Muscle Marketing
by Molly-Ann Leikin

A few weeks ago, there was a segment on "Sixty Minutes" about Jimmy Buffet. Jimmy is a very good songwriter and a charming performer who basically had one hit, "Margaritaville", about twenty years ago. Since then, he has managed to make $30,000,000. a year, every year, from his concerts and concessions. This is not a typo. I said thirty million. Big ones.

As I nibbled on my Sunday night microwave popcorn, (hereafter known as SNMP), I listened carefully to what Jimmy had to say to Mike Wallace, and was interested to see that Buffet himself is the driving force behind his career. The buck starts and stops with him. There is no mystery, southern, fast-talking colonel/manager/savior making side deals with venue peddlers. It's Jimmy.

He wasn't born a slick businessman. He was just a musician like the rest of us. But when he was in high school, Buffet was the only member of his band to have good enough credit to rent a sound system from the local music store so his band could play at the Friday night dances. Since the equipment rental was all in his name, Jimmy had to make sure it got back in time so he wouldn't lose his deposit or get charged late fees. He became responsible and a good businessman out of necessity, and by process of elimination. There was no one else to do it. From there, the Jimmy Buffet phenomenon snowballed into the mugs and memorial salt mines guaranteed to transform your patios in Minnetonka and Moose Jaw into your own, private Margaritavilles.

Well, I said to myself, lapping up my MWPC. My songwriters ought to hear about this.

I know that many of you who haven't had hits yet, don't have a built-in audience to cater to. You're still hoping you'll get a deal. You want to replace Seal, or Spice Girls or Jewell. But you have to have a product strong enough to do that? And how in the world do you get one? And then you have to have the hustle muscles to promote it.

First, you can be smart about what you're creating. Instead of just writing for the sake of spontaneous creativity, as you stockpile songs and tracks, how bad would it be to write something that could be a single and get some airplay? I have no problem with your being true to your artistic self, but if you want to thrive as an artist in the marketplace, you have to take some responsibility for giving the marketplace something it wants and can recognize.

Since none of us can be impartial or objective about what we create, is it realistic for you to stake your whole piggy bank on material no mainstream music professional has ever heard? Is your cousin Candora's Canasta Club really the only opinion you seek before going into the studio?

I urge you to do a reality check on the marketability of your work before you even consider selling the farm to pay the recording costs. Once spent, they are gone forever. And ever. And the minute an A & R person sees a copyright date on the back of your vanity CD that is a few years old, he or she loses interest. It's old news.

I hear albums every day, recorded by artists with hit singles having no relationship whatsoever to what's on the rest of their album. This leads me to believe the single came from the A & R department, with a memo saying "sing this and we'll sign you." Or, "sing this and we'll release your CD once this is on it." No, it isn't pure art. But nobody said it was. It's business. Record labels are not subsidized by the National Endowment for the Arts, like painters and sculptors and ballerina's are. It's business.

Consider for once, being on the other side of the desk. If you were a record label, your job would be to make money for the company. There would be no room for art for art's sake in the equation at all. One of my clients, who moved to L.A. from San Clemente, got a part time job working for a music publisher. After two days she called me, out of breath, saying "now I know what you were talking about! I'm on the other side of the desk! You were right!" That first-hand experience really helped her writing. She got many cuts in the next few months and has gone on to be a major player.

Living in Hollywood, I had no choice but to learn about marketing in its most aggressive form. Whether a studio makes a $60,000,000. movie, or a $2,000,000. movie, as soon as the script is written and before anybody signs a cameraman or a caterer, the studio Armani suits sit down with calculators and low sodium Vitel water to determine how much they will have to spend to market the film. Sometimes the marketing budget is three times the cost of making the film. So in the case of the $60,000,000. movie, the marketing budget is $$180,000,000., which pays for all those "Air Force One" ads we've all been barraged with. It's excessive, it's abusive, but it works. We all troop out like good little consumers to spend eight dollars and two and a half hours with Harrison Ford. Success in the movies is not an accident.

While an album's budget is no where near that of a feature film, songwriters can learn a lot from the way movies are marketed. I was sitting in a producer's office recently, pitching him a story idea, when Somebody In Accounting needed to know how much of this producer's current film budget was allocated to white corn tortilla chips. Either that or condoms. I forget which. My producer friend calmly opened his desk drawer, took out a file, unfolded twenty-two pages of what made up The Budget, each page with an anal-retentive, tidy title at the top, and found the item the caller needed. Then he gave the information to the Guy In Accounting, matter of factly folded up The Budget, put it back in the drawer, and said, "See, this is my whole project. Start to finish." He had every detail, every possibility, considered in front. He wasn't going to use up his whole budget on production, and then, with the finished film languishing in the can, hope somebody with a yen for doing good deeds who had connections, would bop along while he was playing ping pong, and buy the movie from him to help the cause of art for art's sake. It was all prearranged.

I know this sounds crass and commercial, and I often resent the way the music business has changed as much as anyone. Maybe more. But these are truths that won't disappear. If you are in the music business, it is your business to know about your business. As personal and inspired as your songs are, the minute you attempt to market them, they become a product, just like a Coke or a Camry. And having a product, it would be smart to predetermine who will like it, and how you'll have to convince them they have to have it.

On the other hand, sometimes the consumer suffers from overkill. We are all aware that there are some artists in the music business who continually give us the emperor's new clothes - all sizzle, no steak. They are masters and mistresses, as the case may be, of marketing, and really don't have a product at all. I am not extolling this concept. I just hope you're aware of it and find the middle ground, where you have a good, original product, and a good, original marketing plan, along with budget to follow through all the way to a Grammy nomination.

Since songwriters by nature prefer to write in their safe havens, and rarely venture outside of them, let me assure you that a solid marketing plan is not buying a yellow page directory of record labels and publishers and sending out 1000 unsolicited copies of your CD to people you don't know. Absolutely no one will listen to them. You can almost bet on that.

The solution is networking. And I will write about it next time.

© 2000 Molly-Ann Leikin

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