I bet you look good on the salesfloor
DAVE KELLEY*
School of Business, Retail and Financial Services, University of Ulster, Coleraine, County
Antrim, BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland
HEY HO, LET’S GOOGLE
It is generally accepted that the modern marketing era began in 1954. That was the year Peter
Drucker (1954, p. 35) penned the immortal words, ‘Marketing…is the whole business seen
from…the customer’s point of view’. His counterintuitive claim, admittedly, was later elaborated
by Levitt (1960), codified by Kotler (1967) and uncritically recycled by every card-carrying
management guru from Tom Peters to Gary Hamel (Crainer, 1998). But it was Peter Drucker’s
’54 statement that started the marketing ball rolling. It’s been accelerating ever since.
Marketing isn’t the only thing that began in 1954. Lord of the Rings was published, as was Lord of
the Flies. Tailfins made their first appearance on American automobiles; the first colour television
was made by RCA; the first transistor radio was sold by Texas Instruments; the first nuclear
submarine set sail; the first sub-four-minute mile was run; the first kidney transplant took place;
the first issue of Sports Illustrated appeared on newsstands; and the first Godzilla movie was released
in Japan (Epstein, 1999).
Music, too, experienced a revolution that resonates to this day. The first stirrings of rock—
primal, primitive, powerful, provocative—were making themselves felt. ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’,
‘Rock Around the Clock’ and Elvis Presley’s first single, ‘That’s Alright, Mama’ cut through the
clutter of chart-topping crooners like Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney and Nat ‘King’ Cole
(Buckley and Ellingham, 1996). The king might not have been toppled in 1954, much less
beheaded, but the succession was definitely settled when Elvis seized the crown and sceptre in
Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios (Guralnick, 1994).
To be sure, the simultaneous birth of rock music and the marketing concept is more than mere
coincidence. Despite the frequently repeated claim that marketing is a science, a technology, or
indeed a philosophy, what it really is is a massive cultural constellation akin to rock music. So
similar are they, in fact, that marketers can learn more from music’s movers and shakers than they
can from the pseudo-scientific ramblings of self-important scholars in unreadable academic
journals (Blackwell and Stephan, 2004). Their me-too textbooks aren’t much better.
ARE YOU EVER READY TO ROCK?
Marketing, admittedly, hardly qualifies as the new rock ’n’ roll, let alone the next big thing.
However, there are at least seven significant parallels between the two ostensibly antithetical
* Corresponding author: Email: dd.kelley@ulster.ac.uk
JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC MARKETING 15 53–63 (FEBRUARY 2007)
Journal of Strategic Marketing ISSN 0965–254X print/ISSN 1466–4488 online # 2007 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09652540601130013
cultural institutions. The first of these is Morality. Just as rock has always had a raffish, rebellious
side—moral panics have been part and parcel of popular music since Bill Haley had them rioting
in the aisles, implausible though this now seems—so, too, marketing has continually been beset
by moral censure. From the 1950s’ anxieties about ‘hidden persuaders’ to contemporary
contentions that marketing causes obesity, anorexia, shopaholism and just about every awful
ailment out there (to say nothing of global warming, environmental degradation, third world
poverty and the obliteration of childhood innocence), our field has always been regarded as a bit
iffy, unethical, amoral. It’s the edgy image, one suspects, that attracts many people to our
profession in the first place.
The second similarity is Ubiquity. Back in 1954, rock music was a minority interest. Its rioting
aficionados were dismissed as juvenile delinquents by their elders and betters. That was part of
rock’s appeal. Today, of course, rock ’n’ roll is everywhere and everyone’s a headbanger, CEOs
included. Tony Blair’s Stratocaster, Bill Clinton’s saxophone, Richard Branson’s hippiesque
hairstyle and Paul Allen’s Experience Music Center say it all. Marketing, too, has succumbed to
middle-aged spread. What was once a radically different business outlook—one that stood out
from the corporate crowd—is increasingly omnipresent. Everybody’s read the standard textbooks,
attended the identikit courses, acquired the indistinguishable qualifications and applied the cliche´d
principles to their individual circumstances. The competitive advantage that marketing once
guaranteed has been diluted, denuded, destroyed. So ubiquitous has it become that the four Ps are
our three iconic chords; the seven Ss are our 12-bar blues; SWOT and PEST are our bass, lead,
drums and vocals. Marketing is the dad-rock of management.
Technology is the third corollary. As iPod enthusiasts will attest—and illegal file sharers might
confess under duress—technology is a major driving force in the development and dissemination
of popular music. CDs, cassettes, vinyl albums, shellac ’78s, to say nothing of DVDs, video,
MTV, MySpace, minidisks, radio, ringtones, jukeboxes, karaoke, YouTube, Protools and all the
rest, have given rise to countless technology-led reconfigurations. The same is true of marketing.
In the 1950s, it was Kentucky Fried Freudianism in the form of Motivation Research. In the
1960s and 70s, mainframe computers-cum-quantitative methods were the marketing bees’ knees.
In the 1980s and 90s, happy-clappy CRM systems sank their fangs into the floundering field.
Meanwhile, the current decade is chock-a-block with ‘solutions’, everything from ethnography
and neuromarketing to metrics-mania and radio frequency identification tags. We not only have
the technologies, we’re addicted to the next big technofix. Can quantum branding be far away?
A fourth factor is their History of Hybridity. Rock ’n’ roll may have erupted in 1954, when Elvis
first let rip—though that is hotly disputed—but its antecedents go way, way back (Sullivan, 2002).
Rock is a rough ’n’ ready mix of blues, country, soul, jazz, gospel and God only knows what else.
Marketing, moreover, long predates Peter Drucker’s Practice of Management. The word dates from
the 16th century; it was in widespread use by the late 19th century; and of course buying and
selling have been around since the very dawn of time (Brown, 1995). Marketing’s underpinning
ideas are borrowed from economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, geography, political
science, organisation studies, strategy, statistics and just about every subject area under the sun.
We’ll steal any idea that isn’t tied down and those that are, we’ll snaffle them anyway. We are the
tribute bands, the greatest hits, the compilation disks of thought. Now that’s what I call mashup.
Fifth, and probably foremost, is America. Although both rock music and marketing are
ubiquitous, globalised, 24/7 phenomena, they are inarguably, intrinsically, ineradicably American
(Du Noyer, 2003). Notwithstanding the recent, rapid rise in world music; despite the long and
distinguished national traditions of popular music-making; and irrespective of the USA’s periodic
susceptibility to imported acts—from The Beatles to Shakira—America remains the epicentre of
54 KELLEY
rock. Breaking America is ambitious bands’ ultimate aspiration; Austin’s SXSWfestival is the shop
window of choice; and the cover of Rolling Stone still counts for a very great deal. Marketing is no
different. The leading marketing gurus, the principal marketing journals, the most influential
marketing concepts, the most exuberant marketing practices, and by far the biggest brand
names—Microsoft, McDonald’s, Marlboro etc.—come wrapped in the star spangled banner. It’s
not called the land of the free gift and home of the brand for nothing (Brown, 2003). Yes, there
are local marketing traditions, such as the Scandinavian school of services or Britain’s advertising
acumen, but these too have been rapidly assimilated into America’s marketing melting pot and
sold back to the original provider.
The sixth factor is Fad-led Fragmentation. One of the most striking things about the
contemporary music scene is its extreme fragmentation. The number of genres and sub-genres—
house, ambient, techno, metal, speed metal, death metal, gangsta, trip-hop, swing punk, acid
jazz—is legion (McCracken, 2006). So vast has the industry become that even the most catholic
music fan can’t keep track of what’s hot and what’s not. This is compounded by the faddish, nextbig-
thing, here-today-gone-tomorrow character of the industry. Of course, one-hit-wonders
have always been around, but the spin cycle of new acts is getting faster and faster. Marketing,
too, is irredeemably faddish, as is business and management generally (Furnham, 2004). The
bookshops, trade magazines, conference programmes and short course circuits are chock-a-block
with breakthrough ideas, knock-em-dead concepts and stop-me-and-buy-one bromides. For
every CRM or Six Sigma there’s a herd of purple cows, dancing elephants or big fish eaters.
Marketing not only has more subfields than Grammy categories (104 and counting), but the left
brain doesn’t know what the right brain’s doing.
Last but not least is Retro. Despite its unending search for the next big thing, the music biz is in
the throes of a retrorgiastic retroverhaul. In addition to the Live8 extravaganza, which recreated
the atmosphere if not the impact of Live Aid, and the recent wave of neo-rave, the music industry
is moving to the retrotastic beat of Bruce Springsteen (sings Pete Seeger), Rod Stewart (aping Rat
Pack crooners of yore), Elton John (reprising his Captain Fantastic 70s heyday) and U2 (the
greatest U2 tribute band in the world), among many others. The hottest new acts, at the time of
writing, are The Pipettes and The Puppini Sisters, a Ronettes-style girl group and Andrews Sisters
replica respectively. Actually, the only thing that is more retro-orientated than rock is marketing
(Brown, 2001). The merest glance across the contemporary marketing landscape reveals that retro
is all around. Retro autos are two-a-penny, as are retro computers, retro cameras, retro
cornflakes, retro chinos, retro casinos, retro couches, retro coffee-makers, retro cellphones, retro
cyberspaces, such as FriendsReunited. Conceptually, too, retro is rampant, whether it be the
recent revival of interest in the scholarly writings of Wroe Alderson, or the renewed search for a
general theory of marketing, or the intellectual equivalent of mutton-dressed-as-lamb, latter-day
managerial fads like viral, guerrilla and word-of-mouse marketing. Yestermarketing, in short, is
rampant. Nostalgia is back. Retromania rocks!
ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WAL-MART
There are, no doubt, many other intriguing parallels between rock ’n’ marketing.1 Nevertheless,
Morality, Ubiquity, Technology, Hybridity, America, Fragmentation and Retro (or MUTHAF****R
for short) are enough to be getting along with. The future will presumably see further fascinating
developments, not least the narrowing of the gap between both cultural forms. The gap is already
narrow insofar as corporate sponsorship of tours and festivals is already well established (O2,
Orange, Tennent’s, T-Mobile, Innocent and so forth), as are closed-door corporate gigs for
I BET YOU LOOK GOOD ON THE SALESFLOOR 55
serried ranks of Microserfs, Virginmates, Tescoprolites, Amazononentities and what-have-you
(Sherwin, 2006). Television advertisement and movie soundtracks are one of the foremost means
of breaking artists/novelty acts nowadays (e.g., Moby, Jack Johnson, Flat Eric, Crazy Frog) and it
is increasingly recognised that new albums act as loss leaders for lucrative live shows, ringtone sales
and high-margin tie-in merchandise (Sinclair, 2006). Rap music lyrics, moreover, are so replete
with brandname-dropping that Agenda Inc, a San Francisco-based marketing consultancy,
maintains an American Brandstand chart which tracks mentions of luxury products in the US Top
Twenty. Mercedes was the most mentioned brand in 2005, Nike was number 2, with Cadillac
slipping to 3 (from 2 in 2004). Rumours of product placement payola abound, but the official line
is that rappers mention luxury brands for poetic rather than profitic purposes.
Indeed, with their dedicated record labels, fashion collections, sneaker ranges, restaurant
franchises and so forth, rapperpreneurs like Sean Combs, 50 Cent and Jay-Z represent the leading
edge of what’s happenin’ at the music/marketing interface. But it won’t be too long before
further mergers, joint ventures and band/brand strategic alliances are forged: ZZ Topshop,
Radiohead and Shoulders, Justin Timberland, Liberty X-box, Ice T-Mobile, Paul Wella, Tori
Amex, Heinz Ferdinand, Fatboy Slimfast, Simply Red Bull, Racing Green Day, Iron
Maidenform, Stevie Wonderbra, Starbucks Fizz, Old Spice Girls, Shakira ’n’ Vac, Aerosmith
& Wesson, Red Hot Chili Pepsis, Nike and Tina Turner…
The opportunities, clearly, are endless. So, too, are the threats, not least in the legal arena.
Who, for example, owns the name Pink? The suave shirt-maker of repute or the brassy, postpunk
belter who purports to be just like Madonna, only better? What about Beck’s Bier? CAT
Stevens? Fiona Apple? Glenn Miller? Willie Dixon’s? Rob Halford’s? Staples Singers? Billie
Holiday Inn? Fats Domino’s Pizza? John Hiatt Hotels? Robert Cray Computers? Notorious Big
Mac? Corrine Bailey’s Rae? Eagles Star Insurance? The W.H. Smiths? Where does Maxwell
House fit into the picture? A legal battle royal, surely, is looming between O2 and U2.
Given the potentially ruinous possibility of band/brand strife, a degree of give-and-take will
prove necessary. Otherwise, the combatants will circle the wagons and two Cold War-like blocs
will emerge, daggers drawn. Instead of potentially fruitful alliances like Coldplaystation, Shredded
Wheatus, Arcade Firestone, Kate Bushmills or the General Electric Light Orchestra, there’ll be
inbred coalitions of commercial and cultural contenders, respectively. On one side, alliances along
the lines of Standard Lifesavers, Armani & Hammer, Palmolive Garden, Ferrari Bacardi and
Domestos Perignon. On the other side, there’ll be Kayne Westlife, Brian Wilson Pickett, Elton
John Mellencamp, Iggy Pop Will Eat Itself, Grant Lee Buffalo Tom Petty and Boy George
Michael Jackson Browne.
Rather than resort to gloomy prognostication, a regrettable relic of the longstanding hostility
between the musical and marketing mindsets, it is better to accept the new A&R meets M&A
reality; specifically, that marketers have much to learn from musicians and should look to the
music industry for inspiration (Blackwell and Stephan, 2004). Many of the most creative
marketers in the world—Madonna, 50 Cent, P. Diddy, Eminem, The Rolling Stones—make
their bucks in the mosh pits du monde. Given the ferocious competition in the music industry;
given its fast-moving, here-today-gone-tomorrow mindset; given that just about every business is
in show business nowadays; given that the music biz has not, by and large, embraced the
mainstream, textbook, seen-one-seen-em-all marketing principles that prevail elsewhere, it is
arguable that rock music provides an apt marketing paradigm for our time, a paradigm that is not
based on established principles or existing technology, much less conventional wisdom or
marketing research. It relies rather on the rock ’n’ roll spirit of rebellion, anarchy, enthusiasm,
iconoclasm, boundless self-belief and give-it-a-go chutzpah.
56 KELLEY
By-the-book marketing no longer works, because everyone has read the book and can follow
the instructions. It’s time to rip it up and start again. Rip-it-up is the essence of rock.
DA DO RON RONSEAL
In this regard, three contrasting rock brands can help shed light on the secret of musical success.
Madonna, Van Morrison and the Arctic Monkeys are as eclectic a bunch as can be imagined:
one’s an allegedly talentless celebrity, another’s the acme of traditional musicianship, and the
third’s a recent arrival on the rock ’n’ roll escalator. Together, however, they convey a sense of
what can be tentatively termed the nu¨ marketing paradigm.
Madgevertising
Whatever else is said about her—and a lot is said about her—Madonna is one of the biggest stars
in the galaxy of rock (Taraborrelli, 2002). She has had more hit singles than anyone bar Elvis, who
died on her nineteenth birthday. An omen, she maintains. It certainly stimulated her initial
attempts at emulation, despite a manifest lack of musical ability. A wannabe dancer, with
considerable potential, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone moved to New York in July 1978,
where she did what was necessary to make a living on the margins of showbusiness (waitressing,
scamming, hustling, hanging out, porno photosessions, counter clerking at Dunkin Donuts). Her
big break came in 1982, when she charmed Seymour Stein, the boss of Sire Records, into
releasing her first single ‘Everybody’, which was an immediate dancefloor sensation. ‘Holiday’,
‘Burning Up’ and ‘Lucky Star’ quickly followed, as did her best-selling eponymous album.
However, it was her scandalous performance of ‘Like a Virgin’ on the 1984 MTV Awards Show
which transported the writhing whippersnapper to the next level, when the first wave of
Madonnamania really kicked in. Her reputation was cemented by ‘Material World’s’ landmark
video, a virtuoso pastiche of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and sealed by the furore that surrounded
‘Like a Prayer’, which achieved the remarkable double of offending both the Catholic Church
and her (short-lived) sponsor, Pepsi Cola, while topping the charts.
Madonna kept the pot boiling with the Blonde ‘pointy bra’ Ambition tour, then allowed it to
boil over with the wilfully explicit Sex book, a series of sub-par performances in quasi-porn
movies, a smattering of offensive television appearances on American chat shows and a poorly
received album of uninspiring songs, Erotica. Undeterred, if somewhat chastened, Madonna
paused for breath, rethought her marketing strategy and bounced back with a commanding
performance in Evita, as well as a critically acclaimed album, Ray of Light, and a series of I’ll-showem
singles, ‘Beautiful Stranger’ and ‘American Pie’ in particular. The Drowned World tour of
2001 confirmed her status as one of the world’s top-grossing acts and, having forced her way back
to the top, Madonna has not only maintained the momentum with a series of hit singles, theatrical
appearances and feature-length documentaries, but she’s reclaimed her position at the pinnacle of
the profession with a show-stopping set at Live8, a world-wide Number 1, ‘Hung Up’, and the
rapturously received retro album, Confessions on a Dance Floor.
Musical achievements aside, Madonna is best known for her career-long role as a sexual,
religious and political provocateur—a raunchy thorn in society’s side—as well as her incessant
mutability. Femme fatale, foster parent, material girl, earth mother, hippie chick, gay icon, lesbian
lover, professional virgin, sexual deviant, disco dancer, domestic goddess, spiritual spokesperson,
English aristocrat, Mockney geezer, demanding diva, tough-love supermom, kid-lit author,
muscle-bound hard-body and many, many more.
I BET YOU LOOK GOOD ON THE SALESFLOOR 57
What she really is, of course, is a marketing genius. If, as Germaine Greer observes, ‘the true art
form of our time isn’t music or poetry, it’s marketing’, then Madonna is the pre-eminent artist of
the 21st century. She has a remarkable ability to keep the media spotlight trained on her every
move and is acutely aware of how headlines contribute to the bottom line. She is a music business
mogul with her own record label, a production company and diverse subsidiaries devoted to
publishing, multi-media, merchandising and similar ancillaries.2 She is a hands-on executive, who
is famously frugal with her estimated personal fortune of $K billion. She is also infamously
perfectionist, exceptionally litigious and an extremely tough negotiator. She maximises her
commercial potential (ads for BMW, H&M, Gap and Motorola among others, as well as a kiddie
clothing line) while taking steps to avoid overexposure (in terms of available product, not
ongoing PR). Her stage show ticket prices are the highest in the industry. It is estimated that the
Confessions tour of 2006 earned a record $195 million worldwide. She has parleyed what most
agree is a modest musical talent into one of the longest and most successful careers in show
business, a career that shows no sign of slackening. The King may be unassailable, but the Queen
of Pop isn’t far behind.
No guru, no method, no marketer
Van Morrison is a singer-songwriter of singular renown. Variously known as Van the Man, the
Belfast Cowboy and the Grumpiest Man in Showbusiness, he is one of the most highly regarded
and hardest working musicians on the circuit (Rogan, 2005). Brought up in the Ulster Protestant
heartland of East Belfast, where he was steeped in the blues thanks to his father’s extensive record
collection, George Ivan Morrison left school at 15 and, while keeping body and soul together
with a series of dead-end jobs, he acquired his musical chops in the then-burgeoning Irish
showband scene.3 The early 1960s, however, ushered in the British Beat Boom and Van boomed
with the best of them. He formed a raucous rhythm and blues band—Them—whose residency at
Belfast’s Maritime Hotel was the stuff of live-gig legend. Inevitably, albeit in keeping with rock
’n’ roll cliche´, the band was too-fast-to-live, too-young-to-die. It barnstormed the UK charts
with several hit singles, most notably ‘Gloria’, ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’ and ‘Here Comes the
Night’, only to disintegrate in a welter of acrimonious intra-band rows and high-velocity
personnel changes.
Never in doubt about his musical abilities, Van the Man repaired to New York, where he
recorded the signature late-1960s album Astral Weeks, which proved to be the first in a sequence
of seminal solo recordings, such as Moondance, Tupelo Honey, St Dominic’s Preview and a live album
of staggering brilliance, It’s Too Late to Stop Now. This remarkable burst of creativity was followed
by a fallow period of introspective self-discovery and attempts to get in touch with the spiritual
wellsprings of his musical muse. After a three-year hiatus, Morrison returned to form with
Wavelength, Into the Music, Enlightenment and Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, which were quickly
eclipsed by a continuous string of late-1980s classics including Irish Heartbeat, Avalon Sunset and
the inevitable best-selling Best Of. Since the early 1990s, Van the Man has been happily
ensconced in Dublin, secure in his status as a Hall of Fame-inducted rockristocrat and producing
an album a year, or thereabouts. As a rule, these excursions alternate between Morrison’s musical
roots—skiffle, blues, country, gospel, et al—and variations on his trademark, Celtic-inflected
template, a.k.a. Caledonian Soul.
George Ivan Morrison’s status as a living musical legend is unchallenged and unchallengeable.
Equally unchallenged is his reputation for mind-bogglingly boorish behaviour. Almost everyone
who has worked for or with Van Morrison tells tales of his irascible antics. Van is the Man who
58 KELLEY
thinks nothing of berating audiences for their abyssal ignorance or sullenly stalking off-stage in
high dudgeon. Van is the Man who rudely refused to attend his induction into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame and threatened legal action against Ulster admirers who wanted to adorn his
childhood home with a Van-lived-here commemorative plaque. Van is the Man who makes no
bones about his absolute abhorrence of the media’s malevolent myrmidons—physical assaults are
alleged—and as for record company suits, starmakers and A&Rseholes, he has nothing but
contempt for their contrived machinations. Van, remember, is the Man who has written more
songs about the iniquities of the music business than he has about moving on up along the ancient
avenue to the higher ground where the back street jelly roll is in the garden wet with rain on
golden autumn days like this when the healing has begun, begun, begun, begun, begun, begun,
begun. And that’s saying something.
Set against this inordinate asperity, Van Morrison is blessed with a couple of commendably
redeeming features. Yes, he may have no time for ignorant audiences or oily marketing types or
his copycat competitors in the singer-songwriter segment. However, his musical ability is
astonishing. Unlike many recording artists of the Beat Boom generation, he is not reduced to
karaoking his greatest hits or performing as part of a swinging 60s retro package. Equally
astonishing is his work ethic. When he’s not in the studio, he’s out on the road with his band,
playing intimate venues and conjuring sets as the spirit moves him. Every show is different. The
band dips into a repertoire of 80–100 songs—old, new, borrowed, blues—which are improvised
upon in response to a series of surreptitious hand-signals. All too often, these signals cut the set
short or semaphore no encore—if the magic’s not there, that’s that—but on a good night, when
the musical gods are with him, Van Morrison transports his audience on a Vanlose Stairway of
song to the Elysian Fields of the Celtic sublime.
For some, not least his latest biographer (Rogan, 2005), Van Morrison embodies the worst
traits of pig-headed, pig-ignorant Ulster Protestantism (truculent, surly, brusque, uncouth, etc.).
Nevertheless, the Belfast Cowboy’s anti-customer, anti-business, anti-anything-you-got
antagonism doesn’t diminish the fact that Van the Brand is enormously popular, highly
successful, remarkably durable, and totally unique.
Mardy brand
Compared to Morrison or Madonna, the Arctic Monkeys are musical neophytes, whose career
longevity is but a blink of Morrison’s evil eye or flash of Madge’s diamante knickers (Odell,
2006). Like legions of overnight sensations, the Monkeys might not last the course, much less
hear the call of the Hall of Fame. They’ve made a good start, nonetheless. Formed in Sheffield in
2002, the Arctic Monkeys comprise Alex Turner (vocals/guitar), Jamie Cook (lead), Matthew
Helders (drums) and Andy Nicholson (bass, replaced by Nick O’Malley in 2006). They got
together as schoolchums, when near-neighbours Turner and Cook received guitars for Christmas
and promptly decided, in classic rock band manner, that they’d got what it takes. A series of early
gigs at a local pub, The Grapes, attracted the attention of Jon ‘the Reverend’ McClure, a local
muso who knew his way round the business and who lent his support to the fledgling act.
Inevitably, their first demo CDs were recorded on the cheap. So cheap, in fact, that they were
given away to fans at the end of every show. This act of generosity was to have momentous
consequences, however, because fans ripped and burned the songs and circulated them to their
friends via file-sharing networks. Unbeknown to the band themselves, who played no part in the
peer-to-peer process, the Monkeys quickly built up an impressive virtual fanbase. Better yet, this
I BET YOU LOOK GOOD ON THE SALESFLOOR 59
build-up fortuitously coincided with the rise of MySpace and similar social networking websites,
which amplified and intensified the buzz surrounding the band.
Equally inevitably, the blowhards of A&R quickly picked up on incipient Monkey mania. But
the major labels’ ideas for moulding and marketing the band didn’t meet with the members’
approval, let alone that of their manager, Geoff Barradale. They rejected the majors’ advances and
eventually signed with Domino Records, a small independent label that made its mark with indie
success story Franz Ferdinand and, more importantly, shared the Monkeys’ musical vision. The
first single, ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’, was released on 17 October 2005 and,
thanks to the support of the digitudes, it went straight to Number 1 in the UK, effortlessly
trumping McFly and Robbie Williams, whose records were released on the same day. A second
single, ‘When the Sun Goes Down’, repeated the same chart-topping trick, as did the ensuing
album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, which became the fastest-selling debut in
UK chart history. The tie-in tour, unsurprisingly, sold out in an instant. Such was the demand for
tickets that prices quickly escalated to a level where touts, scalpers and eBay extortionists thought
it was their birthday and Christmas combined.
Having demonstrated a new net-led model of making it, the hotter-than-hot Arctic Monkeys
were gleefully embraced by the music business. Cover stories, photo shoots, adulatory articles,
enthusiastic endorsement by established stars and all the usual razzamatazz quickly materialised.
The band’s refusal to play by the accustomed rules of the star-making game—journalists were
ignored, television appearances were spurned, spindoctors were disdained—added considerably to
the Monkeys’ commercial cachet, as did their northern, working-class, garage-band credentials.
They represented the antithesis of meretricious, X-Factored, pre-packaged, utterly inauthentic
pop bands that increasingly cluttered the UK charts. The controversy that surrounded the band—
controversy about misogynistic lyrics, controversy about the cigarette smoker on the album
cover, controversy about their criticism of other bands, controversy over the fist fights that broke
out at their gigs, controversy over their churlish refusal to compromise—also contributed to their
irresistible appeal.4
Such was the excitement about the band that they swept the board at year-end award
ceremonies. Aside from the prestigious Mercury Music Prize, the Monkeys won both the NME’s
Best Band and Best New Band accolades, an unprecedented double triumph. The prognosis,
nevertheless, is uncertain. The second album syndrome, the crack-the-States challenge, the
departure of a founder member, the so-called ‘curse’ of the Mercury Prize, the endorsement of
prominent politicians like Gordon Brown and Ming Campbell (the kiss of death credibility-wise)
are all obstacles in the path of the ambitious band. What’s more, as alleged harbingers of the future
of MySpace-shaped music—if you can make it in MySpace, you can make it anywhere!—the
attention of the entire music industry is focused on Steel City’s contenders, which doesn’t make it
any easier. Their average age, remember, is still less than 21, young enough to be Madonna’s
children and Morrison’s grand-children. Roll over Chuck Berry, tell McCartney the news…
STAIRWAY TO HILTON
Madonna, Morrison and the Monkeys are very different musical propositions, yet in marketing
sense they exhibit several meaningful similarities. Without exception, they are consistently
controversial. Whether it be Madonna’s shock-sells strategy, Morrison’s grumpy bugger
belligerence, or the Arctic Monkeys’ contempt for music business movers and shakers, they
are constantly in hot water. Some of this may be carefully contrived (Madge), some of it may be
down to downright cantankerousness (Van), some may be an unfortunate side-effect of instant
60 KELLEY
celebrity (Monkeymania). But the fact of the matter is that it works. Controversy is the caffeine of
the cultural industries. It generates the attention, the headlines, the column inches, the water
cooler chatter, the sudden buzz surge that showbiz thrives on.
Constant change is another shared characteristic. Madonna is the foremost exponent of
reinvention, as her Greatest Hits tour of that name bears witness. Virgin, whore, matriarch,
messiah and just about every passing fashion out there are part-and-parcel of her personae array.
This repertoire of guises, however, never disguises the fact that it’s Madge behind the mask. The
costumes, choreography and accoutrements may be different, but she’s still playing herself. Van
Morrison, likewise, is constantly changing—country album, followed by skiffle, followed by
gospel, followed by Caledonian soul, etc.—yet these changes are mere variations on the basic
Morrisonian template. Cynics might call it formulaic, but for the Belfast Cowboy’s diehard fans,
the constantly changing set lists, the reworkings of standards, the sheer unpredictability of the
artist provides a compelling cavalcade of invention and convention. The Arctic Monkeys, of
course, haven’t really had time to change, line-up excepted, though their ability to respond to the
challenge of change is crucial to their long-term survival. What they do have is uncommon
curiosity value. The will-they-won’t-they element of unpredictability that’s so important to
Morrison and Madonna, and that keeps the punters coming back for more in the hope of an ‘I
was there’ moment, is central to the delicious intrigue that surrounds the Arctic Monkeys at
present. Will there be a riot at the gig tonight (as is often the case)? Will the band storm out of the
TV studios (as they’ve done in France and Italy)? Will the lads smash their instruments (as they did
on Saturday Night Live)? Will they self-destruct? Can they keep it going? Madonna and Morrison
have learned to keep it going, sustain the intrigue and maintain the mystique, albeit not without
periods of overexposure.
Overexposure is an ever-present threat in the music business, as it is in marketing, where
brands can quite quickly shift from hot to ho-hum, from to-die-for to dead-in-the-water, from
deliriously omnipotent to disastrously omnipresent. ‘How much is too much?’ is an all-important
yet all-but unanswerable question (Brown, 2003). According to Madonna, Morrison and the
Monkeys, calculated constraint is the best policy. Leave them begging for more may be a showbiz
cliche´, one that Madonna has wholeheartedly embraced from the very start of her career—no
encores, rarely tours, limited dates, short but spectacular sets—yet it works all the same. Despite
his prolific work-rate, Van Morrison plays small halls, ensures that every set is bespoke and salts
every filler-filled album with one or two bone-fide classics. The Arctic Monkeys, meanwhile,
have discovered the power of scarcity by accident, insofar as their takeoff was so swift that they
simply couldn’t keep up with demand (the pressing of the first freebie CD was limited to 1000
copies, for example). Perversely, it seems that the best way of sustaining demand is by restricting
supply. ‘Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen’ is the unsung secret of rock ’n’ marketing alike.
This scarcity-sells strategy, admittedly, runs counter to conventional marketing wisdom, which
is predicated on the notion of customer centricity, customer sovereignty, customer first, last and
always (Cialdini, 2001). Total unconditional love rather than tough unrequited love is modern
marketing’s modus operandi. Madonna, Morrison and the Monkeys don’t see things that way,
however. Pandering to the customer is not on their agenda, whether it be Madonna’s antiaudience
outbursts of the ‘fuck you, motherfuckers’ variety, Morrison’s fondness for flouncing
off-stage in high dudgeon or the Monkeys’ couldn’t-care-less attitude to fans’ adventures on
MySpace. This doesn’t mean that customers are irrelevant. Raving fans are their bread and butter,
after all. It simply means that they are moved more by their muse than their market. Customer
eccentricity rather than customer centricity is the guiding principle. Customers are part of the
creative artists’ cosmos, but not a pre-eminent part.
I BET YOU LOOK GOOD ON THE SALESFLOOR 61
HIGHWAY TO DELL
The nu¨-marketing paradigm, as practised by Madonna, Van Morrison and the Arctic Monkeys, is
predicated on controversy, changeability, curiosity, constricted supply and customer disorientation.
What it really boils down to is Celticity. The combination of intransigence,
belligerence, restless creativity, maddening mutability and disarming charm is quintessentially
Celtic. If, as Brown (2006) contends, Celtic marketing is wild, free, tempestuous, imaginative,
spiritual and spontaneous, then our 3Ms represent the acme of Celtic marketing. Rock ’n’ roll
ain’t noise pollution. It’s the future of marketing. Peter Drucker has left the building. The
customer is always right on. I bet you look good on the salesfloor.
NOTES
1 At the risk of attracting the ire of vinyl-loving anoraks with alphabetised record collections, to
say nothing of middle-aged teenage rebels with leather jackets and receding hairlines, the
following questions must be addressed by those who subscribe to the music-equals-marketing
metaphor: Are structural equation models the equivalent of progressive rock and, if so, is anybody
listening? To what extent are neo-Marxist critical theorists a marketing analogue of modern jazz
combos, playing esoteric atonal music with their backs to the audience? If Phil Kotler is the Bob
Dylan of our field, who is its Jerry Lee Lewis? (Answers on a postcard.)
2 Maverick Records was founded by Madonna and her then manager Freddy DeMann in 1991.
Its signings include Alanis Morissette, The Prodigy and Muse. A legal battle broke out with
Warner Brothers in 2004, which resulted in Warners acquiring Madonna’s label as a wholly
owned subsidiary.
3 Irish showbands were the tribute acts of their day, though their sets usually included comedy/
cabaret components (see Smith, 2005).
4 Mark E. Smith, former leader of The Fall and motor-mouth commentator on musical matters,
has recently stated that rather than aspire to rock music superstardom, the Arctic Monkeys are
better suited to careers in marketing. Specifically, running a fish ’n’ chip shop in Doncaster!
REFERENCES
Blackwell, R. and Stephan, T. (2004) Brands that Rock, New York: John Wiley.
Brown, S. (1995) Postmodern Marketing, London: Routledge.
Brown, S. (2001) Marketing—The Retro Revolution, London: Sage.
Brown, S. (2003) Free Gift Inside!!, Oxford: Capstone.
Brown, S. (2006) Tiocfaidh a´r La´: introduction to the special issue, Journal of Strategic Marketing, 14(1), 1–9.
Buckley, J. and Ellingham, M. (eds) (1996) Rock: The Rough Guide, London: Rough Guides.
Cialdini, R.B. (2001) Influence: Science and Practice, Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Crainer, S. (1998) The Ultimate Business Guru Book, Oxford: Capstone.
Drucker, P. (1954) The Practice of Management, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Du Noyer, P. (ed.) (2003) The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, London: Flame Tree.
Epstein, D. (1999) Twentieth Century Pop Culture, London: Carlton Books.
Furnham, A. (2004) Management and Myths: Challenging Business Fads, Fallacies and Fashions, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Guralnick, P. (1994) Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, London: Little, Brown.
Kotler, P. (1967) Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning and Control, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
62 KELLEY
Levitt, T. (1960) Marketing myopia. Harvard Business Review 38(4), 45–56.
McCracken, G. (2006) Flock and Flow: Predicting and Managing Change in a Dynamic Marketplace,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Odell, M. (2006) The eye of the storm. Q Magazine, July, 94–100.
Rogan, J. (2005) Van Morrison: No Surrender, London: Secker & Warburg.
Sherwin, A. (2006) Sell-out gig for Ben & Jerry’s. The Times, 29 July, 60.
Sinclair, D. (2006) Bought the t-shirt?. The Independent, 25 August, 12–13.
Smith, G. (2005) Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music, Cork: Cork University Press.
Sullivan, R. (ed.) (2002) Rock & Roll at 50, New York: Life Books.
Taraborrelli, J.R. (2002) Madonna: An Intimate Biography, London: Pan.
I BET YOU LOOK GOOD ON THE SALESFLOOR 63
DAVE KELLEY*
School of Business, Retail and Financial Services, University of Ulster, Coleraine, County
Antrim, BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland
HEY HO, LET’S GOOGLE
It is generally accepted that the modern marketing era began in 1954. That was the year Peter
Drucker (1954, p. 35) penned the immortal words, ‘Marketing…is the whole business seen
from…the customer’s point of view’. His counterintuitive claim, admittedly, was later elaborated
by Levitt (1960), codified by Kotler (1967) and uncritically recycled by every card-carrying
management guru from Tom Peters to Gary Hamel (Crainer, 1998). But it was Peter Drucker’s
’54 statement that started the marketing ball rolling. It’s been accelerating ever since.
Marketing isn’t the only thing that began in 1954. Lord of the Rings was published, as was Lord of
the Flies. Tailfins made their first appearance on American automobiles; the first colour television
was made by RCA; the first transistor radio was sold by Texas Instruments; the first nuclear
submarine set sail; the first sub-four-minute mile was run; the first kidney transplant took place;
the first issue of Sports Illustrated appeared on newsstands; and the first Godzilla movie was released
in Japan (Epstein, 1999).
Music, too, experienced a revolution that resonates to this day. The first stirrings of rock—
primal, primitive, powerful, provocative—were making themselves felt. ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’,
‘Rock Around the Clock’ and Elvis Presley’s first single, ‘That’s Alright, Mama’ cut through the
clutter of chart-topping crooners like Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney and Nat ‘King’ Cole
(Buckley and Ellingham, 1996). The king might not have been toppled in 1954, much less
beheaded, but the succession was definitely settled when Elvis seized the crown and sceptre in
Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios (Guralnick, 1994).
To be sure, the simultaneous birth of rock music and the marketing concept is more than mere
coincidence. Despite the frequently repeated claim that marketing is a science, a technology, or
indeed a philosophy, what it really is is a massive cultural constellation akin to rock music. So
similar are they, in fact, that marketers can learn more from music’s movers and shakers than they
can from the pseudo-scientific ramblings of self-important scholars in unreadable academic
journals (Blackwell and Stephan, 2004). Their me-too textbooks aren’t much better.
ARE YOU EVER READY TO ROCK?
Marketing, admittedly, hardly qualifies as the new rock ’n’ roll, let alone the next big thing.
However, there are at least seven significant parallels between the two ostensibly antithetical
* Corresponding author: Email: dd.kelley@ulster.ac.uk
JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC MARKETING 15 53–63 (FEBRUARY 2007)
Journal of Strategic Marketing ISSN 0965–254X print/ISSN 1466–4488 online # 2007 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09652540601130013
cultural institutions. The first of these is Morality. Just as rock has always had a raffish, rebellious
side—moral panics have been part and parcel of popular music since Bill Haley had them rioting
in the aisles, implausible though this now seems—so, too, marketing has continually been beset
by moral censure. From the 1950s’ anxieties about ‘hidden persuaders’ to contemporary
contentions that marketing causes obesity, anorexia, shopaholism and just about every awful
ailment out there (to say nothing of global warming, environmental degradation, third world
poverty and the obliteration of childhood innocence), our field has always been regarded as a bit
iffy, unethical, amoral. It’s the edgy image, one suspects, that attracts many people to our
profession in the first place.
The second similarity is Ubiquity. Back in 1954, rock music was a minority interest. Its rioting
aficionados were dismissed as juvenile delinquents by their elders and betters. That was part of
rock’s appeal. Today, of course, rock ’n’ roll is everywhere and everyone’s a headbanger, CEOs
included. Tony Blair’s Stratocaster, Bill Clinton’s saxophone, Richard Branson’s hippiesque
hairstyle and Paul Allen’s Experience Music Center say it all. Marketing, too, has succumbed to
middle-aged spread. What was once a radically different business outlook—one that stood out
from the corporate crowd—is increasingly omnipresent. Everybody’s read the standard textbooks,
attended the identikit courses, acquired the indistinguishable qualifications and applied the cliche´d
principles to their individual circumstances. The competitive advantage that marketing once
guaranteed has been diluted, denuded, destroyed. So ubiquitous has it become that the four Ps are
our three iconic chords; the seven Ss are our 12-bar blues; SWOT and PEST are our bass, lead,
drums and vocals. Marketing is the dad-rock of management.
Technology is the third corollary. As iPod enthusiasts will attest—and illegal file sharers might
confess under duress—technology is a major driving force in the development and dissemination
of popular music. CDs, cassettes, vinyl albums, shellac ’78s, to say nothing of DVDs, video,
MTV, MySpace, minidisks, radio, ringtones, jukeboxes, karaoke, YouTube, Protools and all the
rest, have given rise to countless technology-led reconfigurations. The same is true of marketing.
In the 1950s, it was Kentucky Fried Freudianism in the form of Motivation Research. In the
1960s and 70s, mainframe computers-cum-quantitative methods were the marketing bees’ knees.
In the 1980s and 90s, happy-clappy CRM systems sank their fangs into the floundering field.
Meanwhile, the current decade is chock-a-block with ‘solutions’, everything from ethnography
and neuromarketing to metrics-mania and radio frequency identification tags. We not only have
the technologies, we’re addicted to the next big technofix. Can quantum branding be far away?
A fourth factor is their History of Hybridity. Rock ’n’ roll may have erupted in 1954, when Elvis
first let rip—though that is hotly disputed—but its antecedents go way, way back (Sullivan, 2002).
Rock is a rough ’n’ ready mix of blues, country, soul, jazz, gospel and God only knows what else.
Marketing, moreover, long predates Peter Drucker’s Practice of Management. The word dates from
the 16th century; it was in widespread use by the late 19th century; and of course buying and
selling have been around since the very dawn of time (Brown, 1995). Marketing’s underpinning
ideas are borrowed from economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, geography, political
science, organisation studies, strategy, statistics and just about every subject area under the sun.
We’ll steal any idea that isn’t tied down and those that are, we’ll snaffle them anyway. We are the
tribute bands, the greatest hits, the compilation disks of thought. Now that’s what I call mashup.
Fifth, and probably foremost, is America. Although both rock music and marketing are
ubiquitous, globalised, 24/7 phenomena, they are inarguably, intrinsically, ineradicably American
(Du Noyer, 2003). Notwithstanding the recent, rapid rise in world music; despite the long and
distinguished national traditions of popular music-making; and irrespective of the USA’s periodic
susceptibility to imported acts—from The Beatles to Shakira—America remains the epicentre of
54 KELLEY
rock. Breaking America is ambitious bands’ ultimate aspiration; Austin’s SXSWfestival is the shop
window of choice; and the cover of Rolling Stone still counts for a very great deal. Marketing is no
different. The leading marketing gurus, the principal marketing journals, the most influential
marketing concepts, the most exuberant marketing practices, and by far the biggest brand
names—Microsoft, McDonald’s, Marlboro etc.—come wrapped in the star spangled banner. It’s
not called the land of the free gift and home of the brand for nothing (Brown, 2003). Yes, there
are local marketing traditions, such as the Scandinavian school of services or Britain’s advertising
acumen, but these too have been rapidly assimilated into America’s marketing melting pot and
sold back to the original provider.
The sixth factor is Fad-led Fragmentation. One of the most striking things about the
contemporary music scene is its extreme fragmentation. The number of genres and sub-genres—
house, ambient, techno, metal, speed metal, death metal, gangsta, trip-hop, swing punk, acid
jazz—is legion (McCracken, 2006). So vast has the industry become that even the most catholic
music fan can’t keep track of what’s hot and what’s not. This is compounded by the faddish, nextbig-
thing, here-today-gone-tomorrow character of the industry. Of course, one-hit-wonders
have always been around, but the spin cycle of new acts is getting faster and faster. Marketing,
too, is irredeemably faddish, as is business and management generally (Furnham, 2004). The
bookshops, trade magazines, conference programmes and short course circuits are chock-a-block
with breakthrough ideas, knock-em-dead concepts and stop-me-and-buy-one bromides. For
every CRM or Six Sigma there’s a herd of purple cows, dancing elephants or big fish eaters.
Marketing not only has more subfields than Grammy categories (104 and counting), but the left
brain doesn’t know what the right brain’s doing.
Last but not least is Retro. Despite its unending search for the next big thing, the music biz is in
the throes of a retrorgiastic retroverhaul. In addition to the Live8 extravaganza, which recreated
the atmosphere if not the impact of Live Aid, and the recent wave of neo-rave, the music industry
is moving to the retrotastic beat of Bruce Springsteen (sings Pete Seeger), Rod Stewart (aping Rat
Pack crooners of yore), Elton John (reprising his Captain Fantastic 70s heyday) and U2 (the
greatest U2 tribute band in the world), among many others. The hottest new acts, at the time of
writing, are The Pipettes and The Puppini Sisters, a Ronettes-style girl group and Andrews Sisters
replica respectively. Actually, the only thing that is more retro-orientated than rock is marketing
(Brown, 2001). The merest glance across the contemporary marketing landscape reveals that retro
is all around. Retro autos are two-a-penny, as are retro computers, retro cameras, retro
cornflakes, retro chinos, retro casinos, retro couches, retro coffee-makers, retro cellphones, retro
cyberspaces, such as FriendsReunited. Conceptually, too, retro is rampant, whether it be the
recent revival of interest in the scholarly writings of Wroe Alderson, or the renewed search for a
general theory of marketing, or the intellectual equivalent of mutton-dressed-as-lamb, latter-day
managerial fads like viral, guerrilla and word-of-mouse marketing. Yestermarketing, in short, is
rampant. Nostalgia is back. Retromania rocks!
ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WAL-MART
There are, no doubt, many other intriguing parallels between rock ’n’ marketing.1 Nevertheless,
Morality, Ubiquity, Technology, Hybridity, America, Fragmentation and Retro (or MUTHAF****R
for short) are enough to be getting along with. The future will presumably see further fascinating
developments, not least the narrowing of the gap between both cultural forms. The gap is already
narrow insofar as corporate sponsorship of tours and festivals is already well established (O2,
Orange, Tennent’s, T-Mobile, Innocent and so forth), as are closed-door corporate gigs for
I BET YOU LOOK GOOD ON THE SALESFLOOR 55
serried ranks of Microserfs, Virginmates, Tescoprolites, Amazononentities and what-have-you
(Sherwin, 2006). Television advertisement and movie soundtracks are one of the foremost means
of breaking artists/novelty acts nowadays (e.g., Moby, Jack Johnson, Flat Eric, Crazy Frog) and it
is increasingly recognised that new albums act as loss leaders for lucrative live shows, ringtone sales
and high-margin tie-in merchandise (Sinclair, 2006). Rap music lyrics, moreover, are so replete
with brandname-dropping that Agenda Inc, a San Francisco-based marketing consultancy,
maintains an American Brandstand chart which tracks mentions of luxury products in the US Top
Twenty. Mercedes was the most mentioned brand in 2005, Nike was number 2, with Cadillac
slipping to 3 (from 2 in 2004). Rumours of product placement payola abound, but the official line
is that rappers mention luxury brands for poetic rather than profitic purposes.
Indeed, with their dedicated record labels, fashion collections, sneaker ranges, restaurant
franchises and so forth, rapperpreneurs like Sean Combs, 50 Cent and Jay-Z represent the leading
edge of what’s happenin’ at the music/marketing interface. But it won’t be too long before
further mergers, joint ventures and band/brand strategic alliances are forged: ZZ Topshop,
Radiohead and Shoulders, Justin Timberland, Liberty X-box, Ice T-Mobile, Paul Wella, Tori
Amex, Heinz Ferdinand, Fatboy Slimfast, Simply Red Bull, Racing Green Day, Iron
Maidenform, Stevie Wonderbra, Starbucks Fizz, Old Spice Girls, Shakira ’n’ Vac, Aerosmith
& Wesson, Red Hot Chili Pepsis, Nike and Tina Turner…
The opportunities, clearly, are endless. So, too, are the threats, not least in the legal arena.
Who, for example, owns the name Pink? The suave shirt-maker of repute or the brassy, postpunk
belter who purports to be just like Madonna, only better? What about Beck’s Bier? CAT
Stevens? Fiona Apple? Glenn Miller? Willie Dixon’s? Rob Halford’s? Staples Singers? Billie
Holiday Inn? Fats Domino’s Pizza? John Hiatt Hotels? Robert Cray Computers? Notorious Big
Mac? Corrine Bailey’s Rae? Eagles Star Insurance? The W.H. Smiths? Where does Maxwell
House fit into the picture? A legal battle royal, surely, is looming between O2 and U2.
Given the potentially ruinous possibility of band/brand strife, a degree of give-and-take will
prove necessary. Otherwise, the combatants will circle the wagons and two Cold War-like blocs
will emerge, daggers drawn. Instead of potentially fruitful alliances like Coldplaystation, Shredded
Wheatus, Arcade Firestone, Kate Bushmills or the General Electric Light Orchestra, there’ll be
inbred coalitions of commercial and cultural contenders, respectively. On one side, alliances along
the lines of Standard Lifesavers, Armani & Hammer, Palmolive Garden, Ferrari Bacardi and
Domestos Perignon. On the other side, there’ll be Kayne Westlife, Brian Wilson Pickett, Elton
John Mellencamp, Iggy Pop Will Eat Itself, Grant Lee Buffalo Tom Petty and Boy George
Michael Jackson Browne.
Rather than resort to gloomy prognostication, a regrettable relic of the longstanding hostility
between the musical and marketing mindsets, it is better to accept the new A&R meets M&A
reality; specifically, that marketers have much to learn from musicians and should look to the
music industry for inspiration (Blackwell and Stephan, 2004). Many of the most creative
marketers in the world—Madonna, 50 Cent, P. Diddy, Eminem, The Rolling Stones—make
their bucks in the mosh pits du monde. Given the ferocious competition in the music industry;
given its fast-moving, here-today-gone-tomorrow mindset; given that just about every business is
in show business nowadays; given that the music biz has not, by and large, embraced the
mainstream, textbook, seen-one-seen-em-all marketing principles that prevail elsewhere, it is
arguable that rock music provides an apt marketing paradigm for our time, a paradigm that is not
based on established principles or existing technology, much less conventional wisdom or
marketing research. It relies rather on the rock ’n’ roll spirit of rebellion, anarchy, enthusiasm,
iconoclasm, boundless self-belief and give-it-a-go chutzpah.
56 KELLEY
By-the-book marketing no longer works, because everyone has read the book and can follow
the instructions. It’s time to rip it up and start again. Rip-it-up is the essence of rock.
DA DO RON RONSEAL
In this regard, three contrasting rock brands can help shed light on the secret of musical success.
Madonna, Van Morrison and the Arctic Monkeys are as eclectic a bunch as can be imagined:
one’s an allegedly talentless celebrity, another’s the acme of traditional musicianship, and the
third’s a recent arrival on the rock ’n’ roll escalator. Together, however, they convey a sense of
what can be tentatively termed the nu¨ marketing paradigm.
Madgevertising
Whatever else is said about her—and a lot is said about her—Madonna is one of the biggest stars
in the galaxy of rock (Taraborrelli, 2002). She has had more hit singles than anyone bar Elvis, who
died on her nineteenth birthday. An omen, she maintains. It certainly stimulated her initial
attempts at emulation, despite a manifest lack of musical ability. A wannabe dancer, with
considerable potential, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone moved to New York in July 1978,
where she did what was necessary to make a living on the margins of showbusiness (waitressing,
scamming, hustling, hanging out, porno photosessions, counter clerking at Dunkin Donuts). Her
big break came in 1982, when she charmed Seymour Stein, the boss of Sire Records, into
releasing her first single ‘Everybody’, which was an immediate dancefloor sensation. ‘Holiday’,
‘Burning Up’ and ‘Lucky Star’ quickly followed, as did her best-selling eponymous album.
However, it was her scandalous performance of ‘Like a Virgin’ on the 1984 MTV Awards Show
which transported the writhing whippersnapper to the next level, when the first wave of
Madonnamania really kicked in. Her reputation was cemented by ‘Material World’s’ landmark
video, a virtuoso pastiche of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and sealed by the furore that surrounded
‘Like a Prayer’, which achieved the remarkable double of offending both the Catholic Church
and her (short-lived) sponsor, Pepsi Cola, while topping the charts.
Madonna kept the pot boiling with the Blonde ‘pointy bra’ Ambition tour, then allowed it to
boil over with the wilfully explicit Sex book, a series of sub-par performances in quasi-porn
movies, a smattering of offensive television appearances on American chat shows and a poorly
received album of uninspiring songs, Erotica. Undeterred, if somewhat chastened, Madonna
paused for breath, rethought her marketing strategy and bounced back with a commanding
performance in Evita, as well as a critically acclaimed album, Ray of Light, and a series of I’ll-showem
singles, ‘Beautiful Stranger’ and ‘American Pie’ in particular. The Drowned World tour of
2001 confirmed her status as one of the world’s top-grossing acts and, having forced her way back
to the top, Madonna has not only maintained the momentum with a series of hit singles, theatrical
appearances and feature-length documentaries, but she’s reclaimed her position at the pinnacle of
the profession with a show-stopping set at Live8, a world-wide Number 1, ‘Hung Up’, and the
rapturously received retro album, Confessions on a Dance Floor.
Musical achievements aside, Madonna is best known for her career-long role as a sexual,
religious and political provocateur—a raunchy thorn in society’s side—as well as her incessant
mutability. Femme fatale, foster parent, material girl, earth mother, hippie chick, gay icon, lesbian
lover, professional virgin, sexual deviant, disco dancer, domestic goddess, spiritual spokesperson,
English aristocrat, Mockney geezer, demanding diva, tough-love supermom, kid-lit author,
muscle-bound hard-body and many, many more.
I BET YOU LOOK GOOD ON THE SALESFLOOR 57
What she really is, of course, is a marketing genius. If, as Germaine Greer observes, ‘the true art
form of our time isn’t music or poetry, it’s marketing’, then Madonna is the pre-eminent artist of
the 21st century. She has a remarkable ability to keep the media spotlight trained on her every
move and is acutely aware of how headlines contribute to the bottom line. She is a music business
mogul with her own record label, a production company and diverse subsidiaries devoted to
publishing, multi-media, merchandising and similar ancillaries.2 She is a hands-on executive, who
is famously frugal with her estimated personal fortune of $K billion. She is also infamously
perfectionist, exceptionally litigious and an extremely tough negotiator. She maximises her
commercial potential (ads for BMW, H&M, Gap and Motorola among others, as well as a kiddie
clothing line) while taking steps to avoid overexposure (in terms of available product, not
ongoing PR). Her stage show ticket prices are the highest in the industry. It is estimated that the
Confessions tour of 2006 earned a record $195 million worldwide. She has parleyed what most
agree is a modest musical talent into one of the longest and most successful careers in show
business, a career that shows no sign of slackening. The King may be unassailable, but the Queen
of Pop isn’t far behind.
No guru, no method, no marketer
Van Morrison is a singer-songwriter of singular renown. Variously known as Van the Man, the
Belfast Cowboy and the Grumpiest Man in Showbusiness, he is one of the most highly regarded
and hardest working musicians on the circuit (Rogan, 2005). Brought up in the Ulster Protestant
heartland of East Belfast, where he was steeped in the blues thanks to his father’s extensive record
collection, George Ivan Morrison left school at 15 and, while keeping body and soul together
with a series of dead-end jobs, he acquired his musical chops in the then-burgeoning Irish
showband scene.3 The early 1960s, however, ushered in the British Beat Boom and Van boomed
with the best of them. He formed a raucous rhythm and blues band—Them—whose residency at
Belfast’s Maritime Hotel was the stuff of live-gig legend. Inevitably, albeit in keeping with rock
’n’ roll cliche´, the band was too-fast-to-live, too-young-to-die. It barnstormed the UK charts
with several hit singles, most notably ‘Gloria’, ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’ and ‘Here Comes the
Night’, only to disintegrate in a welter of acrimonious intra-band rows and high-velocity
personnel changes.
Never in doubt about his musical abilities, Van the Man repaired to New York, where he
recorded the signature late-1960s album Astral Weeks, which proved to be the first in a sequence
of seminal solo recordings, such as Moondance, Tupelo Honey, St Dominic’s Preview and a live album
of staggering brilliance, It’s Too Late to Stop Now. This remarkable burst of creativity was followed
by a fallow period of introspective self-discovery and attempts to get in touch with the spiritual
wellsprings of his musical muse. After a three-year hiatus, Morrison returned to form with
Wavelength, Into the Music, Enlightenment and Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, which were quickly
eclipsed by a continuous string of late-1980s classics including Irish Heartbeat, Avalon Sunset and
the inevitable best-selling Best Of. Since the early 1990s, Van the Man has been happily
ensconced in Dublin, secure in his status as a Hall of Fame-inducted rockristocrat and producing
an album a year, or thereabouts. As a rule, these excursions alternate between Morrison’s musical
roots—skiffle, blues, country, gospel, et al—and variations on his trademark, Celtic-inflected
template, a.k.a. Caledonian Soul.
George Ivan Morrison’s status as a living musical legend is unchallenged and unchallengeable.
Equally unchallenged is his reputation for mind-bogglingly boorish behaviour. Almost everyone
who has worked for or with Van Morrison tells tales of his irascible antics. Van is the Man who
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thinks nothing of berating audiences for their abyssal ignorance or sullenly stalking off-stage in
high dudgeon. Van is the Man who rudely refused to attend his induction into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame and threatened legal action against Ulster admirers who wanted to adorn his
childhood home with a Van-lived-here commemorative plaque. Van is the Man who makes no
bones about his absolute abhorrence of the media’s malevolent myrmidons—physical assaults are
alleged—and as for record company suits, starmakers and A&Rseholes, he has nothing but
contempt for their contrived machinations. Van, remember, is the Man who has written more
songs about the iniquities of the music business than he has about moving on up along the ancient
avenue to the higher ground where the back street jelly roll is in the garden wet with rain on
golden autumn days like this when the healing has begun, begun, begun, begun, begun, begun,
begun. And that’s saying something.
Set against this inordinate asperity, Van Morrison is blessed with a couple of commendably
redeeming features. Yes, he may have no time for ignorant audiences or oily marketing types or
his copycat competitors in the singer-songwriter segment. However, his musical ability is
astonishing. Unlike many recording artists of the Beat Boom generation, he is not reduced to
karaoking his greatest hits or performing as part of a swinging 60s retro package. Equally
astonishing is his work ethic. When he’s not in the studio, he’s out on the road with his band,
playing intimate venues and conjuring sets as the spirit moves him. Every show is different. The
band dips into a repertoire of 80–100 songs—old, new, borrowed, blues—which are improvised
upon in response to a series of surreptitious hand-signals. All too often, these signals cut the set
short or semaphore no encore—if the magic’s not there, that’s that—but on a good night, when
the musical gods are with him, Van Morrison transports his audience on a Vanlose Stairway of
song to the Elysian Fields of the Celtic sublime.
For some, not least his latest biographer (Rogan, 2005), Van Morrison embodies the worst
traits of pig-headed, pig-ignorant Ulster Protestantism (truculent, surly, brusque, uncouth, etc.).
Nevertheless, the Belfast Cowboy’s anti-customer, anti-business, anti-anything-you-got
antagonism doesn’t diminish the fact that Van the Brand is enormously popular, highly
successful, remarkably durable, and totally unique.
Mardy brand
Compared to Morrison or Madonna, the Arctic Monkeys are musical neophytes, whose career
longevity is but a blink of Morrison’s evil eye or flash of Madge’s diamante knickers (Odell,
2006). Like legions of overnight sensations, the Monkeys might not last the course, much less
hear the call of the Hall of Fame. They’ve made a good start, nonetheless. Formed in Sheffield in
2002, the Arctic Monkeys comprise Alex Turner (vocals/guitar), Jamie Cook (lead), Matthew
Helders (drums) and Andy Nicholson (bass, replaced by Nick O’Malley in 2006). They got
together as schoolchums, when near-neighbours Turner and Cook received guitars for Christmas
and promptly decided, in classic rock band manner, that they’d got what it takes. A series of early
gigs at a local pub, The Grapes, attracted the attention of Jon ‘the Reverend’ McClure, a local
muso who knew his way round the business and who lent his support to the fledgling act.
Inevitably, their first demo CDs were recorded on the cheap. So cheap, in fact, that they were
given away to fans at the end of every show. This act of generosity was to have momentous
consequences, however, because fans ripped and burned the songs and circulated them to their
friends via file-sharing networks. Unbeknown to the band themselves, who played no part in the
peer-to-peer process, the Monkeys quickly built up an impressive virtual fanbase. Better yet, this
I BET YOU LOOK GOOD ON THE SALESFLOOR 59
build-up fortuitously coincided with the rise of MySpace and similar social networking websites,
which amplified and intensified the buzz surrounding the band.
Equally inevitably, the blowhards of A&R quickly picked up on incipient Monkey mania. But
the major labels’ ideas for moulding and marketing the band didn’t meet with the members’
approval, let alone that of their manager, Geoff Barradale. They rejected the majors’ advances and
eventually signed with Domino Records, a small independent label that made its mark with indie
success story Franz Ferdinand and, more importantly, shared the Monkeys’ musical vision. The
first single, ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’, was released on 17 October 2005 and,
thanks to the support of the digitudes, it went straight to Number 1 in the UK, effortlessly
trumping McFly and Robbie Williams, whose records were released on the same day. A second
single, ‘When the Sun Goes Down’, repeated the same chart-topping trick, as did the ensuing
album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, which became the fastest-selling debut in
UK chart history. The tie-in tour, unsurprisingly, sold out in an instant. Such was the demand for
tickets that prices quickly escalated to a level where touts, scalpers and eBay extortionists thought
it was their birthday and Christmas combined.
Having demonstrated a new net-led model of making it, the hotter-than-hot Arctic Monkeys
were gleefully embraced by the music business. Cover stories, photo shoots, adulatory articles,
enthusiastic endorsement by established stars and all the usual razzamatazz quickly materialised.
The band’s refusal to play by the accustomed rules of the star-making game—journalists were
ignored, television appearances were spurned, spindoctors were disdained—added considerably to
the Monkeys’ commercial cachet, as did their northern, working-class, garage-band credentials.
They represented the antithesis of meretricious, X-Factored, pre-packaged, utterly inauthentic
pop bands that increasingly cluttered the UK charts. The controversy that surrounded the band—
controversy about misogynistic lyrics, controversy about the cigarette smoker on the album
cover, controversy about their criticism of other bands, controversy over the fist fights that broke
out at their gigs, controversy over their churlish refusal to compromise—also contributed to their
irresistible appeal.4
Such was the excitement about the band that they swept the board at year-end award
ceremonies. Aside from the prestigious Mercury Music Prize, the Monkeys won both the NME’s
Best Band and Best New Band accolades, an unprecedented double triumph. The prognosis,
nevertheless, is uncertain. The second album syndrome, the crack-the-States challenge, the
departure of a founder member, the so-called ‘curse’ of the Mercury Prize, the endorsement of
prominent politicians like Gordon Brown and Ming Campbell (the kiss of death credibility-wise)
are all obstacles in the path of the ambitious band. What’s more, as alleged harbingers of the future
of MySpace-shaped music—if you can make it in MySpace, you can make it anywhere!—the
attention of the entire music industry is focused on Steel City’s contenders, which doesn’t make it
any easier. Their average age, remember, is still less than 21, young enough to be Madonna’s
children and Morrison’s grand-children. Roll over Chuck Berry, tell McCartney the news…
STAIRWAY TO HILTON
Madonna, Morrison and the Monkeys are very different musical propositions, yet in marketing
sense they exhibit several meaningful similarities. Without exception, they are consistently
controversial. Whether it be Madonna’s shock-sells strategy, Morrison’s grumpy bugger
belligerence, or the Arctic Monkeys’ contempt for music business movers and shakers, they
are constantly in hot water. Some of this may be carefully contrived (Madge), some of it may be
down to downright cantankerousness (Van), some may be an unfortunate side-effect of instant
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celebrity (Monkeymania). But the fact of the matter is that it works. Controversy is the caffeine of
the cultural industries. It generates the attention, the headlines, the column inches, the water
cooler chatter, the sudden buzz surge that showbiz thrives on.
Constant change is another shared characteristic. Madonna is the foremost exponent of
reinvention, as her Greatest Hits tour of that name bears witness. Virgin, whore, matriarch,
messiah and just about every passing fashion out there are part-and-parcel of her personae array.
This repertoire of guises, however, never disguises the fact that it’s Madge behind the mask. The
costumes, choreography and accoutrements may be different, but she’s still playing herself. Van
Morrison, likewise, is constantly changing—country album, followed by skiffle, followed by
gospel, followed by Caledonian soul, etc.—yet these changes are mere variations on the basic
Morrisonian template. Cynics might call it formulaic, but for the Belfast Cowboy’s diehard fans,
the constantly changing set lists, the reworkings of standards, the sheer unpredictability of the
artist provides a compelling cavalcade of invention and convention. The Arctic Monkeys, of
course, haven’t really had time to change, line-up excepted, though their ability to respond to the
challenge of change is crucial to their long-term survival. What they do have is uncommon
curiosity value. The will-they-won’t-they element of unpredictability that’s so important to
Morrison and Madonna, and that keeps the punters coming back for more in the hope of an ‘I
was there’ moment, is central to the delicious intrigue that surrounds the Arctic Monkeys at
present. Will there be a riot at the gig tonight (as is often the case)? Will the band storm out of the
TV studios (as they’ve done in France and Italy)? Will the lads smash their instruments (as they did
on Saturday Night Live)? Will they self-destruct? Can they keep it going? Madonna and Morrison
have learned to keep it going, sustain the intrigue and maintain the mystique, albeit not without
periods of overexposure.
Overexposure is an ever-present threat in the music business, as it is in marketing, where
brands can quite quickly shift from hot to ho-hum, from to-die-for to dead-in-the-water, from
deliriously omnipotent to disastrously omnipresent. ‘How much is too much?’ is an all-important
yet all-but unanswerable question (Brown, 2003). According to Madonna, Morrison and the
Monkeys, calculated constraint is the best policy. Leave them begging for more may be a showbiz
cliche´, one that Madonna has wholeheartedly embraced from the very start of her career—no
encores, rarely tours, limited dates, short but spectacular sets—yet it works all the same. Despite
his prolific work-rate, Van Morrison plays small halls, ensures that every set is bespoke and salts
every filler-filled album with one or two bone-fide classics. The Arctic Monkeys, meanwhile,
have discovered the power of scarcity by accident, insofar as their takeoff was so swift that they
simply couldn’t keep up with demand (the pressing of the first freebie CD was limited to 1000
copies, for example). Perversely, it seems that the best way of sustaining demand is by restricting
supply. ‘Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen’ is the unsung secret of rock ’n’ marketing alike.
This scarcity-sells strategy, admittedly, runs counter to conventional marketing wisdom, which
is predicated on the notion of customer centricity, customer sovereignty, customer first, last and
always (Cialdini, 2001). Total unconditional love rather than tough unrequited love is modern
marketing’s modus operandi. Madonna, Morrison and the Monkeys don’t see things that way,
however. Pandering to the customer is not on their agenda, whether it be Madonna’s antiaudience
outbursts of the ‘fuck you, motherfuckers’ variety, Morrison’s fondness for flouncing
off-stage in high dudgeon or the Monkeys’ couldn’t-care-less attitude to fans’ adventures on
MySpace. This doesn’t mean that customers are irrelevant. Raving fans are their bread and butter,
after all. It simply means that they are moved more by their muse than their market. Customer
eccentricity rather than customer centricity is the guiding principle. Customers are part of the
creative artists’ cosmos, but not a pre-eminent part.
I BET YOU LOOK GOOD ON THE SALESFLOOR 61
HIGHWAY TO DELL
The nu¨-marketing paradigm, as practised by Madonna, Van Morrison and the Arctic Monkeys, is
predicated on controversy, changeability, curiosity, constricted supply and customer disorientation.
What it really boils down to is Celticity. The combination of intransigence,
belligerence, restless creativity, maddening mutability and disarming charm is quintessentially
Celtic. If, as Brown (2006) contends, Celtic marketing is wild, free, tempestuous, imaginative,
spiritual and spontaneous, then our 3Ms represent the acme of Celtic marketing. Rock ’n’ roll
ain’t noise pollution. It’s the future of marketing. Peter Drucker has left the building. The
customer is always right on. I bet you look good on the salesfloor.
NOTES
1 At the risk of attracting the ire of vinyl-loving anoraks with alphabetised record collections, to
say nothing of middle-aged teenage rebels with leather jackets and receding hairlines, the
following questions must be addressed by those who subscribe to the music-equals-marketing
metaphor: Are structural equation models the equivalent of progressive rock and, if so, is anybody
listening? To what extent are neo-Marxist critical theorists a marketing analogue of modern jazz
combos, playing esoteric atonal music with their backs to the audience? If Phil Kotler is the Bob
Dylan of our field, who is its Jerry Lee Lewis? (Answers on a postcard.)
2 Maverick Records was founded by Madonna and her then manager Freddy DeMann in 1991.
Its signings include Alanis Morissette, The Prodigy and Muse. A legal battle broke out with
Warner Brothers in 2004, which resulted in Warners acquiring Madonna’s label as a wholly
owned subsidiary.
3 Irish showbands were the tribute acts of their day, though their sets usually included comedy/
cabaret components (see Smith, 2005).
4 Mark E. Smith, former leader of The Fall and motor-mouth commentator on musical matters,
has recently stated that rather than aspire to rock music superstardom, the Arctic Monkeys are
better suited to careers in marketing. Specifically, running a fish ’n’ chip shop in Doncaster!
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