Quiddity Higher Purpose Business, help for entrepreneurs, women in business, David Solomon

Going gaga over Gaga

(Article first published as Going Gaga Over GAGA on Technorati.)

Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, David Bowie, Prince, Madonna – all global music phenomenon in their own time and own way. And now we have Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – better known as LADY GAGA (yes, it is written all in capitals - see her website).

Love her or hate her, you have to admire the business empire she’s built, notable for both the speed of its creation and the diversity of its platforms.

As a true “Purple Cow” GAGA stands out from the crowd. Even though she does seem to channel Madonna’s fashion, Prince’s dance moves and Alice Cooper’s shock-rock performances (amongst numerous other fairly obvious influences), she has also done something unprecedented – melding her inspirations with leading edge dance/pop and incredible Web savvy to build a global empire in just 5 short years.

At only 24, GAGA reigns over a brand that spans music (10 million+ albums sold), video (1 billion+ Web views), design (Monster headphones, Polaroid cameras), starring in a comic book series, and marketing (HP, MAC Cosmetics).

And let’s not go past the unbridled and unashamed product placement in those billion-plus video viewings. Paparazzi touted Chanel. Bad Romance featured Monster Headphones, Nemiroff Vodka, and HP’s Envy 15 Beats Limited Edition laptop. And Telephone, the most overt example yet, hawked everything from Wonder Bread to Miracle Whip to dating Web site PlentyOfFish.com.
 
LADY GAGA cultivates her brand with near-military rigor. In 2008, she handpicked several friends to form a creative team that she calls Haus of Gaga. Together, they produce look-at-me fashions - a nude, bubble-covered bodysuit, sunglasses made of cigarettes, a flame-shooting metal bustier - that define her concerts and her controversial videos.

And at the moment no other artist commands the kind of attention that GAGA does. If she does something with your brand, you’ll immediately have millions of eyeballs watching. Brand GAGA has build a huge following of loyal fans who follow her every move, facilitated by social media and Web 2.0. For example, she has a real-time tribe of Twitter followers numbering nearly 4 million, as well as 6 ½ million Facebook fans.
 
Look at the publicity generated for Hermes when LADY GAGA arrived in Tokyo with a “defaced” Hermes Birkin bag tattooed with Japanese text. Perhaps the more appropriate word is customised. GAGA took an iconic fashion accessory (incidentally worth $6,000) and made it her own.
 
However, lest you think there is no artistic substance behind the hype, think again. Take the recent song Alejandro and its accompanying 9 minute video.

By anyone’s standards this is a provocative video clip complete with images of religion, death, fascism, mostly-naked men, gyrating dancing, military precision manoeuvres and simulated sex. Gaga describes the new clip as “a celebration of my love and appreciation for the gay community…” - and to date it has received nearly 44 million views.

If you haven’t seen it, you can watch the video here: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqrrmev4mA&feature=player_embedded#!).

If you don’t want to see it, just imagine all the following film clips combined into one, and that’s what you’d have - Like a Prayer (Madonna) + Spinning Around (Kylie Minogue) + Slave For You and Toxic (Britney Spears) + the dancing of Beyonce, Shakira and Rihanna.

And yet, in my humble opinion, the song is worthy of winning the Eurovision Song Contest. It has a strong beat, better than average lyrics (without the typical profanity), imagery worthy of Cirque du Soleil - and even violins! It is catchy, toe-tapping and head nodding.

GAGA is ubiquitous, largely because she deftly exploits the Web. Her persona is built for the online generation - she was the most-Googled image of 2009. And because of this influence she can also have a strong social enterprise influence.

As part of their sponsorship of her U.S. tour, GAGA negotiated with Virgin Mobile to involve her fans and her causes. So Virgin created www.ladyvirgin.com and gave show tickets to those who did community service, thus helping generate 30,000 hours nationwide (US only) to help the issue of  youth homelessness.
 
And the lessons for us?

LADY GAGA dares to be different. Sure, she borrows greatly from what has already been successful, but she puts her own style and panache on it. And there is a depth of quality to her work – she is no Milli Vanilli (remember them?).

More importantly, LADY GAGA understands her audience and she communicates with them – and lets them communicate with her - in a way with which they are most comfortable. And her product is designed to tap right into the emotional strands of every young person. It’s what they want, available when they want it.

For all businesses the current marketing challenge is now how to shape your  business, services and products so that you can engage this emerging youth market and their dependency upon technology and social networking sites.

You just can’t put your head in the sand and ignore it - a recent study revealed that 1 in 3 young women check Facebook before brushing their teeth or going to the toilet in the mornings!

The bottom line? To remain commercially viable all businesses will need to learn to work with what their market demands. And this inevitably will mean change. As has been said before – change is the new constant.

www.quidditybusiness.com.au

The Six P’s

My first exposure to the Six P’s was when I undertook basic training in the Army. It was drilled into us that “Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Poor Performance”. (Actually I have sanitised that just a bit :).

Being a somewhat optimistic and positive thinking person, I later converted the Six P’s to be “Prior Preparation and Planning Promotes Positive Performance”.

So what’s the point of telling you about this?

Well, we just moved house, and with a family of 5 (all of whom who are hoarders), this was no small undertaking! I wouldn’t say that it was executed with the precision of a military manoeuvre, but without the Six P’s we would have been in big trouble.

And that got me thinking about how it relates to business…

I’m not sure how much of this was propaganda, but I remember being taught in my early business studies about the basic difference between post World War II Japanese and Western manufacturing.

The Japanese would start by planning extensively – for up to 80% of the time available for the project – and then execute - just once - to a very high standard, if not perfectly.

On the other hand, the Western managers would certainly plan – but for much less time (say 20%) – and then execute the plan. And then adjust and re-execute to fix up all the errors.

Cirque du Soleil shows are another interesting example of effectiveness of the Six P’s.

A Cirque show will start with experts (performers, production etc) and even then, still take anywhere from 2 to 4 years to prepare! The artists all undergo artistic and acrobatic training at the Creation Studio where they around twenty trainers from around the world to supervise performer-training programs.

Kà, which opened at the MGM Grand in late 2004 - an extravaganza complete with giant puppets, archers shooting flaming arrows, and the “Wheel of Death” - cost $165 million to stage and was 4 years in the making.

O, a theatre based show performed in the water, took more than 400,000 man-hours of preproduction and production work to prepare, not counting the time spent on the construction of the theatre (and another US$100 million).

My own experiences with performance are similar – years of scales and lessons to get my voice ready, followed by practicing each song literally hundreds of times, before I was ready to perform live on stage or to record.

The Six P’s make it all look effortless, but only if you’ve done the work beforehand.

The same applies to just about any discipline you can name.

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Bing Crosby all made singing look effortless. So did Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly when it came to dance.

How easy did Johnny Wilkinson and Andrew Mehrtens make it look to kick a rugby ball accurately? Or these players when they hit a tennis ball? Court, Navratilova, Evert, Goolagong, King and Graf.

My friend Robyn is the fastest typist I have ever seen. She was last measured at over 150 WPM!

Whether you are an accountant who can look at the numbers and see things mere mortals cannot, or a business coach / mentor who can spot the real issue - not just the symptoms, or perhaps a counsellor who knows in the moment just the right question to ask, people look at you in awe and ask “How do you do that?”

How? I’d suggest it is the Six P’s at work.

It is conservatively estimated that it takes 10,000 hours to become “expert” in something. This equates to 250 x 40 hour weeks = 5 years full-time.

Becoming an expert in your field (no matter whether it is law, graphic design, dentistry, sales, importing, investment etc.) has become a prerequisite to firstly survive and then flourish.

So if it takes this long, how can we speed up the process of becoming an expert? 5 years is a long time, especially if you are in the early stages of your business.

The secret is the Six P’s – combined with doing work ON the business.

Yes, I know, we’ve all heard it before. But do we do it?

www.quidditybusiness.com.au