February 24, 2005
Recycling and combining marketing genius
A bit of backgrounder. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind has been on the movie channels a great deal lately. Which causes me to have Chuck Barris on the brain. Which got me to to thinking…Are you reading anything new here? Probably not. These ideas are tried (and maybe tired). None is unique. Some are tweaks. Some are re-combinations. There can be a great deal of power, however, in re-combinations. Good borrowing and great stealing and what not.
There are likely thousands of people thinking exactly the same thing you are thinking, and millions of people thinking along the same lines. The genius is in beating everyone else to the punch. Or taking a good idea and making it better. Feel free to make any of these better. Please.
Which brings me to my fleeting thought on American Idol. Whoa whoa whoa. Hold your horses. Stick with it for a second. It has a point. Well it has a couple of points. One is an identity point. The other is a recombination point. Both will have some sort of marketing context. I swear. Hear me out. You’ve got a few minutes.
Okay, American Idol. Know why Simon Cowell, the man behind American Idol, is a genius? There are a couple of reasons.
The first reason is that he is blessed with the ability to play the bad guy. He has a rude identity that he is willing to play. And he rarely, if ever, deviates from that identity. He has a consistency to his identity that companies would kill to have. And what’s more, it’s negative. He’s the bad guy. The guy people love to hate. And he can pull it off. It works well and it sells.
But the second reason--and in my opinion the real reason--he’s a genius is because he took two insanely popular constructs and managed to combine them in a way that seemed to be an entirely new idea. He knew what people wanted. He saw an opportunity, and he took it.
So what were the ridiculously popular ideas that he combined? The Gong Show (Barris on the brain) meets the karaoke bar. And then he threw in calling-in and text messaging to make it even more personal.
Genius. In this day and age of people feeling more and more connected and less and less in control, he put the control back in your hand. He let you rip the mike away. You can’t sing and I want to tell you that. He gave you the right to take part in his rude identity without any guilt. And soon, without really thinking, people wanted part of that rude identity. They wanted the ability to tell people that they're horrible, without feeling horrible about it. He knew the market and what the market wanted. And it was truly a moment of genius, that concept.
But don’t forget his genius was just a reconstruction of Chuck Barris’ genius. No not the Dating Game. The Gong Show. Stick with me here. I mean, seriously. The Gong Show. It’s part of our national lexicon. It needs no explanation. Even if you’ve never seen the show, you know what it is. Babies are born knowing what it is now. (No doubt, the American Idol gene is finding its way into the youth of tomorrow.) That was freaky cutting edge genius, though. And exploring that kind of thought requires a whole other diatribe.
Oh and I didn't forget the karaoke. Unfortunately, there is no genius in the karaoke bar. Despite all my best attempts at spin, it still seems incredibly lame.
So I guess all that I’m saying is that maybe sometimes my ideas or views will be more like Chuck Barris. Sometimes they’ll be more like Simon Cowell. I just want you to feel free to gong me at any time.
Thanks for reading. I hope that even with the American Idol comments, you’ll still choose to return.
Recycling and combining marketing genius
| | Subscribe:
RSS, Bloglines
