Here’s an example of ill-thought out software marketing from Mac. It was on the flyer in an official Mac store in Melbourne:
1) “Logic Express 8 delivers everything a musician needs to write, record, edit, mix with unmatched quality, speed and ease: $249″
2) “Logic Studio delivers everything a musician needs to write, record, edit, mix, and perform in the studio and on the stage. $598″
Given that most of us dear sweet musicians are usually broke, you think they would try a little harder to explain why I would spend over twice as much for Logic Studio. I mean why the hell would I take my software package to a gig? And how?
And anyway, if Express 8 delivers “everything a musician needs” why would I spend more? On “wants”? Which ones?
You may have noticed my tagline up top. This stems from an initial idea to call an album (of music) “A New Initiative from the Department of Imagination and Procedure”. I haven’t yet made said album, but the idea hung around and then when I was setting up an actual office earlier this year, from which I was intending to run my own business, I decided to call it the “office of…” instead of the “department of…”.
Then things changed (fine by me) and I closed the office before it even got used and was wooed back into full time employment. (Actually, I volunteered for reasons of practicality.) So anyway, I decided to tag this blog as per above and be done with it.
But of course, as sometimes happens, long after I had grown bored with the “sound” of the phrase (which was what appealed to me in the first place, that and the inherent satire) I began to muse on how it really does sum up the Yin/Yang nature of work. There’s left brain work (Procedure) and left brain (Imagination).
Oh, of course, I meant right and left brain, or is it left and then right? I don’t know, who cares. Boooring!
Getting the idea which side I prefer? Give me creative work any day. (And all the arty types say “Here, here!”)
Unfortunately, in order to get a full time job, which I suddenly needed for reasons of impending fatherhood, I had to take a “procedure” role. And ever since then I have been doing extra personal-development work each morning and evening to buck myself up and get on with business, instead of going insane due to boredom. This strategy has worked to an extent, but frankly it has been increasingly more difficult to endure, despite my silence on the issue.
Silent I may have been, but then yesterday my lovely, intuitive boss must have picked up on it because out of the blue she pulled me into the office and told me that I should do away with all this procedural bullshit and get back to what I do well, being creative. So she has charged me again with working with her to develop and implement entrepreneurial opportunities for the business (brand).
Awesome. I still have to sell, which is fine, I actually enjoy that, but I get to do it in creative ways, by coming up with new ideas, web based and otherwise. I won’t go into details, because I don’t know what they are yet, but it will mean sheer creativity for the fun of it, rather than spreadsheets and protocol and fucking boring shit like that.
Woo Hoo!
And the Lesson is: Do your daily affirmations folks, they work if you believe they will
Here’s to you finding your dream job, or at least moving towards it day by day. If I can help you with this in any way, just let me know.
You know the websites I mean; those with the endless sales copy that goes on and on down the page. The websites that look horrible and tacky and cheap.
People actually do buy stuff from these websites. That’s why people bother to put them up in the first place. That’s why they are still there when you check back years later.
This is something that I have learned over the last year.
Prior to that - because I never bought stuff from these websites, I assumed that nobody would be stupid enough to buy stuff from those websites.
But then one day I was looking for specific information and whoa! I found (the promise of) it at one of these websites. And the offer seemed pretty sound when I considered all they had to say.
So I bought it.
Amazed at myself, I started doing some research and found out there is a whole subculture around these long-copy direct sales websites.
My girlfriend and I were huddling around the fire today trying to defrost and otherwise contemplating her swollen belly (baby not gas) and discussing our impending trip to France, Ireland and London (we leave Wednesday) when I asked if her sister in Paris has the ‘net.
“yes, why?”
“Oh you know, so I can check my emails and. you know, … blog … a little.”
“Are you still doing that?”
“Err, yes … I like writing you know …”
“Ok, but I hope that’s not all you want to do on holiday.”
“Of course not darling … ”
She has no idea why I blog, and I was just sitting here thinking about it and I realised that I have been very vague about why I have started this, my fourth blog.
Mind you, not that it matters because nobody much is reading it yet but anyway…
The reason I am writing this blog is because I am freshly starting out (again) on my great adventure to fulfill my life’s purpose. I have recently defined and refined my Life Purpose (I described it all in this article and this article for LivingNow magazine).
If you were to go and read these articles, you would see that I was extremely circumspect about exactly what business i am in. That was because I had just written the article in a big hurry (the editor perversely likes them better that way) and I didn’t want to say something and then change my mind or radically refine my call. But anyway that was a month or two ago now and I am pretty certain that my decision has stuck and will continue to do so. The business I am in (as distinct from my life purpose) is Media Publishing. Not just writing. Not just music. Not just meditation and Zen/Tao stuff. Not just running LivingNow’s website and otherwise doing LivingNow stuff. The business I am in is Media Publishing.
Everything I do revolves around this, and if I feel that I am straying I just need to ask myself is what I am doing about “Media Publishing” and if the answer is yes then I am cool, if it is no I have to draw the line and get back on track.
So that makes running a blog pretty cool.
And now it is time to sell something. I was just sitting here typing all this nazel gazing crap out and I realised I really need to start selling stuff.
But I am going on holiday for five weeks. Bugger.
Ok, so here’s what I am going to do. I have just finished a seven track “collection of songs” (can’t just say CD anymore dammit) and I have a two track project in the mail too. And I am about to start releasing written products for sale. But all of this is going to have to wait until I get back from Europe. So meanwhile…
I am going to do a little marketing exercise. I am going to write and upload to the web one very useful piece of writing. A gift to the world. And I am going to email it everyone I know and otherwise give it a little nudge before I leave and then see if it spreads over the internet and to what extent while I am gone.
Surely if I can come up with one really useful info-gift to the world it will get some eyeballs. Or not? Let’s find out. I can’t lose really, if it does well, then I can get back from my holiday and start selling stuff leveraging off the momentum the ‘gift’ has provided me, if it doesn’t spread, then I can re-package it and acticely sell it in a more pro-active manner.
Ok, I’ll be right back, gotta go write this thang…
I get a kick out of checking out all the wacky business ideas that the author of Uncommon Business Blog unearths for our pleasure. Actually it’s quite addictive, and when there isn’t anything new there when I check, I get pretty low, maybe there is some kind of weird connection between cool business ideas and feel-good chemical reactions in the brain? I reckon I might be, like, onto something there man…
Anyway, three of my favourite posts at this simple little spot of bloggy goodness are:
actually it looks great, okay is the name of the cd (i think) and it (the blog) is kind of the same idea as I have with this here blog, to openly share the how’s of marketing music. in his case his music, in mine, my music (and writing). I mean that’s not all this is going to be about, but it is part of it.
check it out. nice. haven’t heard the music yet. unfortunately no time for such luxury today. work calleth and off to Europe for five weeks next week, so things will probably be a bit slow for a while yet…
This really loses people when I bring it up at parties. Their eyes glaze over and next thing you know, I am left trying to convince my glass of flat warm cola that it really is a fascinating and colourful artform.
Oh well.
I am right now about to embark on what I hope will be the most successful spree of marketing I have ever done. I’d explain in words, but truthfully I know parts of the picture, because it all about experimentation and testing (that’s part of what is so dynamic and exciting about marketing). I can say that I know that it involves my meditation/philosphy passions with my music/writing passions, and that I find it challenging to see how to peice these together. For example, some of my songs are about feeling totally fucked up and miserable but my meditation has brought me incredible levels of happiness and peace, and I am going to help people to experience that. “From a marketing perspective” as people everyday say in corporate offices around the world, this is interesting because it is essentially a kind of contradiction.
And then there is my passion for treating each other with love and respect, but I write horror stories, complete with blood, guts and despicable examples of human depravity at it’s worst.
Oh well, I know I’ll figure it out as I go, perhaps by blathering on at length about Yin and Yang, and about the need to contemplate with close scrutiny the fact of our mortality and the often brutal nature of sickness, injury and the processes of death (in order to liberate ourselves from Fear).
Here’s a guy who is doing a great job of marketing two similar streams of self-expression: the personal development/spirituality field and that of popular music. I haven’t heard the music yet but I. love. the. marketing. angle.
