Posted on 27/6/2018, 1:24 pm, by Colin Charles, under
Business.
Last week, I read in the WSJ an article about Beyoncé and Jay-Z and their new album, “Everything is Love”. If you have a subscription, feel free to read: Beyoncé and Jay-Z Go Pay-to-Play With New Album.
Naturally, that tempted me to listen to the album with my Apple Music subscription. I was not moved (keeping in mind, Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind is one of my favourite tunes).
So Taylor Swift has done before too. One of the reasons why I have subscribed to Apple Music was to listen to her music when she pulled out of Spotify. While this has changed, I have never bothered to change my streaming music service of choice.
It occured to me that these folk only do this to get in the news. It is free advertising, via “earned media”. I generally don’t read music reviews in the papers that I subscribe to, but if it makes the main pages, it is quite hard to skip over.
Posted on 7/1/2018, 6:41 pm, by Colin Charles, under
General.
From an excellent Medium post: The 3 Most Important Things I Know About Consumers I Learned From Bartending:
- It’s never really about the product – people drink to feel (or to stop feeling) something. True again about buying clothes. “Understanding these needs goes a long way. You almost never want to speak or market directly in terms of these needs, because it freaks people out and breaks the “magic” of what they’re doing, but understanding the deeper motivations goes a long way in building rapport.”
- People want to be guided – so true, I always do say, “what do you recommend?” For me, it makes or breaks my visit to the place; a passionate person would give me a recommendation they themselves consume, rather than what they think I would like to consume. Interesting to also see that people care about what others do… “Social proof is a powerful thing. And with great power comes great responsibility.”
- Consistency vs. Novelty – Customers want rapport with you (and themselves). “People love new. They love novelty.”
Giving stuff away gets people engaged (well yes, who doesn’t love a free lunch?).
Perhaps the biggest takeaway is also that people want to like you, and they do want others to like them (and they also want to like themselves).
So when making products, think about fulfilling all these needs.
Posted on 22/2/2014, 11:00 am, by Colin Charles, under
Business.
How WhatsApp’s Arora Sealed Facebook Deal – Digits – WSJ: Time spent on PR is time not spent ‘making your users happy,’ Arora said. ‘The users you get from press and hype are not the best users.’
