk about it and it is always one of the filters I use to look at life. (The other would be how it relates to Clay.) So, I've consolidated a few marketing lessons I gave awhile back. Perhaps I'll add some additional ones later.

Marketing is built around the 4 P's. These are the terms that are the cornerstone for marketing. They are Product (or service), Price, Place (of distribution) and Promotion. All marketing plans must consider these 4 elements. I'm getting very intrigued as to what they have in store for Clay's promotion.

Now some schools of thought have added a 5th P and others just lump this P into Promotion. The name of the 5th P is PACKAGE.I know you are all familiar with that term…..

There are marketing terms that I know everyone is familiar with such as brand. Brand is of interest with Clay's new CD because rumors are that he is going to have somewhat of an image change.

Branding is the process of creating an identity that you want your product or service to have. Product branding is a bit easier because you actually have a tangible thing. Brand can be something visual like the Nike swoosh or a state of mind created when you hear the company or product name. For example, you may want your brand to be peace of mind if you are an insurance company. One of the most brilliant brands ever created, IMO was the audio brand of Intel. If your brand becomes so specifically tied with one thing that is highly recognized by a large segment of the market, you are said to have brand equity.

Japan cultivated the most amazing turnaround of brand equity in history. Remember when Made in Japan meant junk? Now it likely means high quality electronics and cars. I should know, I just bought one. Car that is. The new Clackmobile.

Clay's brand right after AI was one of the geek who could sing. The power balladeer. The former teacher/southern Mama's boy, etc. I think this served him OK for the early part of his career but does not tell the whole story of who he is or what he is capable of doing musically.

It seems that they are moving the brand toward a mature adult man with career goals in entertainment and personal aspirations of family and giving back. I am very excited to see the CD that goes with this. I am also very excited about the photographs that go with this!

Brand is also a distinctive category- such as I do not like Kathy Griffen's brand of comedy.

Brand is also the mark they put on cows and other animals to signify which ranch they belong to. We will be seeing these brands in the form of pins on all the cows—er, I mean fans at the concerts this year. (That reminds me of the cute movie with Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman called Someone Like You where she talks about how all women are cows. Nice Friday night movie and way too much pretty in it.)

I found this at tubegator.com and just had to share it with you. I edited it to try and make it a little more PG-13.

You're a woman and you see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and say, "I'm fantastic in the sack," That's Direct Marketing.

You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a handsome guy. One of your friends goes up to him and pointing at you says, "She's fantastic in the sack," That's Advertising.

You see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and get his telephone number. The next day you call and say, "Hi, I'm fantastic in the sack,"That's Telemarketing.

You see a guy at a party, you straighten your dress. You walk up to him and pour him a drink. You say, "May I," and reach up to straighten his tie, brushing your chest lightly against his arm, and then say, "By the way, I'm fantastic in sack."That's Public Relations.

You're at a party and see a handsome guy. He walks up to you and says, I hear you're fantastic in sack,"That's Brand Recognition.

Sometimes marketing terms are just too good to be ignored. Take for instance

TOSS A WACKY.

This is not a good thing. Tossing a wacky means that after you have worked soooo hard to come up with your marketing plan and then you try to do scenario analysis to see if it would fail and someone comes up with a scenario that yes indeedy (or is that yes, in Didi) kills your idea. The person who came up with that hypothetical idea killer is said to have tossed a wacky-and your quarterly bonus as well.

Now I would love to be a fly in the wall of Team Clay's marketing strategy and see how many wackies were tossed. Or how many monkeys were spanked. Oh wait, I don't think that is the same thing.Perhaps they talked about simple things like changing Clay's hair. Or maybe something extreme like moving Clay more towards a hip-hop kind of Lil' Gonzo star. After all, he did do that rap star hand motion quite well when Jacob put that backwards baseball cap on him during the 2004 tour.

When someone on Jerome's list is identified and removed-that's also tossing a wacky.

You can also toss a salad but Clay thinks too much salad can kill you, so he probably tosses it right out the door. After all, can't have too much green when there are Hot Pockets to be microwaved.

You can toss a Dwarf which is what Legolas did in the Return of the King movie.

Maybe Team Clay plays Toss Across in the strategy meetings and the first person to hit the same idea in tic-tac-toe format gets to decide the release date of Clay's next album. It seems everyone sucks at this game.

Technorati tags: Clay Aiken, Marketing

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